Geek Habitat

Reposted from my geekgal.vox.com blog (Dept. of Redundancy Dept.):

I love technology as much as the next geek, but when my potted plants start having the capacity to call me and demand to be watered or provided with better light (more here; don’t miss the newsreel and sample audio from an unhappy moss), I’m going to have to relocate them all to… a quiet porch somewhere.

Found on: Twitter.com (User Pothos, via Botanicalls)

It was a perfect day to spend outside, so that’s exactly what we did. It’s an open windows, Thank-God-we-live-in-Texas gorgeous day, and my gardening itch has needed to be scratched for ages. I don’t have any new plants yet, of course, but at least the front and back yards are prepped and looking much less neglected.

If you’re a friend or family member on Flickr or Vox.com you’ll see pics of my rest day (no computing) doing yardwork with Sara supervising from her stroller.

If you want to but can’t view pics of her on either site, give me a shout out here or in email and let me know who you are on Flickr or Vox, so I can add you.

With all the work I did today in the yard (mowing front and back lawns, broadcasting fertilizer, raking, watering) I took another day off from the bike trainer today. I’ll be riding with Justin this weekend, hopefully he’ll be gentle on me… I’m not ready for a nearly 2 hour, 1,750-foot elevation gain ride yet!

* I’m feeling much better this week, although I still spent most of the day treading water to keep my head afloat.

* The weather station my parents bought Justin last year, which we didn’t install until several months ago, is working again–just in time to log the changing weather as a cold front entered South Texas this evening. The weather station had inexplicably stopped reporting any outdoor data (wind speed and direction, temperature and humidity, rainfall) on the 11th, and I thought I’d ruined it somehow when I buried some cables for it (so no one accidentally runs over them with our lawn mower.) Now to pipe that data over to The Weather Underground, when I get a chance!

* The weather’s finally going to be cooler, which means I can stop guilt-tripping about the fact that I let my small but once-thriving xeriscaped front garden bed revert to a nasty mess due to pregnancy and caring for a newborn. I’ll just plan on socking away some money to get everything looking wonderful for Spring ‘08–a fitting way to ring in Sara’s first birthday, besides!

* I may not be getting anywhere on the myriad (commercial) web updates I need to make, but I have terrific members on my sites who provide honest, useful feedback whenever I post a, “Hey, gang, can you weigh in on this for me?” post. Transferring those thoughts into action, however? …not working so well, as of late. There’s something about the informal nature of blogging that makes it much less iffy to keep up with actual content updates… figures. I’m half-tempted to install MediaWiki on the primary content-driven site and let my users do the maintenance… it certainly is tempting when I can’t possibly create enough clones of myself to get everything I want done started, much less finished.

* We’re buying me a road bike (as in bicycle, not motorcycle) before the end of the year. I desperately need to lose weight (this is NOT my body, and I miss my real body… and I worked so hard to get it, after knee surgery in ‘05.) My mountain bike never fit me quite right, so even though I actually prefer mountain biking to road cycling, a new road bike was the route to go. That, and when you have limited time, you want to biggest bang for your fat-burning “buck”, and road cycling wins… at least in these parts where real mountains are few and far between. Does this mean I won’t ever get back into mountain biking? Hell no… but I want to be back in shape before I do it, and riding a bike that actually fits my body. So, new road bike in 2007, maybe new mountain bike in 2008? Just a thought. Anyone want a gently used (dings and scratches in all the right places) Gary Fisher Tassajara–red and black, men’s frame? Can’t remember the frame size. It’s a great bike, just not a great fit for this 5′4″ woman.

No creative title for this entry, sorry!

Mom’s fall yesterday thankfully did not result in a broken thumb, although it is sprained, swollen and varying shades of purple. To keep her from driving with what we still thought was a broken thumb, I played hybrid taxi yesterday, taking her to her gastroenterologist appointment and to get x-rays on the thumb. She’s now sporting a thumb splint and occasionally icing it to manage the swelling.

