Deer in the Headlights

I guess by now the sauce is done and in the freezer. I guess they use veggies to make sort of a V-8 tomato sauce. It sounds good and I know you will enjoy having it for soups, stews, and Italian dishes this winter. Have you ordered the composter yet? I have not, but still plan to before the end of the month.

The declining stock market has me almost gasping. I got my Fidelity statement and my jaw dropped over how much I had lost this last month. I am just furious as it is all due to a few greedy folks and now the entire country is going to have to pick up the pieces. It just does not seem fair to me anyway you slice it. Yet the commercials roll on with urgings to buy more and more and more.

I am at the point where I am so disgusted with the news media that I have literally tuned out. I did watch enough to see that 51% of Americans did not watch the Katie Couric interview with her. The news folks are making more of pictures of her in a red swimsuit than they are her politics. I do not think they would ever treat a man that way. Disgusted with them all!!!

Have you all gotten any news about the Dallas ISD up there? They are in the same shape as the AIG and are laying off 1200 plus folks with more to come as they are so in the red. Aaargh!

On the good news side the weather is nice and cool this morning and I am making some headway in reclaiming the messy yard. I am off to my quilt group this morning and plan to spend the day in reckless abandonment quilting and laughing with friends. Wish you could be here to join us.

Insert something creative!

Texas is lucky then. Since Missouri is one of those despised-by-the-coasters, flyover, battleground states, we get the full court press. We have one of the candidates or VP candidates here just about every week. With what they spend on ads around here, THEY could bail out AIG.

Not a lot of news. I was going to move my azaleas this evening but I was woken up at 6am this morning but huge claps of thunder and a rainy day. Instead, I'm going to take my tomato harvest and try making homemade tomato sauce. I've never done it before but looking at recipes, how hard can it be? There's only so many tomatoes you can eat sliced or in a salad. Even the animals are starting to look at me in alarm when I bring another basket of them in! An odd note: did you know that a lot of tomato sauce recipes call for carrots? And broccoli? /scrunched face.

I'll let you know how the grand experiment goes!

Puzzled

I am puzzled as to whether the TV folks really think they are great, or realize how bad they really are and so constantly tell us how great the shows are. I tuned into the start of the Emmys and after about 3 minutes of boring banter among the reality hosts turned to another channel. I turned back twice more to see if things had gotten better and both times quickly realized they had not, so turned it to another channel for good. I wonder what the ratings for the show were.

I watched Dancing with the Stars premiere last night, and it was dismal. It was almost a caricature of itself. Yipes I may be watching the TCM and Western channel this next year. I planned to watch the opener of Boston Legal, but fell asleep in my chair and awoke to the end scene. It was a jam packed day and the DWTS had lulled me off to dreamland. Bummer. Was it any good? I sure hope so as I would like to have one or two shows to look forward to.

I am headed out to the yard for a full day of trim, rake, prune and weed. I am going out to dinner with a group of friends from church to a restaurant called Sweet Temptations. It sounds like fun. I cannot wait to get my Mastercard bill so I can order the composter. I want the cost to be on next month's bill not this one.

I think your take on the elections is an interesting one. You may well be right. We have not been as bombarded as in past elections. Maybe both canidates are not that interested in Texas, or maybe they are waiting until the last minute to blast us with ads, or maybe neither side can speak Spanish.

Televisions!

First, sure enjoyed talking compost with you yesterday. You ignited my brain with grand plans and I've been scouring the Internet reading about worm farming. Always such a pleasure to get a call from you.

That one program I told you about, Chuck, starts next Monday September 29th at 8pm on NBC! Check it out. You'll either love it or--not. I like it a ton. A good spy spoof is always good.

Did you watch any of those (awful) Emmy awards last night? Blech. I guess they're off my list for forever. Not like it was ever great drama but they used to be fun to watch just for people making fools of themselves but now it's just grindingly boring. So they cut off someone like Glenn Close making her acceptance speech so we can listen to a bunch of reality show hosts talk? Sheesh. I should have realized how bad it would be when I saw that reality shows have a category on the Emmy's. Really?!

I'm so happy we only have a few more weeks before the election. I think I've hit the "I don't care! Just elect someone so you'll shut up!" point. Maybe that's the secret plan? They annoy most voters so much they no longer care and then the secret cabals vote and carry the election.

Wind and rain and forecasted doom, oh my!

Well Ike has the local weather folks in a tizzy with almost around-the-clock break into current programming alerts. I even got a red-alert call from the city of Garland. Just when we are supposed to be hit with this weather I am being picked up by a friend of mine for afternoon tea at the Adolphus. It should be an interesting afternoon.

