I had a second thought....

Have you ever had a thought and decided that it was sheer brilliance?  And then you actually thought that one through to an illogical conclusion?  Then you had a second thought that beat hell out of that first thought!  Well, I am here to tell you that my world is full of those thoughts.  Most of my day is spent thinking second thoughts until nightfall comes and I wonder just what in the hell I was thinking.  Maybe it is best that I not think at all!  Like now.

I spent yesterday with Michael Wenzel, a realtor with Keller Williams Realty.  He is a delightful man and honest to the core.  I am not real sure I am quite ready to sell, but when I do, he is my man!  He told me apartments are few and far between, nursing homes are full and houses are selling about as fast as they are put on the market.  This tells me, I might want to hold on to what I have until I fall and break the proverbial hip!  I have to live somewhere and this one is paid for so that holds a certain charm.

Now Michael is a very well spoken man and anyone who knows me, knows that I have the first thing I ever touched in life and when I spend 30 years collecting, something is going to get full!  When he talked about showing the house, he said "You might want to open it up a bit.  That makes it look bigger. " He could have said , "You need to get a dumpster in here!"  I will consult with my kids over the next couple weeks and come to some sort of conclusion about where I will go if I sell this place.  There is a lot to be said for just "sheltering in place"  like they say when a storm is coming.

But, back to the title of this post.  I shudder to think how many times I have had an absolutely brilliant idea and then thought it through to the conclusion that I should probably be locked up for my own safety!  I can think of several husbands that were fleeting instances of my lapses in good judgment!  Coulda', woulda', shoulda', are words that do not appear in a dictionary, but probably oughta'.

I planted an Apricot tree out behind the house 25 years ago.  Monday I started removing limbs with my bow saw.  I am going to need to call a tree man.  Another instance of not thinking things through to a logical conclusion.  That little Mulberry tree that came up in the middle of the old fashioned rose bush is another instance.  I could have taken a pair of nippers to it, but now it is chain saw material.  Those sprayers that come on automatically in the garden are going to need removed because I was burning weeds and got to close to one.  Oh, yeah, and that blackberry bush with the 11 inch razor pointed thorns is going to need removed also.

 My mother once told me "You are your own worst enemy!" I did not understand what she meant all those years ago, but I am beginning to see a pattern developing here!  I am thinking that someone ought to just come and throw a net over me and drag me off to the loony bin, wherever that might be.  I assume someone would feed me and give me a place to sleep at night!  And there is that word "assume".  Kenneth explained that one to me once.  "Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

And there you go.  More ramblings of a mad woman!  Have a good day!

And the Apricot out back is in full bloom.

Well, yesterday I bit the bullet and cleaned the goose house.  I am sure the little feathered friends apprectiate my efforts if no one else does.  That is one very dirty job.  It took 5 wheel barrow loads in the garden and one up front on the herb garden.  Today I am going to start the sprinlers.  I am sure that will entail a trip to the local hardware to replace one or two of them.  I just love Spring.  With a little luck I will remember to get gas and such so I can rototill tomorrow or Saturday.  And during a stroll through my kingdom, I happened to see that the Apricot out back is in full bloom.  I did not take a picture of it because I take one every year and it looks the same, so here is a picture of it.

The strange part of this whole thing is that the tree in the back is in full bloom and the one in front is not.  Now I bet you are thinking that the front is further North, but it is not.  It is actually East.  I know what it is though.  This one is West of the house and the sun reflect on the stucco and warms it up more.  For many years I maintained Rose Gardens in the back, front , far front and side yards.  The kids always gave me roses for Mother's Day and at one time I had 64 and they were absolutely beautiful.  I love roses!  I used to have a favorite, but then I broke it into categories.  Favorite red, was Chrysler Imperial because it smelled best.  Favorite multi-color was Double Delight because it smelled best.  Favorite orange was Tropicana.  I could point at each one and tell you what it was, but then I got a little lax on the pruning and the feeding and the roses got a little scraggly and then real scraggly and then one by one they went to the big rose garden in the sky.  I still have a few, but those are on their way out.
This year I am going to work on turning my back yards into natural habitats for the little furry creatures and I do not mean the foxes, but I am sure they will drink from the pond if the dogs let them.  Oh, yeah and then there is that skunk thing.  Maybe I will try to just attract birds.  That would be best, I think.  I will keep the grass in the front and on the North side because I just love to mow that stuff!  That and the dogs and I like to set out front in the evening and early morning and survey our kingdom.  I have tried to get the geese to join us but I can not get them to leave the back.  Scary world out there!
So, just wanted to pop in here and let you know that Spring is here at my house.  This is not to say that we will not get a foot of snow next week.  It is just to say that it is looking good here yesterday and today and I am going to take full advantage of this little spurt of good weather!

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I just want to tell you about the Pecan Tree.

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At my sister Donna's house in her back yard is a very tall Pecan tree.  Every year the squirrels slither in and pick all the Pecans and hide them all over the North end of town.  If you look very closely at that last picture you can see one of the little fellows looking back at you.  They do not like to have their pictures taken so they sort of hid.

I made this picture extra large so you can see that beady little eye in the upper left hand corner, kind of .  Do you know these things spit at you?  Well, for the record, they do.  And they also chatter away and Lord only

knows what they are saying.

 Now this is a Pecan that is not ready.  I understand that had I picked this a few days earlier the inside would have been liquid.  That is very weird.  And do you see those brown fingers I got for my effort?  You may be interested to know that I still have those brown fingers and will no doubt die with them.  That is the thanks I get.

