Gone Feral In Idaho

I got the old pump going again this year. The dwarf lily pad is still going strong and needs to be re-potted again this year. I still have to add more water plants and some fish that this fall will go into a fish tank hopefully before becoming part of the food chain for some bird I have yet to identify. All the wires and tubes will be hidden from view. I can't wait to do this project on a much larger scale.

pearly pink tomato The tomato plants will go outside this weekend. About 3/4 of the plants are forming blooms that I first noticed today. This was day three in the new position at work and it was way less hectic and I was good and went to bed early the night before so today's post work routine went much more like I've wanted than Monday and Tuesday when I came home pretty much exhausted.  I even made the new schedule a day before my original goal (boring office people stuff right there, let me tell ya, but I am thrilled with it). So today was the first day this week where I've had the energy and awareness to really check out the plants. A nice leisurely stroll with Sadie was awesome as well. I let her have lots of sniffing time so she could really check out whats been going on in the hood. I must say, I wasn't much fun for her Monday and Tuesday.  white queen with possible megabloom Tomorrow marks another full trip around the sun for me. Each trip seems s...

I turn this bad boy in tomorrow. I've had it almost 5 years, and it shows some wear. The exciting news is that I am moving to Investigations Supervisor and I'll get a new badge. I have a lot to do and to learn. Luckily the deputies I work with are a great bunch, so they should make my job easy. Just this afternoon I parted ways with my beloved Electra SuzyQ. It was the most bad-ass bike I've ever had. I bought it when I moved into my dream neighborhood at the time in 2005. My roommate had a really cool cruiser too, we rode all over town turning heads. With the money I made from the sale I am almost half way funded for a new bike that I plan to use to get to work. I did take the SuzyQ around the block one last time and a local patrol officer I've worked with passed by with the biggest smile on his face seeing me on such an outrageous bike. The person that bought it is sure to get more fun out of it and I hope to see her riding it around town. 

I took advantage of today's gorgeous warm weather to put the plants outside on the front porch to get some real sunshine. I'm glad I got out in the yard a bit since I wasn't feeling well earlier. I think I'm now on the mend.

Kyle and I visited the MK Nature Center this week, it is one of my favorite places in town. We had our first date there. Note the fake petroglyphs on the larger rock.  I've also re-potted all the seedlings, we had to expand the grow op with an annex on Sadie's crate, she's the great plant guard dog.

I've worked on these felted rocks for over three years, not constantly, but little by little. I than kept them in a bag in the closet for about a year. I finally found this glass vase and put them in it with some cholla cactus skeleton pieces I found in Arizona back in February. They are really soft and have a nice weight to them People love to pick them up. maybe over time, I'll make enough to make a rug or bedspread. For the meantime they'll be displayed in the vase.  This project was inspired by Ronel Jordaan's designs   whose products were a bit out of my price range. Here is a link for a tutorial.  I made some of mine by starting them by hand then adding streaks of color and putting them in pantyhose like little sausages and throwing them in the washing machine.  img source with another tutorial I finished them with fine wool threads pulled from the roving and using a felting needle, worked them into each rock.

Acid? Nope, classic migraine. I am one of the lucky folks who share the same plight that Lewis Carol, author of Alice in Wonderland, suffered. No wonder he wrote such a crazy story. I'm not feeling that great, so no long blog post. Here is the link to the image source and a great explanation of the phenomena . Luckily I don't get them very often. From Wikipedia : Migraine and epilepsy In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recor ded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of 'moving fortifications' that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome. [72] Unfortunately there is no clear evidence to show whether this was his first experience of migraine per se, or if he may have previously suffered the far more common form of migraine without aura, although the latter seems most likely, given the fact that migraine most commonly develops in the teens or early adulthood. [73] Another form of migraine aura, Alice ...

We planted some collard greens last October in the hoop house so I figured I'd try my hand at some proper collard greens. I got this recipe from P. Allen Smith's website which included black eye peas. I couldn't find smoked turkey wings, but found some smoked turkey legs. How could you go wrong with smoked turkey legs? At just over 1 hour into cooking, the house smells amazing. It looks like 2 hours will do it for the beans at a very low simmer.  Review: There were no measurements for this recipe so I winged it. I soaked one bag of black eyed peas in salt water for 24 hours and rinsed well. I put in 2 tbs of all the other ingredients except for the red pepper flakes (just a pinch of those) and poured in enough low sodium chicken broth to cover. The greens were enough for about 4 servings so they got 1tbs of the ingredients except for the pinch of red pepper flakes. Since we used smoked turkey legs we pulled them out and chopped up the meat and threw it back in...