Took the girls for a long walk about 7 last night as I was unsure if the weather would permit one today. They love to go so much and it is fun to walk with Nancy and Toby.

If the power is still on when we get back from tea, I would like to start coralling some stuff in the office with an eye toward doing some prep work next week and painting the week after. I will just have to see how it goes

I took all the umbrellas down and put them in the attached storage area. I would so love to totally clean out that place, as I cannot find anything and actually can only use a tiny part of it because of all the junk in there. I surely do need to gather stuff and have a garage sale. Clutter everywhere is getting me "nuts".

Mushroom farms incoming!

Sometimes...Mother Nature works with you. It's been raining off and on all week with Tuesday the one break in it. We took Tuesday and mowed both yards short in preparation for aeration and seeding. The service actually came a day early, yesterday, and got the yard all aerated and seeded. An hour later, the rain came back and we got a good slow drizzle all night and so far all today. All those little holes in the yard filling up with good soaking rain. Hooray! It also means we don't have to water the entire yard twice a day like you usually do after seeding. Double hooray!!

Outside of that, just not a lot to report. It has been raining pretty much the last week so not much outside time. We've cooled off (highs in the mid 70s) and Faye just goes bonkers when we start getting fall weather. As you can imagine, with the rain I can't easily get her out to run some of that energy off so we've played a lot of "Throw the toy down the stairs!" so she has to add some stair work to her house running around.

We, Faye and I, plan on working very hard on our walking manners so we can do some walks with the dynamic duo of Molly and Bridget. Finding a neat safe area to let them run would be a ton of fun. Bound to be somewhere close to you where that's possible.

Hurricane Season

We got a nice rain from the hurricane Ike already and they are forecasting up to an additional 8 inches depending where you live this week end. I should be fine as far as flooding unless the 8 inches falls at the same time and it is supposed to be over a couple of days. They are saying that we will be getting winds 30-60 mph, so I guess there will be a lot of limbs and leaves left to rake up. Ahhhh fall has finally made its appearance.

I am going to see Alex Anderson, the hostess of Simply Quilts on HGTV with several friends on the 16th and to the Adolphus this Saturday for tea and a teacup exchange with 16 others. Both of those outings should be fun. I have two classes coming up, an applique class on the 18th and a composting class on the 19th, so the rest of this month I am either playing or learning, or both!

I actually do the teaching this Sunday and the next. I confess to being a little nervous as it has been several years since I taught. I hope it is like riding a bicycle and it all comes back to me.

There are so many house and garden jobs that need doing, that I am overwhelmed and am not doing any of them. I really need to pick one and launch into it, which I plan to do the week of the 23rd as I have left that week open to WORK.

I think Faye and Bridget are going to have a blast together. We must walk them and maybe find a place to take them where they can run together off leash in complete safety. Bridget would love to have a playmate that has longer legs and can keep up with her speed.

Indian Summer

Ack! How can it be another month? I'm not ready for fall!

Kevin and I went out to LeRoy Kansas and visited Arnold's Greenhouse. It's a couple of hours away and was a neat trip. Just lots of little Kansas farming towns and farmhouses. Arnold's was a real treat and is absolutely on our must do when you visit during planting times like spring. It's the largest plant supplier in the state and grows most of it's own plants. It's a countryhouse type place and they had a nice seating area with gardening books. Acres and acres of plants. We were looking at bags of these wonderful garden shoes they have and Kev picked up a pair in a bag and there was a frog in it! Heh! They just had all kinds of neat garden tools. Their catalog is online and I'm just kicking myself for not picking up a printed catalog (about a Sear's catalog size) for you. Their website is www.arnoldsgreenhouse.com.

I picked up a new shrub I'd never seen before called a Beautyberry. My variety is a Early Amethyst. Here's the wiki entry for it : Beautyberry

Tuesday-another month

I just finished making a To-Do list of some chores that need doing badly, but that I really am not looking forward to doing. I plan to grit my teeth and start knocking them off one by one. I know I will feel better for doing it once they are all done, but of course there will be new yucky chores by then to take their place.

So far we have not received one drop of rain from the hurricane that came ashore. We are all hoping that a little will fall, as once again we desperately need it.

I really have no news to share as it seems as if my life is in one of the doldrums that come along from time to time. While I do not like being in this state, I have learned that the event that shakes you out of them is quite often an unpleasant one. I certainly hope that this time it will be a nice one, which happens too. Life keeps you guessing, that is for sure.

I hope your long week end was fun and productive and that your week back will be an easy one.