Since my brother’s in town visiting, before heading back to his new Austin town home, I’m spending time with my family again this evening. Their proximity to the Rainbow Gardens on Bandera Road means I bought more plants today ($58), this time a variety pack of 6 starter celosia, two bags of organic potting soil, a plant whose tag I’ll have to check before I remember what it is (but it’s purty!), and 6 different variety packs of starter coleus of varying sizes. Other than the lava rock and the whiskey barrel, which I think may make it through one more year if I tie some twine around it’s diameter, I’m all set for this spring. Well, that and the minor detail of needing to put everything in the ground. And the fact that we somehow have a light freeze warning in effect tonight!

Tomorrow, we hit the road to visit Justin’s brother, Jason’s, family in Coppell, Texas, outside of Dallas. Jason and Karen’s daugther,Jillian, is expecting a baby brother soon, so the whole family’s visiting to celebrate Jillian’s second birthday (March 29) a little early. At first, I thought we wouldn’t take our hybrid for various reasons, but the pendulum’s swung back and I think I’m okay with us taking her on a “road trip” so soon. After all, I subjected Justin’s F-150 Supercrew 4×4 to an overnight beach camping trip at Padre Island National Seashore when it was still brand new.

Best average mileage so far? 33 mpg. Sweet!

Joy #8211 of being self-employed: I got to spend the entire day gardening, and I didn’t have to feel guilty about it.

The first order of things this morning was to rake our front yard again. I did this no less than two weeks ago, and damned if our live oaks (Quercus virginiana) didn’t have a whole ‘nother yard’s worth of leaves to shed. I swear I looked up and surveyed the trees before killing my shoulders and wrists with the raking two weeks ago. A couple hours and five full trash bags later, I could again see our sad excuse for a front lawn. It’s trying to be green, but after all, “It’s not that easy being green.” Right now, our lawn’s just doing a really good impression of h-a-y.

One drudge-work task completed, another one begun: I had an ill-fated wildflower garden I created last year, along part of our backyard fenceline near our deck. Well, one of its two 5-foot runs was completely dead, so I harvested all the good topsoil from it and hauled the soil into the front yard to fill in various low spots and wear patches (thank you, neighborhood kiddos!) in the lawn. I could have sprung for some good lawn dressing, but this was readily available and free. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, Repeat.

After that, the fun stuff could finally begin. I planted most of the $67 of plants I bought at Rainbow Gardens (Bandera Rd. store) yesterday. The haul? Three varieties of salvia, including scarlet sage (Salvia coccinea); Mexican heather (Cuphea hyssopifolia) and cigar plants (Cuphea micropetala). I must admit there’s a wonderful synchronicity about loading up a bunch of plants into one’s hybrid vehicle.

As usual, this is just my first run to the garden center. I still need to buy some new coleus (Coleus blumei) to replace/augment my potted coleus that suffered a little too much during our overly-dry winter. My whiskey barrel in the backyard is three or four years old and is beginning to disassemble itself, slat by slat. I also need to replenish my red lava rock border in the backyard, since we’re on a slope and the rocks slowly migrate under our fence and into the greenbelt. And, if I had my act in gear, we’d be buying a Texas red oak (Quercus texana) to plant in the backyard, but the thought of digging a 4-foot-diameter hole in the rocky substrate of our backyard just isn’t compelling, yet. That, and the red oak needs to be clear of all structures (house, fence, etc.) by at least 25 feet and that may be a little problematic… I don’t really want it in the middle of my yard, after all. Anyway, there’s definitely more to come. I need a good deal of fresh soil to replenish my various empty pots and containers so I can plant the sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) Mom’s childhood tale inspired me to purchase a month or so ago — who knew sweet peas were fragrant, multi-colored flowering plants which make great cuttings and are ardent climbers? OK, maybe I’m the only one who didn’t know that. Sweet peas to me are what one finds on one’s plate at dinnertime.