Now comes the weird part.  Karen had noticed the leaves seem to fall suddenly and completely.  Upon investigation, she was told that the tree is "self grooming".  That means that it will loose all it's leaf clusters when it decides the time is right.  And what do you think finally happened?  The tree, Karen and the video camera all had the same "aha moment".   It was a very still day; not a breeze stirring.  Karen glanced out the back window and noticed a few leaf clusters on the ground.  Then a couple fell and a light clicked on in her memory bank.  She ran for the video camera which by some sort of miracle in itself was charged and ready.  She took three video's and when she was done, so was the tree.  Bare as bare could be.  She showed me the video's and I asked for copies to be emailed to me.  But there you go.  I know how to upload to Youtube and download to my computer, but I do not know how to tell someone else how to do it.  So sad.
So this is all I wanted to tell you about the Pecan tree, the tree with a mind of it's own.  Someday we will have the video's on this computer and when we do then I can figure out how to get them on the blog for you.  It seems like most of my life is spent "figuring things out"  and not always coming to a good end on them.  But what is life if not a learning experience?
As Paul Harvey, or some one would say.  "Good Day."

I love Spring and I love my Spring Fever!!

Here is a close up of my Apple tree and on the other side is my humble abode.  On the center left is the pooch and a few sprigs of the Red Bud tree.  On the lower left is the lid to the septic tank.  All is well there, also. I will put a pot of Geraniums on it when they are in season, which will be pretty soon.  It is about to quit freezing at night, for which I shall be very happy!

Right now, blooming in my yard are the Lilacs.  The Apple tree is about done, as is the Red Bud and the Cherry.  Flowering Pink Almond  is all done. Forsythia never bloomed at all.  The Apple tree will have green apples. They will have bugs, cause I do not spray.  I throw them over the fence to the fowl and they like bugs.  Apricots are going to be prolific and buggy as well.  The Cherry tree has never had even one cherry.

But anyway, I am trying to tell you about my Spring Fever!  Did you ever hear that saying, "In Spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love?"  Well, in Spring, this old ladies thoughts turns to thoughts of naps!  I think I could completely sleep all the way through Spring if it were not for that wretched phone!  I know we get that urge to dig in the dirt and plant stuff, but the more I look around at what needs to me done in the yard, the sleepier I get.

Hey!  Maybe I am secretly a bear!  I could sleep all winter and then kind of start stirring the end of the Winter, which is the beginning of Spring.  Oh, oh!  Gotta go to church.  We will continue my sleeping habits at a different time! 

And my life is full and rich...

This is the Daisy dog. She has not had a bath in over a month!

This is the Elvira, Mistress of the night dog. She just had her bath and she is very pretty.  I look around at my life and I see that it is very good. I have the Cherry Tree right outside the office window, the Redbud blooming in both the front yard and the back yard, the Flowering Pink Almond, Lilac's  and tons of the pretty little yellow flowers all through the grass. Now what more could one woman ask from life? The companionship of the doggies is enough to satisfy any longings I have on the cold winter night. Barely enough room in the bed for me to sleep!

I have a car to drive, a roof over my head, clothes for my back, and food for my tummy.  I have friends and my church for a social life, a mind to think , and a marker at the cemetary that is already engraved. Can you think of anything that is missing? When I bought my marker, the guy at Imperial said the date of my death would be engraved later. I tried to talk him into helping me just set a date and we would work from that, but the guy had no sense of humor. In his line of work I think I understand that.

So, just wanted to share that with you while I had it on my mind.  Dogs come and dogs go. Cats come and the owls eat them. The duck flock is slowly thinning itself and I am sure the geese will follow suit.  A couple years ago I had 36 ducks. Now I am down to 21. It is called the cycle of life.  I have friends who are concerned that the world will end in 2012. First it was 1984, then 1999, then 2000, and I am still here. See, I read the Bible and I like the part about. "No Man shall know the hour of my coming. There shall be 2 people working in the field, the one shall be taken and the other left behind..."

So I shall set here with my doggies, very patiently waiting. In the meantime, I think I will do a lot of living and there is a lot needs doing out there. Think I will go find some to do.

Here are the Apricot blooms I was telling you about!

Here you see the blooms on the Apricot tree.  I know some of you will think that means Spring is here and Winter is over, but I am sorry to say you may be mistaken. It has been my experience that here in Pueblo we only get a fruit crop about once every 7 years.  I can still remember getting Apricots off this tree and I can't remember things that happened seven years ago, so I am pretty sure the freezing stuff is not over.

But I do want to tell you where this tree came from. About 20 years ago we were working on a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) job in Paonia, Colorado.  That is over on the Western Slope where all the fruit comes from. The land is mostly for grazing cattle and recreation and such so it is mostly public land. On the public land grows all kinds of trees to include Apricot, Peach, Choke Cherry, Apple, and one called Sarviss Berry which is a lot like a Blueberry.  Anyway my dear husband picked a bread bag full of Apricots for me.  I made them into Apricot Jam and threw the pits out by the septic tank. Next Spring I had many Apricot Seedlings.  I planted 14 over at my mother-in-law's and planted 3 here. Still have them.

The Apricots are the first fruit trees to bloom in the Spring.  Also usually the first ones to get frosted, too.  Ok, that is the story for the day. Putting my tired old body to bed.