Mowing the Lawn with Mags

Somehow, for the past 30 years of my life, I have gotten away with never once mowing a lawn. I always had my dad, brothers, or husband around to do it. When Hubs and I got married, we got a dog, and then moved to a townhome with a yard for her to play in. It was always my responsibility to pick up poop so he could mow. That was the deal. However, when we bought our house last year and he would be derelict about mowing the lawn, it would sometimes make it difficult for me to find all of the presents in the tall grass. That always turned into a circular argument about me not being able to find the mines because the grass was too long, but he would have mowed the lawn if I cleaned up the dog logs, but I would have picked them up if the lawn wasn't too long. Sometimes we argue about this for hours.

A couple of weeks ago, Hubs asked me to pick up the dog logs. I told him I would, and then it rained... and rained... and rained. It rained for 8 days straight. I'm not exaggerating either. It rained 24/7 for 8 stinking days. You know that rain that recently flooded Georgia? Well, it started here.

Needless to say, our lawn got really long, and there was no way I could find all of the puppy pressies, so I offered to mow the lawn. It was a total shock, I'm sure. I had never touched a lawn mower before, and here I was, offering to mow our massive back yard. Hubs had to show me how the mower worked and how to pivot around corners, and he told me how to make sure I didn't miss spots.

Maggie is a border collie, so she LOVES to heard. I had seen Mags attack the lawn mower when Hubs mowed many times and laughed my butt off. One time I got it on video. He always told me it was funny, but it made it really hard to mow in straight lines. I had no idea how strong that little girl was until yesterday when I tried to mow the lawn. I took a little video of my experience of trying to mow the lawn with Mags. I hope you get as much of a kick out of it as we do.

I've Lost All My Fish

This past weekend we finally experienced some long overdue sunshine and some wonderfully warm temperatures. We hit the low 40's all weekend. Since it had been so long since we had been able to see into our 275 gallon fish pond to see any of our fish, and the temperature was finally warmer outside, Hubs decided to go try to thaw the ice and see if we had any survivors. He began the process of melting the ice by pouring boiling hot water on the top of the pond, but the water chilled almost instantly and barely melted anything. After a few pots of hot water, he decided to hook up the garden hose to our washing machine and pump hot water straight into the pond.

While he was thawing the pond, I was putting together a little slide show as my tribute to a winter that I will not miss when its over. After an hour of thawing, my sweetie came in and told me he had found a few of our fish, frozen in the ice. We had no idea at this point how thick the ice was, but were praying at least a few of our little guys made it. We had a heater in the pond all winter, but it was obviously completely inadequate. As the hours passed and the inches of ice continued to melt under the hose, we found more and more frozen fish. It was strangely ghostly looking into the ice in our pond with our dead fish frozen in suspended animation. Some looking like if we just thawed the ice around them, they would start swimming again. When all of the ice was melted we discovered that there was about 10" of ice, and our pond was a complete loss. All 20 of our fish slowly went into suspended animation over the past few months and froze to death. It touched me more than I thought it would. I've been so sad about it, I haven't been able to set foot in my backyard since we found them all dead.

We had originally wanted to take all of our fish with us to Texas, and had even made plans on how we would make it work. I know it all sounds silly, but each fish was special to us for different reasons, either because of their coloring, or the length of their fins. We knew each fish and appreciated them individually daily. Below is my tribute to my fish and the horrible winter that will never end.

Fish Roll:

• 5 large goldsifh, approx 3" long, one with really long, flowy fins
• 1 "Whitey" (the only fish with a name)
• 4 fully black boys, approx 1" long, two with really long fins
• 4 fully gold girls, approx 1" long, two with really long fins
• 3 black and gold, approx 1" long
• 3 algea eaters

What I Learned This Year

As 2007 comes to a close, its time to take a moment to do a year in review. I decided the best way to do this is with a bulleted list or two. The past year has been full of ups and downs, some even to the extremes (including a false positive pregnancy test after undergoing artifical insemination). Below is my year in review:

Things I did:

• Helped my husband landscape our backyard by ourselves
• Planted my own first garden
• Published my first user manual and admin guide
• Published my first company newsletter
• Started blogging
• Came out of my introvert shell
• Made wonderful new friends
• Chose to use my blog to educate
• Was artificially inseminated
• Had a moderate endometrial resection, ovarian drilling, and lost my appendix
• Bought a new couch
• Ate lots of chocolate

Where I went:

• Dublin
• Edinburgh
• Bath
• London
• New Orleans
• Houston (a couple of times)
• A reinaissance festival dressed as a saucy wench

Things I learned:

• Outlook and attitude are absolutely everything 100% of the time
• Its okay to be sad and cry sometimes--I don't always have to be strong
• I love plants (went from a couple houseplants to many)
• How to be a gardner
• I have a green thumb
• Sometimes its better to just let old friends go
• Infertility and surgery are for the birds
• Cheese is a cure for PMS (I'm NOT kidding!)
• Fish ponds are a lot of work (and expensive)

Things that happened:

• My grandma passed away (my last grandparent)
• My love for my husband grew exponentially

This past year has been good and bad, and I look forward whole-heartedly to the next year.

I wish everyone the best in 2008!

Its Snowing

It snowed about a foot and a half here today. I was just glad that today was not on a weekday when I would have to wait until 5:00 to head home on less than fun roads. I took a few pictures of the backyard and Maggie in the new snow. First are some pictures of the new backyard Hubs and I put in over the summer, and the way the yard looks now with all of the snow, including our poor little fish pond. :)

The south side with our failing Jackman Clematis vine, hostas, and some other plants I don't remember the names of. Maggie was being camera shy.

The west side with Hubs' favorite Concord grape vine, silver mounds, strawberries (not shown), carnations, little purple flowering plants, and my favorite delphiniums.

All the green is now covered in a sheet of snow, with the brim of Hubs' hat visible as he shovels the pattio.

Maggie, feeling slightly tortured that her pampered self has to sit outside in the snow for this Kodak moment instead of inside on the sofa, next to the fire place.

The fish pond before we lost the battle against algea for the year. It used to be so beautiful with its multi-colored stones.

The fish pond con masive algea and covered in snow. If you look closely, you can see two of our larger fish in this picture. We have 17 fish total, but we've only been able to find 7 since it got cold. The sand dollar-looking item is our winter heater.