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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sara's burial garden plot

Well, first i have to tell you, this was not a burial plot. It was suppose to be a vegetable garden!



Last year my daughter cleared a spot in the backyard, and we had the greatest garden! Even the bunnies liked it, but for the most part, all the tomatoes survived and it was great. This year my daughter expanded the spot until it unfortunately resembled...a plot. Or as my husband called it, "a baby burial plot." But that was because we hadn't put the vegetables in yet, we were waiting for payday to do it. In the meanwhile my neighbor found another dead robin in her yard. It was the second one to fall out of the tree with no other signs of trauma. She was quite disturbed and i asked my husband (a mortician) if he would go over and get rid of it for her (since death is normally no big deal for him). The last thing i told him was "whatever you do, don't throw the bird in Sara's garden burial plot."

So guess where he buried the bird?

You got it...Sara's garden burial plot!
And my daughter is IRATE.

But wait, it gets better!

In the meantime, my neighbor saw something in the paper that said if you have more then one robin die mysteriously, you have to call the DNR. Which she did. And then she told me what they said.

They said, we have to go out, dig out the robin from the "burial plot" and wrap it in a double baggie, and put it in our freezer til they can come get it and check it out to make sure it doesn't have the West Nile virus or something.

I'm calling my husband right now. You don't think i'm going out there to dig it up do you?

Friday, June 05, 2009

Next years garden...this year

I have always dreamed of a garden in which the impatiens and begonias were color coordinated and the weeds thinned themselves. I have always thought myself "a gardener" but my husband says that's too strong a word. He says I'm more like a four year old someone gave a hand grenade to and told to go crazy-without the bloodshed.

Every spring i start the season vowing this is going to be the best year ever! I start out at Kmart (because they have the cheapest prices in my area) with about 40 dollars of dreams and stamina. I say stamina because after i get home with all my impatiens and geraniums and waxed begonias, it suddenly dawns on me "whose gonna plant all this crap?"

Pictured above is last years "next years garden project." What you see is my neighbors crappy fence and about 40 bucks of Publishers Clearing house irises and glads (10 dollars a month in 4 monthly installments!) which i planted in remembrance of my grandmother and uncle. (Actually i planted a cherry tree in honor of my grandmother but the rabbits ate it.) They've (bunnies) left the iris and glads alone. Shortly after i took this picture the lavender my neighbor gave me bloomed. You can't really see this because it's hunched over as the bunnies have been chomping on it, but the smell is absolutely intoxicating!


Everything in this picture (above) was donated years ago. The hosta's, the snow on the mountain, and the bush on the right. I have no idea what that bush is called, my neighbor Violet didn't want it, and so i went over and dug it up. Also pictured is the phlox before they bloomed. They're the tall plants to the right of the hosta's and next to the bush.


I LOVE pansy's but they break my heart every year. They look beautiful until July 4th, you don't even have to look at the calender, July 4th they still look great but i swear to God the very next day, July 5th, they bend over and die, they can't take the heat. It doesn't stop me from planting them, I mean what else can you plant in March that will survive the early spring frost?! The pansy's are the yellow and blue in the background. They looked incredible this past May but you can already see them fading.


I should have suspected something when a fellow coworker gave me a small paper bag with an innocent looking little "weed" and told me "just be careful where i plant it." I should have said "why?" I didn't and as you can see, this little "perennial" is taking over the entire yard and running over everything in it's path. I've spent three years trying to dig it up and it's spent all three years going "up yours" and re rooting itself all over my other hosta's and perennials. I recently went to a garden store and saw they were selling this "plant" for six bucks for a three pound bucket. You are welcome to come dig mine up for FREE! I'll even provide you a shovel.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Life in 46 seconds

There's a sad story out of Oklahoma City involving a Desert Storm veteran who worked as a pharmacist in a crime ridden section of the city, and an unarmed 16 year old who made the fatal mistake of helping his 14 year old friend with a robbery one week ago today. Except, neither boy expected the pharmacist to have a gun. The entire botched scheme was caught on video, and the robbery, from start to death took only 46 seconds.
In the first 10 seconds the armed 14 year old, and his unarmed friend enter the pharmacy, with the 14 year old waving the gun as his 16 year old friend struggles to put his mask on. In the next few seconds all hell breaks lose as the 16 year old jerks to the right of the video and falls to the ground while the 14 year old runs out of the store. The Desert Storm veteran is seen holding a gun and chasing (and firing) two more shots at the 14 year old. The pharmacist then returns and after checking on his two female employees, returns to the injured 16 year old and fires FIVE more shots into his stomach, killing him. The entire scene plays out in about 46 seconds on video. The police filed murder charges against the pharmacist after viewing the video.

You occasionally hear about these stories in the news, thief killed by store clerk in robbery attempt but maybe it's because after several years of living in Milwaukee I thought I was immune to the stories, until I saw this bad decision by a couple of teens play out on video, in only 46 seconds.

You have to wonder how long the teens planned for this, a couple of days, a week(?), did they single out this particular pharmacy or was it just opportunity, and a gun? And just how did the 14 year old get the gun, or did he steal it, did the boys flip a coin to decide who would hold the gun, or did the 14 year old have to talk the older teen into helping with the robbery, which I suspect could have been the case after watching the 16 year old struggle to put his mask on while his friend waved the gun. You have to wonder on watching this if it ever crossed their mind that maybe something could go wrong, or were they too focused on what they could buy with all their easy money. Did they ever once consider how easy it would be to die, in only 46 seconds.

Tonight, it's one week later and the 16 year old is in the ground while his 14 year old friend is behind bars, and a disabled Desert Storm veteran with a legally concealed weapon is facing murder charges, thanks to a bad decision played out in life, in only 46 seconds.