June 6, 2009

Happy Ground Hog Day!!!

Just as expected, the raccoons showed up and were hanging from the trees, knocking seed to the ground for their friends. They even knocked the entire red feeder to the ground and it looks like they may have tried to steal it. It is several feet away from where it would have dropped or rolled. And someone said they’ve moved on since there wasn’t any fresh food for five days – I knew it wasn’t true!

Oh, the stunned bug from the ceiling was lying on his back this morning…if it was the same bug…and it wasn’t alive! Let’s hope this bug traveled solo!
We hadn’t been to the Levee for breakfast in such a long time we thought we’d go there. Tasty as usual – we’ll see if the end results are as usual as well! We went to Do-It-Best and picked up a couple of things, returned a couple of things and visited with Julie for a few minutes. She’s always so friendly. Then we went to the landscape store in search of an Azalea shrub – but during our shopping excursion, Carolyn – our personal landscaper – pointed out they flower in April and May and then show green for the rest of the year. Since I wanted color ‘more’ of the year, we continued to shop and learn about the different shrubs, in the rain. I felt like I was shopping for a car! Sun vs. shade, water vs. dry. Sand, manure, color, height – geez!

We settled on two Dappled Willows. It’s a graceful shrub with weeping branches with striking salmon pink stems and flower buds. Leaves are light green, strongly mottled with white and pink leaves. It could grow to 15 – 20 feet tall and wide and thrives on vigorous pruning. How’s that for a description?? (stolen from the tag on the shrub!)

On the way out we seen how huge this shrub grows and at that point we decided to not plant them next to each other but rather one at each end of the cabin – but both in the front. Good choice since seeing theirs, we should have only bought one! So with the two shrubs, some growing packet that looked like salt and a big bag o’ manure in the truck, we headed back to the cabin. I hate to tell you just how bad the truck smelled at this point and thought maybe the Levee was starting its schedule to be just a little sooner than expected! It wasn’t too long after we got back that we had them in the ground. Other than hitting the roots, it wasn’t too hard to dig the holes and once they were in, watered and dammed, we readjusted the downspouts so the rain would help us in watering when we’re not here.

I am so happy with our new shrubs!


Carlo added a hasp lock to the outhouse to keep it locked, sprinkled ant granules and sprayed ant killer. We’re still not sure what our intruders are – they’re either carpenter ants or field ants based on the little chart that came with the spray – we’re hoping they’re the latter!

And we finished everything in time for the rain!

We headed to Cost Cutters ~ CLOSED ~ . There’s also one inside Wal-Mart ~ CLOSED ~. So while we were at Wal-Mart we shopped for a bunch of stuff we could have lived without! We went for gas and hit Tractor Supply for a gift for Paul and a new bird feeder.

This one is shaped like a barn, is red and made of metal. Will this fool the raccoons??? If not this one will make some noise when they raid it! We went to Walgreens for wrapping tissue and headed back to the cabin to set up the solar lighting we bought. We placed some in the front and others in the back. Hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow to charge them to their full potential! We lost several of our other lights when the flood hit. You might see them somewhere south of here, possibly at a neighbors! Carlo hung the new bird feeder and I wrapped the hat and candy we bought for Paul. We decided to stay in for dinner and scrounge since we had a later lunch. We didn’t do too much the rest of the evening other than a little TV, a shower and enjoying the last days of R & R.