Anyway, about six hours of work and I now have:

• Lush cigar plants planted underneath our youngest oak tree in the front yard, along with a single bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) planted in a white ceramic pot I’ve been wanting to reuse (it came with my ill-fated Harry & David gardenias last year).
• Another red salvia to augment the scraggly one that’s near the driveway and sidewalk, looking rather pitiful until it was mated with the new saliva. Together, they look like one respectable plant!
• Two additional red salvias in my “main” garden bed beneath two large live oaks. There are already two mature (5+ years) salvias thriving here, but they’d grown leaving a couple openings that needed filling. Now that whole area is one gorgeous and fragrant salvia bed, still with small openings for some low-growing grass or flowers. I’ve never really managed to fill the whole bed with flowers that can make it through the winter and come back on their own in the springtime. I love the salvias because they die back but are among the first to resume flowering in Spring.
• Some starter salivas to spruce up my two strawberry pots. I wish I knew the name of the succulent I planted last year in my smaller strawberry pot — it’s doing quite well and has long, slender aloe vera type leaves (without any sharp edges/spines) and now these dime-sized orange and yellow flowers at the tip of long, delicate stalks. I’ll have to post a photo.
• I finally dug out a two foot long, one foot wide rock that’s been protruding from our lawn for, well, forever. One less obstacle to worry about when mowing, yay!
• 12 Mexican heather starters in a flat, awaiting planting below our front window. Usually, my Mexican heathers come back with a vengence but this year only one of the 15 or so plants is showing any signs of life. I really think we got so little rainfall, they died. We certainly never got cold enough this winter to have killed their roots.
• The fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides) Mom bought me a couple days ago is now planted, although it may be a temporary home. I put it in the ailing whiskey barrel, and will need to replant it if I do opt to replace the barrel this year. Like the Mexican heather that normally over-winters just fine, my established fountain grass died off this winter. It was absolutely dead when I shoveled it out of the whiskey barrel today to make a home for the new fountain grass.
• Still unpotted:
  - A starter Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta) that, like the fountain grass, Mom bought me. I thought I had the perfect large pot for it, but I realized it’s got a 2-foot-long and growing crack around the diameter of the pot.
  - The Mexican heathers I mentioned above. That’ll be an hour or two of work right there, since I need to till the soil and remove all the dead heathers that were there before. The good news is our dwarf Burford holly (lex cornuta ‘Burfordii Nana’) hedge has never looked so healthy and full; apparently, it took to the pruning I did quite well!

I’m still debating what to do with a thriving 40+ pound (pot and plant) orange-flowering aloe vera plant we have on the front porch. I got it from my mom over two year’s ago — someone had given it to her just with the plant and root ball, and she’d left it on her porch in that condition — and it kept growing. She offered it to me and it stayed that way until I, too, realized it was continuing to grow. I planted it in a 20 or so gallon pot and it’s now overgrown that, although it shows no ill effects. It’s actually putting out its second flower stalks of 2006 — it put 3.5+ foot tall flower stalks out in mid-January due to our mild winter, and I thought that would be all she wrote, but now it’s on to Round #2. Anyway, it needs to either be planted in the ground so it can get really big, or I need to find an even bigger pot for it, but anything bigger than what it’s already in means I won’t be able to move it into the garage during our occasional freezing temperatures.

Needless to say, I’m sore. My post-op knee is raging, as is my right wrist, elbow, shoulder and lower back. I have a Thermacare wrap on the small of my back, and another one up over my shoulderblades. Meanwhile, my knee’s awaiting the Elastogel wrap which is currently in the freezer getting chilled enough for reuse. No pain, no ga..garden, as they say!

Can you tell I love gardening? I’m only a green thumb with the things I know I cannot kill. Hand me something fiddly, like a gardenia or a violet, and I’ll kill it in short order. But Texas xeriscaping — plants that can handle our droughts and full sun? Bring ‘em on!

