It's late, and I've had a long day....

Well, I got up at 6 this morning...I had to do some yardwork, and the forecast was for the 90s today, so I figured since I was awake, I may as well go outside & play in the yard. I weeded, hooked up my 5 soaker hoses & a "jumper" hose together (we're going to set up a timer to water the yard while we're gone...unfortunately, though, the $10 timer I got at WalMart isn't going to cut it...big surprise, I know. Tomorrow I'll go to Lowe's and get one that actually works.)--seriously, 5 soaker hoses!!!! I distributed 10 bags of 3cu ft. of pine mulch (the nice worker at Lowe's loaded the truck for me, but since I couldn't bring him home, I took them out of the truck & laid them all out in the yard myself. Just call me Super Woman.)...and learned that, along with moulding, you never get as much mulch as you think you'll need...you're always 1 bag short. And, true 'nuff, I need just one more bag. I rearranged the retaining wall bricks along the side to be a little more "finished"--they don't just curve around the house to...nowhere. They now curve at the end of the shrubbery and look like they belong there.

In the middle of my yard work, the SECOND heater guy came out and verified the first diagnosis--it's wired funky. Great. But, he referred me to someone else, and I promptly called, left a message & have yet to hear from him. I'm starting to panic a little, since we'll be leaving NEXT WEEKEND. But...it'll happen or it won't. If it doesn't, we're going to have to come back for periodic maintenence & we'll schedule something for one of the weekends we're home.

I started looking outside, and kept noticing all those little nails we put around the edge of the porch when we hung the Christmas lights. The lights sure looked nice, but as we buck the trends, we took them down after Christmas, but left up the nails for next year. Only this year, we won't be hanging lights on this porch. So I removed all the nails, and painted over the spots. With white paint. Because I thought the porch was white. It's not. It's sort of....not really white, but not really beige, either (I know this, because I tried the beige paint that we have that the walls of our house used to be). So...I figured, "Heck with it! Maybe no one will notice!" and I just painted the edge & bottom of the overhang shelf-thingy. I think it looks okay...maybe no one will notice. If they do...they can repaint it at their leisure. I'm just glad when I look out the window you don't notice all these little rusty nails & such.

By the way, we've got three of the cutest puppies roaming around in our neighborhood....they're sweet, and if I thought there was any way we could take 'em, I'd have them named & bathed in about 2 seconds (they are so stinky!!! I don't know what it is, but every stray we come across stinks!!!!). Well, just to clear up a point: if you think it's easy working in the garden with three puppies, you'd be wrong. They are just about as helpful with gardening as the cats are with putting up a stove hood. They're at that cute "cotton balls w/feet" stage where they are UNDER YOUR FEET at every step, they've got those tiny, sharp puppy teeth that's perfect for nipping exposed body parts & they're all feet & claws. And stinky breath. But they are cute, and very, very sweet. Anyone want a puppy?????