Weird

Three of the six finch eggs hatched.  A day or two ago I checked and it appeared that at least one of the baby birds was no longer alive  This morning I checked and the nest is completely empty except for one live baby.  No egg shells, and no sign of the other two baby birds.  Does the mother clean it out or something?  There are no shells or anything on the ground below either.

In other animal news, make sure your dog never eats grapes.  Sunday night Lila ate probably a pound of grapes that had accidentally been left out, and she's been in the animal hospital ever since.  She was in kidney failure within a couple hours of consumption.  Twenty-four hours ago the news was not at all good, and we were mentally preparing for the possibility of having to put her down.  We went to visit her last night, thinking it might be one of the last times we saw her.

This morning she has amazed everyone by being completely normal.  It doesn't appear that there is any lasting damage, and she should come home this afternoon (some $700+ later).  So, it seems that everything will end well, but don't risk it, grapes are dog poison!

Look What Hatched!

I'm not poking around in the nest, but I do have to water the fern occasionally, so while I was doing that this morning I took a peek.  To help you envision size, the eggs are about 3/4 inch.

Comments and Greenery

First, a little housekeeping matter.  I have comment moderation on for posts older than 14 days because I was getting spam comments.  I'm quite sure that I used to get an email telling me when there was a comment that needed to be moderated, but this morning I checked my dashboard for the first time in quite a while and there were a bunch of unmoderated comments.  So I apologize if it appeared that I was ignoring you; it was unintentional.

A couple of those comments were left by the courageous Anonymous on my post entitled Confessions of a Lazy Mom and Housewife.   That post was an expose of some hot spots around my house, and things I tend to let slide.  Here is one of those comments:

"i think your[sic] all lazy if your[sic] a housewife and cannot even bother to do an hour or two of cleaning a day, you should be fired....Sure, things can slide when you have kids and cleaning dust isn't the most important, but it shouldn't be forgotten and should get done! I have [a baby] but I still manage to make my home acceptable."

That irked me a little bit, I guess.  It's not that I don't agree with what she's saying; as a housewife I have a job to do, but lighten up a little bit!  Nothing in my post was staged, but at the same time it was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek.  Who doesn't have some clutter around the house?  If there wasn't any stuff, it would be a museum, not a home.  Believe me, I work around here, and my home is completely acceptable!

Now, before I saw those comments, I intended to do a little post on my houseplants (yawn).  As it turns out, it was that Confessions post in which I showed you this:

I also said that once I watered it and all that, it would perk right up.  I did, and it did.  Here it is now:

I also wanted to show you something cool that I found at the dollar spot at Target a couple of weeks ago:  watering bulbs like the ones you see advertised on TV, except these are green plastic and only cost $1.  Can you see it in the plant above?  It's on the right.  They really work, releasing the water over several days.  The soil isn't moist on the surface, but I guess that's because the water is released deep at the roots.

I put them in my ferns that are hanging on the porch, too. 

And, the finches did build a nest, and there are six eggs!  I hope all goes well.

The Most Exciting Post Ever

Well, friends, it has become quite clear to me that I lead a boring life. For the most part, I’m okay with that. It’s not like I’d rather be climbing Everest or performing brain surgery. But sometimes I think there’s got to be more to life than daily trips to Walmart.

I’m not even kidding. I have been to Walmart everyday this week except for Monday. I always forget something. Or perhaps it would be more fair to say that no matter what I just bought, tomorrow I will need something else, and unfortunately, Walmart has pretty much everything and the lowest prices, so back I go.

So, the most exciting thing I did this week is color my hair. I’ve never done it before. (Well, there was that one time in high school when I let my friend try to color my hair with one of those temporary party colors--true red!--but it didn’t work.) However, in the last year, I’ve been getting more and more grays, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to hide them.

I’ve actually had the box of Natural Instincts for almost a year, and it’s taken me this long to get up the nerve to use it. Since I’m a complete novice, I was a little afraid that it would turn out badly. Last time I got my hair cut, I asked my stylist for tips. She said use semi-permanent, so it uniformly washes out and doesn’t leave roots, and don’t pay attention to what the color is called, go by the pictures.

The color I picked out last summer followed those rules, so that’s what I used. Even though this is called “lightest golden brown” the color on the box most closely matched my natural red/auburn/Titian/whatever-you-want-to-call-it hair. I watched several how-to videos on YouTube and based on that decided to use a color application brush, which I got at Sally Beauty Supply.

And now for the reveal.

From this (random photo taken in Dec ‘09):

To this (photo taken yesterday to try to recreate above photo):

You can hardly tell, right? Craig didn’t even notice. I can tell that it’s just a little bit darker. But the grays are gone! Natural-looking color and no grays…for me, that was success!

Who needs Everest when they've got this kind of excitement?

Spring Has Sprung 2010

The season change always surprises me with how it seems to sneak up on me and happen over night. The first truly cold days of fall depress me with the thought of the long winter ahead. Then by the time warm spring days appear, believe it or not I’m always a little sad that the cozy cocooning evenings by the fire are over.

Just a little. Mostly because I’m not emotionally ready to parade my winter skin around in lighter clothing. I do, however, love the warm weather, sunshine, and greening of the landscape.

Here are a few signs of spring around our house.

Last fall, Craig planted three tiny forsythia bushes at the back of our yard. I wasn’t sure how much to expect from them this spring, but they actually produced a few little yellow blossoms.

He has also been working on our square-foot garden for a month or so now. He’s got the whole crop rotation planned out for the year, and covers to protect from rabbits, scorching sun, or cold. A couple early crops went in a few days ago. He’s really into this. Hopefully it goes well and is fruitful.

Our lawn is greening up, I put the spring wreath on the door, and Saturday I bought two Boston ferns to hang. Pretty soon I’ll get some flowers going in my chair planter.

If you look really closely, you can see a bird on the chain of the fern on the left. Pretty much as soon as they were hung, a pair of purple finches took a strong liking to the ferns. I’m not sure if they’re going to build a nest or what, but they’re fun to watch out the front windows.

Happy Spring!