As is typical of most of my home projects, the whole experience of mounting the 15-foot telescoping pole for our new purple martin house has been an experience.

I’ve had a hole 18 inches deep and about 16 inches wide (about 4 inches too wide, in point of fact) for several weeks now. The delay in mounting the pole has been rigging suitable guylines to temporarily stabilize the pole and house while I mixed and poured concrete into the hole and allowed it to set. Realistically, this is a two person job. And for once, I was being reasonable and waiting until Justin and I could complete the project together.

Reality went haywire today when I plodded to our back fenceline and inspected the 80lb. bag of concrete mix that’s been in my Dad’s (borrowed) wheelbarrow, covered with trashbags and a big blue tarp, for weeks. Unfortunately, the severe thunderstorms we had on Mother’s Day managed to set half of my concrete bag into a nice bag-shaped block of concrete. The rest of the mix was salvageable, and since it looked like it might rain again, here’s where reality went bye-bye…

I rigged a passable system of guylines using three bungee cords near the base of the pole, staking them out with the nearest approximations of landscape stakes I could find {Aside: I can never find my thick yellow polycarbonate tent stakes when I need them for home projects like this!} This meant that one stake was the pole from a defunct solar-powered landscape light; another was a gardening fork hammered into the ground handle-first; and still another was a weed puller. As one can safely assume, this wasn’t nearly enough to keep the 8-foot-tall pole (minimum; its maximum height when extended is 15 feet!) stable. Using the only “rope” I could locate in our house — kite string — I created a web between the upper segment of the pole and our backyard fence that even Charlotte the spider would be proud of… if she judged on artistic beauty rather than tensile strength, anyway!

Somehow, this rigging held up while I made numerous trips to pick up equipment and supplies I needed to resume the job. Due to the rain-soaked initial batch of concrete, it had to be broken up as it was not nearly the right consistency — lots of large chunks of concrete, held together by a pitiful layer of actual concrete that was attempting to set. I was going to call it a day and wait for “reinforcements” (Justin), but reality wasn’t ready to return yet. I went to Lowe’s and wrestled two 80lb. bags of concrete mix on to one of their flat trolleys. I’d made the mistake last time of dropping a bag into one of their standard shopping carts — good luck getting that out without causing yourself a hernia, though I managed to find a way to scoot it into my trunk. Anyway, this time went more smoothly, although I don’t want to see another concrete bag for a long time. Eighty pounds is just not fun to lift, and it’s particularly hellish when it has to be lifted from below waist height into a car’s trunk, only to repeat the process in reverse when you get home!

Since there’s no room in our garage for our vehicles, a wheelbarrow and two 80lb. bags on concrete, that meant the project was underway the moment I got home. Thankfully, everything from this point on went quite smoothly. Sure, I got the requisite number of new bruises on my knees and shins, a few new cuts on my hands (until I located my waterproof, rubberized work gloves), and I did have to lift one of the 80lb. bags again after the wheelbarrow tipped over while I was taking a breather inside… What home project in this household can occur without such drama, indeed?

Unless a freak wind storm stirs up this evening, I think it’s safe to say the purple martin house will be open for business in two to three days. Considering a purple martin landed on the house and investigated one of the empty nest holes as I hoisted the house into its proper vertical orientation, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble attracting tenants! Afterall, it is the purple martin’s spring migration! Soon, it’ll just be a matter of keeping the European starlings and house sparrows out of the house, since neither species is native and both are predatory species that will kill purple martin nestlings.

Hmm… and I wonder where my time goes when I should have spent the day reconciling lines and lines of changed PHP code so I can launch a new website. Uhm hum…

P.S. Kudos to my loving husband for the Cloud Appreciation Society’s selection of his Pileus Cloud as their May Cloud of the Month. Good thing I sent Justin the link to the CloudAppreciationSociety.org, and he had the good sense (unlike me) to contact them.