Yeah, there are a couple purchased annuals in here, but I have a lot of flowers blooming already. (I cannot take a good picture of the lilac, but it’s blooming so heavily you can smell it all the way up on the porch.)

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Most of my garden is filled with perennials, which is nice because it means minimal work for me, aside from keeping the beds clean. However, the deck was sorely in need to some type of color, so (don’t tell Grandmom) I spent a ridiculous amount of money yesterday, and with the excluding on a mature foxglove (to replace the one that never took) everything I purchased was an annual. So now the flower boxes look nice, and we’ve got color on the porch, and flowers Grandmom can see.

I love Gerbera daisies. Although they can be moved inside during the winter, in our house they tend to become kitty salad bar, and don’t survive.
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Azaleas
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Lily of the Valley
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Tulip
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Oh really?

Why is it that three day weekends are never long enough?

I finished three books this weekend, yet still I wish I had another day off. Probably because I did nothing to the garden this weekend, and with temps already in the 80s, it’s going to be hot when I do get to it.

Of course the nice thing about having an established garden is that I’ve plenty of perennials to come up on their own, and the soil has been worked enough to make things easy on me, so it’s not difficult to weed, just time consuming.

Perhaps one evening this week I’ll work in the garden, but since I have fresh rhubarb and need to make something with it–probably not.

The best part about early spring bulbs is they come up with absolutely no effort on my part.

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Bleeding hearts coming up are creepy looking. That’s all there is to it.
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House across the street has some nice icicles.

What happens when Grandmom is gone and we are on vacation:

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Took the plow three tries to get up the hill, and they ended up losing the chains on at least one of the rear wheels in the process.

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Night pictures were taken by Michael; I’d gone to bed.

And it’s still snowing…
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It rained most of the afternoon, until about six.

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Then the little children would heat copper coins on the stove and press them against the glass until the roundest of holes would melt in the ice; through each of these peeped the lovelies little eye: one belonged to a little boy and the other to a little girl. His name was Kai and hers was Gerda.

I love snow!

Since the semester is over, and more than half the population of the town is gone, I have a feeling there will be no rush to clear the roads.

Going up the hill…

Going down the hill…

Why yes, I did marry a mutant. Michael reads the instruction manuals on EVERYTHING.

I’m the one that refuses to read instructions or ask directions.

But who cares about instructions? I’ve got cinnamon bread rising right now!

Well, exciting and expensive.

Saturday we got a new range. 30″ Kenmore Elite Range (white). Michael researched everything in our price range, and this was the top rated stove we could afford. It’s got five burners, five racks, and convection.

Even better, we got it 12 months same as cash. (Here’s not never paying interest!)

It’s to be delivered next Sunday.

I’m wondering how many things I’ll ruin till I get used to the convection?

Today, I got a new laptop.

HP Pavillion dv6, and 18 months same as cash for payment. (Woot!)

Getting a laptop was almost more complicated than buying a new stove. You see, I’m a lousy typist. So all those laptop keyboards with the page up/page down etc buttons to the right of the enter key are a nightmare for me, since I’m constantly hitting them. That significantly reduced the number of options available; primarily to Sony, Asus, Lenovo, and HP, and not all all models of those brands.

After spending an evening looking at specs and reading reviews, I had a couple models I thought would be good.

Since Amazon didn’t have any of those models with 6 or 12 months same as cash financing, we wandered off to Best Buy, where they had the Sony, Asus and HPs I was considering, but no Lenovos. Which is too bad, because for the most part I have liked my Think Pads (though my favorite, the T41, was actually made by IBM before they gave the Think Pad line to Lenovo.)

After about 20 minutes of back and forth, I finally settled on the HP Pavillion. 15.6″ screen, and extended keyboard.

I’m in love!

Of course, I’m tying this on my old old desktop in the basement, since I’m supposed to be down here doing bills.

Including all the ridiculous purchase we made this weekend.

Perhaps I’d better get back to this bills…

We’ve lived here for 8 years, and today we got our first (and so far only) trick-or-treater.

We’ll ignore the fact that her parents had to drive half an hour to bring her, and just enjoy how adorable she is.

We’ve apparently had the right amount of rain and perfect temperatures here for fall color in my yard.

Burning bush and sugar maple.

Sugar maple–my favorite tree in our yard.

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Last year I moved the black eyed susans; they seem to have taken off after their relocation.

I’ve been planting sunflowers at the back of my herb garden. Hopefully the desperately needed weeding and thinning out I did today will help them.