Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Gutters

(No, not mind in the gutter kind of gutters!)  Bill cleaned the rain gutters out this afternoon.  They were pretty full, lots of helicopter maple seeds, dirt, leaves and just general gunk.  They are nice & clean now.  If we ever get any rain again, they might actually do their job!  It might rain Thursday or thereabouts.  Hope so, we need it.

After he cleaned the gutters, Bill replaced the filter in the drain pipe to the rain barrel.  It's basically a pantyhose leg, periodically it needs to be replaced.  It works wonderfully, actually.  It's a creative way to recycle torn hose.

I did some yard work this afternoon.  I planted two Asian lily plants in the whiskey barrel.  One has red blooms, although they are called purple, and the other one has light pink.  They are supposed to be perennial and full sun.  We'll see!  I pulled a few weeds around my hosta plants and cleaned out leaves, etc. from the same area.  The hostas have come back well this year, they are starting to spread and self-propogate and look very good.  My skin has been on high alert ever since, I'm heading for the shower very soon in hopes that the itching will go away.  I scrubbed my arms up as far as my elbows after I came inside and it did help.  But I still got itchies!  Also, my sinuses are not happy with me.  They weren't happy before I played in the dirt, and they are really angry with me know.  But at least I got to spend some time outside.  That's always a good thing.

While we were outside, I noticed that quite a few of the iris plants in the back yard have buds.  They should be blooming very soon.

No shuttles for Tulsa.  I'm surprised and at the same time, I'm not surprised.  There were 20 other cities attempting to get one, there were only 4 available.  The surprise comes in from the fact that NASA had rules for this, and the majority of the cities that will receive one did not meet the qualifications.  Sounds like some politics involved!  Well, it's not the first time and won't be the last.  But it would have been really neat to have one here.  Even if it wasn't the Enterprise.

I think I'm going to head to the kitchen now, and mix up some hummingbird food.  I have been meaning to for a few days but keep forgetting.  They'll be here soon and will be hungry.  I don't want to disappoint the little needle beaks!  They have been known to dive bomb us before, being redheads were are already targets for them.  I don't want to give them any more reason to attempt to stab us!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where did the shuttles go? I got home and planted 2 plants that I got on Saturday- an Esperanza and a bat face. My salvias are all starting to bloom but my sun flowers do not look very good. I have to keep refilling my hummingbird feeders almost every other day. They are little pigs. Froggy

Otter Mom said...

The Enterprise went to New York, it was already at the Smithsonian and they got one in it's place which makes sense. One shuttle went to Florida, near Cape Canaveral. That's the only one that actually qualified for NASA's rules. One went to California and I forget where the other one went but I think it was on the west coast somewhere. Tulsa has had a huge part in the space program, a lot of the components for assorted rockets and most of the shuttles were made in Tulsa. Houston didn't even get one, and they probably should have gotten the first one@