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.
* 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!
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.
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.
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.
