The morals of the story

This is a photo of a robin sitting on my deck railing taken some time in Dec or Nov when we had some snow this year. Contrary to the story below; our robins stay around all winter and do not migrate. Our Island robins seem to grow to a rather huge size, while our deer are much smaller than the regular mainland deer. There must be a moral in there somewhere. :)

THIS BIRD HAS AN INTERESTING STORY: All of his little friends left for southern climes, but he stayed on in my backyard. It started snowing this day, and he was getting cold and so finally started flying south too. He only got a short distance though when his wings started to get ice on them, and he fell to the ground in a barnyard and was quickly covered with snow. He must have wondered why he had waited so long to fly south and resigned himself to a harsh and lonely death when a horse happened along. To add insult to injury, the horse dumped a load on manure on the bird (if you know what I mean). By now this poor bird must have surely been bemoaning what an ignoble death he faced, but the manure was warm, and it was not too long before the warmth started to revive the bird. Apparently happy to be alive, the bird started singing. At this point, a cat came walking by. The cat heard the bird, uncovered it, and ate it. Now all good stories have a moral, and this must be a very good story because it has four morals.
1-Don’t procrastinate or you’ll get snowed under.
2-Every horse’s ass that dumps sh*t on you is not necessarily your enemy.
3-Every cat that takes sh*t off you is not necessarily your friend.
4-If you’re happy, for goodness sake keep your mouth shut.
A Flickr internet friend put this on his Flickr account. I thought it was quite fun and worth repeating. His photo is much better suited to the story.

I have been for both of my labs yesterday and today and can now get on with my life. The mamogram was no where near the horror stories I have heard. The ultrasound went much the same as the first one. Results to the drs... I don't expect any problems.

We saw Maria today and finalized our plans for our trip on the Russian River Cruise and the Baltic countries, finishing with a few days in Amsterdam. This should be fun. I must start to do a bit of research on the places mentioned in the itinerary.

crocuses and stuff

The front strip of grass along the street in my garden is covered in crocuses. They look wonderful. They are multiplying like crazy, too. All the crocuses in my garden this year seem to be huge. I did not feed them, though.

I have managed to get the dead tree out of the bed by the chimney and mostly chopped up. It's roots had rotted and it just pulled right out of the ground. I started to clip the boxwood hedge by that end but ran out of time. Today I got the cottenaster topiary clipped into its form. Things are looking quite good. There is not much to do once I have the trees chopped up.

I searched Google again for how much space I might have on my Blogger and found the Picasa photo albums containing my photos. It seems I have two albums with a total of 294 MB. This site said I have one Gigabyte of space. This one and this one I deleted about 10 photos yesterday from the Victoria Grid in October. So.. guess I have room for these, if the limit is still 300 mb.

I have to get in contact with Trevor with regard to my back up stuff. It is totally weird. It says it cannot write to the back up folder cause there is no more room on the drive. He wasn't on line today. I did a backup with Acronis and it said the same stuff, but it is backed up, it seems, to a different drive. This stuff makes me crazy. Probably him too, as he has set up many of these back up systems with no problems.

Orchid Society show and sale

Yesterday, Pat dropped me off at the Student Union Bldg. at the Uni to attend the Orchid Show and Sale. I have not been for a few years. This year seemed smaller than the last one I attended. Some glorious displays though. I came away $113 lighter of pocket and 6 new plants. One is the Ludisia pictured above -- grown primarily for its colorful leaves. Another one I now have is the Paph. (lady slipper) Ho Chi Minh pictured above. Its a lovely fat light pink slipper. Mine should bloom next year. I have a mini cattleya - Psyche, a phalenopsis, Porroglossum hystrix (tiny) and a Tris andreettae (tiny). I was home before noon, and could not seem to keep my eyes open all afternoon.... so tired. My thyroid meds need adjustment, so hopefully when I get on the higher dosage I should be zipping around again.

I got quite a lot of things done today. Including going to Cannor Nursery and getting the stuff to plant the orchids in... 4 three litre bags each at $8.00. Also picked up 4 cedars and 4 choice perennials, dill seeds, pot trays. This ran to over $100 so I got the Cannor membership to get the 10% off, and the $25 rebate on the order over $100. (Membership is $20 and includes free delivery (not including gravel mart). So, $96 later I am set for the Spring, I think.

When I got home with this an hour later, I transplanted up the new orchids and read up on them on the internet. Also soaked the old pots in 10% bleach solution, then scrubbed them, and soaked again in sink full of clean water. Hopefully, this will kill any diseases that may have been in the old soils. I have a few clay pots left over and now a few extra trays. In the past few years a few of my orchids have died. I might be overwatering them, or at least letting them stand in water. I think they should drain freely and be watered more often. Who knows what happens to them when I am on holidays. I have not seen any scale on the plants since the last time I cleaned them, so I hope this is under control now. I must pay attention to fertizing the plants -- orchids, anyway -- more often.

I have been spending at least half an hour a day on the cat. It is going to be glad to see Andy and Tara home, I guess. I don't care for this cat. It shreds the sofa, scratches and bites... thinks it is playing, and does not have a very nice dispositon at all.