Ms. Low-Tech Makes Good!

I've finally figured out how to add a picture to my title page! Blimey! My last efforts have left me with a little postage stamp picture sitting out there looking meager and lost. Which is rather distressing, because some of my very favorite bloggers not only have stunning pictures behind their titles, they change them at will! New beautiful pictures all the time to match mood and seasons and life.

I've been sitting here for months going plink plink stab mash bang bzzzzzt on the keyboard and getting {ERROR! RUN OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW} messages on my screen and nothing to show for my efforts. Don't expect this one to change for a while. I have to rest my brain and take a nap for a while. It was also just a fluke and I've already forgotten how I did it.

Blogging has been an adventure in figuring things out with a mind that neither likes to follow directions, read contracts of any kind, or read any of the small print on the back of my credit card statement. ( Would someone kindly read the back of their credit card statement, and just give me the bottom line.) The small print basically allows the company to change interest rates at will and charge you for stuff you never asked for.

Knowing my lo-tech capabilities are an hindrance, I've made a point of learning at least one new thing a day here in blog land. I just impressed myself to death the first day I figured out how to add a link to a word, a picture to the post, change the color of font and anything else that some people apparently have just known how to do before computers were even invented.

I love the flowers in the picture. They're called plumeria, also known a frangipani. They have a wonderful heavenly exotic fragrance and come in many different shades of red, pink, yellow and orange. This is one of the plants that are (supposedly- I'll get to that in a minute) so easy to grow, that all you do is whack a branch off a mature plant, stick it in the ground, and voila - new plant growing and thriving. They are in the oleander family, and are (supposedly - I'll get to that in a minute) poisonous. They grow so rampant in Hawaii that they are used on leis. The ones they give you for free at the airport!

I drove all the way to Seffner a few years ago and purchased two plumerias after browsing and sniffing thousands of them. These were already rooted and growing nicely in gallon containers. I carefully planted them, nurtured them, watched over them and voila - they both croaked within 6 months. So I gave up on them. Until 2 years ago when my friend Heather whacked a branch off of her beautiful plumeria. I went home and planted it in a pot and voila! It grew nicely and even got some leaves the following spring.

In May I got really brave and planted it outside next to the fig tree and voila! The deer ate the top off of it. And pulled it out of the ground the next day. Undaunted - after I got over it a few months later - I trimmed the dead top off and voila! New leaves started to grow in 4 places around the sides of the stalk and voila, the deer ate the leaves. It's supposed to be poisonous, I thought. They don't care. What's a bit of a stomach ache when they can hide in the bushes across the pond and watch my reaction to their nibbling

Well, it's autumn now and I see plumeria thriving and blooming in the neighborhood, and mine is sitting there looking reasonably healthy despite the fact that it gets barbered every week or so by the deer. No flowers yet. Or maybe there were and the deer ate them too. I dunno.

So, now I have this lovely picture of plumeria on my blog! I think I will dab a little perfume on the screen so I can enjoy the scent. Lord knows I may never find out what my real one smells like.

Back to Nature

I got an e-mail yesterday from my neighbor, Julie. It was basically a note to let folks in our subdivision know that there are lots of deer running around the neighborhood at night. The guy next door to her has been taking a count, and according to Julie, he's counted 17 with night vision goggles, some pregnant.

Now I ask you, how is it that deer can afford night vision goggles when I can't? Do all 17 need a pair? Couldn't they share and maybe leave me a pair over where the hibiscus that they ate used to be? Maybe just let the pregnant ones wear them. Imagine what a herd of deer would look like in this:

I found another dead squirrel yesterday! This is the first casualty since Chauncey Le Nuts bit the big one a few months ago. As happened the previous time, I neglected to bring along my Hello Kitty CSI kit, so I just made a perfunctory examination. There was no sign of foul or fowl play. No arrow, bullet holes, little tiny pantyhose wrapped around his neck.

He looked rather content, for being dead, so I figure it was just natural causes. Or more likely from eating all of my rose buds. Too much vitamin C. I had to use a plastic Albertson's bag to pick it's little body up. I have a special place behind a bush where I stash animal corpses until trash pick up. I made the mistake of putting a dead fish in the garbage can in the garage once. This IS Florida, after all. We have garbage pick up twice a week here in the sunshine state for obvious reasons. The garage usually being a comfortable and consistent 110 degrees. (That's Fahrenheit) (We Americans haven't figured out the metric system yet so we sure as heck would be scratching our heads trying to work out Celsius.)

I'm sorry, but I don't do little animal funerals. You have to be licensed to do funerals in Pinellas County. I can marry people if I want but I can't bury stuff.

Let's go back for a minute to the sentence about garbage in the garage - I just noticed that except for the b they are spelled the same. Huh. That explains a lot about the state of several of the garages in our neighborhood. You know the ones. There's so much "B" in the garage that after 17 years they still haven't been able to put a car in it.

I think I have mentioned before that our daughter Jennifer in San Francisco uses the Mister as her personal private alarm clock. Either she texts him by 10:00 saying she's awake or he will call her. The Mister has to have the alarm on his phone set to go off at 10:00 am every day. That's because, in my unemployed state our schedules have gone to pot, and we just might still be asleep at 10:00 (so what!). Anyway, the texting is sometimes amusing - like yesterday for example - we're still snoring away when her text comes in. It says "wakey wakey" The Mister looks at it an laughs and then he mashes it close enough to my face so I can see it, and I laugh. Wakey wakey is one of the still used vestiges of our years as parents of young children. It's a nice way to start the day - laughing

I like the alarm idea - we know every morning that Jennifer is alive and well in SF. That's very reassuring.