Sunday, May 6, 2012

Pecks of Peppers

I got a plant from my office for Administrative Professional's Day, the politically correct term for for the commonly-known Secretary's Day.  The plant is a type of ivy and it's dying.  I put it inside, it withers.  I put it outside, it continues the death spiral. I water.  No change.  I spritz it with water.  Yep, you guessed it.

However, Mr. Grumpbump seems to have a way with the plants (as he does with the cats, who love him so much more than me).  He started planting all kinds of everything once we bought the house.  There is no real plan to what he is doing.  I know he enjoys color, so anything with a bloom brightens his day.

Although our area has suffered from lack of rainfall, Mr. G has managed to keep some of his garden alive and thriving.


Sunflowers
Lantana

But Mr. G's real promise seems to be with vegetables.  He admittedly went a bit beserk planting peppers because we must have 50 of them growing and so many more flowering.  The majority of the pepper plants are sweet peppers (light green in color).  Yes, you can add them to salads or eggs or stir-fry, but they are not that versatile.   Interspersed with the sweet peppers are a few hot pepper plants, and the peppers on those plants are small and tight and a very dark green.  They practically scream "hot pepper".  I'm not touching those.

We have at least 10 more plants like this.
 Mr. G has one bell pepper plant.  So far, we have picked two peppers and they have been on the small side.  However, they taste great.  The plant has two more almost ready to go.
Bell Peppers
 So, with the garden feeling a little too green, there is a promise of something different.  I have yelled at Mr. G to plant some more damn tomato plants.  Tomatoes are my absolute favorite thing in the whole world.  You see those itty bitty red dots?  Say a prayer that they have lots of babies who grow up to be red juicy delicious.

Grow, dammit!
 The vegetables and sunflowers are growing outside of the patio area, in a small patch of ground called our backyard.  The lantana, catnip and other greenery are growing in the areas to either side of the pool.   With the addition of all of these plants and shrubs, we have fooled Delilah into thinking she's really outdoors and she has stopped her incessant whining at the front door to be "let outside".  Now, she will cry at the back door, which we will gladly open to let her out.  Many nights, she will sleep outside and you can find her in the catnip/lantana area, where she had matted down the mulch to make a nice, comfortable spot for herself.

Delilah
I'm still working on washcloths but I might pick up my scarf project and try to finish it today.  It was 90 degrees yesterday so knitting a scarf seems counter-intuitive.  However, I don't have that much more to go before it's done, clearing space for me to start that baby blanket.

Crazy Colors Scarf
I bought a new computer a few weeks ago.  Mine was just becoming too slow, even after I re-installed the OS and cleaned everything off of it (most stuff I have is stored on an external drive).  Mr. Grumpbump's computer was replaced last November and his prior computer was about 6 months old than mine, so I knew the time was coming.  I'll probably sell the old one on eBay, but I'll have to do a lot of cleanup on it (both internally and externally).    You know with new things you make all kinds of promises to keep it looking perfect and new and fresh.  That's where I am right now.   I am trying to keep it free of cat hair, crumbs and the like.  I'm not very good at sticking with my commitments and typically I just give up.  I'll be abusing this computer in no time.


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