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Amaryllis By Morning

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

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So here’s my new amaryllis. I like the delicate pink and white color of the flower and these stalks are shorter than the red, which I also like. It’s nice to have some color back in the house, especially since it’s February. For a short month, February always seems eternal. ;-)

And I know this isn’t the best picture in the world. I’ll have to take more and try to get some better shots. The one thing that surprised me was how poor my camera does when I tried to get any kind of close up shot. It just totally blurred everything all up.

I’m still getting all kinds of gardening catalogs–in fact, the pace seems to have picked up. I wonder if they count on people up north being desperate for signs of summer and prey on our cabin fever? Hmm.

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I Dream of Summer

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

My new amaryllis is beginning to have the flower pod open and just in the nick of time. The weather here has been horrible (try -36 with the wind chill when I woke up yesterday) and any sign of spring is welcome right now. Okay, flowers blooming indoors isn’t really a sign of spring, but hey, I’ll take what I can find. And of course, like always, there’ll be pictures when the amaryllis blooms. This one is a cream/red mixture.

I keep getting emails from the nurseries I’ve ordered from–and a few others that I signed up for–and I’m so tempted to get some of those huge begonias. They’d have to be indoor plants because, like the amaryllis, they’re sissy flowers, but they’re big and gorgeous and I’m thinking, wow, wouldn’t that add some nice color in the winter. I’m getting just the slightest bit desperate for warm weather. :-)

Of course, it helps that the gnats that came with the second amaryllis appear to be gone now. If I still was fighting those damn things, I wouldn’t be quite so tempted by new plants. I hate bugs and don’t want any in my house, even if they’re only little nuisances.

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Mea Culpa Redux

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Um, sorry Packer and Charger fans. Yes, it’s true. I was rooting for your teams. This football playoff season I’ve only had 1 team I’ve wanted to win actually do so. That was back that first week with all the wild card teams playing. I guess this means New England is destined to win the Super Bowl because I can’t stand that team or their quarterback. If anyone’s doing a pool, you know who to bet on. :-) It’s really tough being a jinx–takes all the fun out of watching the games.

It is monumentally cold here still. I think the lowest we went was -31 with the wind chill when I first woke up on Saturday morning, but even now, my toes are cold and I am so not looking forward to going outside. I think they should dome the entire metro area and heat it. :-) It’s a long walk from where the peons park at NWA to the door.

Flower report: Looks like I’ll have to throw out both poinsettias at some point. The red one has been shedding since before Christmas and it looks like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Now the white one it starting to lose leaves, too.

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Eight Is Enough

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

My RITA books arrived. Eight of them! I think the contest needs more judges or something because that’s a lot of reading when I have writing to do. I think I have about 6 weeks to read, which should be enough time, but I’ll have to double check my instruction sheet to be certain.

It’s supposed to be hugely cold here this weekend, which would actually be a perfect time to curl up in bed with a book, but it’s also a prime writing time for me. So guess what I’ll be doing? Yep, writing. I signed up for my chapter’s Book In A Week–we do it every month–and I’m behind on my goal. I’m going to need Saturday desperately.

The newspaper here had an article on hard-to-kill houseplants and it’s got me thinking I should get a few more plants. And then I remind myself that I didn’t want a jungle inside my house. I have two poinsettias, two amaryllis and 1 lucky bamboo plant. It’s already starting to get jungle-like, although the red poinsettia has been dying almost since the day I brought it home.

If y’all have been hearing the merger talks between NWA and Delta, you know things are not calm and peaceful at the Evil Day Job (EDJ). The last thing I want is to relocate to Atlanta. For one, I just moved into my house about 18 months ago and for another, Atlanta is having a horrible water shortage. Why would you want to move more people into that city? Anyway, I keep reminding myself that there’s no point worrying about it until I have to, but there are days that’s tough.

And some person who’s name was “unknown” on caller ID woke me up at 1:30 this morning when he tried to logon to the Internet using my phone number. Argh!

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Amaryllis 2

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

My new amaryllis arrived yesterday–one day after the nursery notified me it was coming. Now that was quick! But it didn’t come to me like the red holiday amaryllis came. That one was all planted for me and all I needed to do was water it. This one arrived in pieces. I have one pot, one bag of dirt, and 3 bulbs. Some assembly required.

The package also came with at least one gnat! Grrr. After dosing the other plant for more than a week after it’s arrival brought those darn little bugs, the last thing I want is to go through this again. Especially when I’ll have three other plants to dose now. One was bad enough.

So tomorrow when I should be writing, I’ll be planting amaryllis bulbs and dosing all my plants with that gnat stuff. If I’d only known, I probably would have resisted ordering. Maybe.

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Transitions, Transitions

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

The writing came easier yesterday, but these darn transitions are a bear! I don’t want to end the scene and pick it up again, but making the turns into what Logan needs to do next has been rough. I was fighting with another one of the things last night. On the plus side, once I make this turn, I’ll be into the action part of the scene, and while mixing choreography with emotion takes work, it’s gotta be better than transitions. gasp! I’m trying to give myself permission to accept a rough segue by telling myself I can fix it later. The perfectionist in me is balking.

I was watching television the other night when that commercial came on for Comcast. I don’t know if it’s nationwide or not, but it has men and women in suits singing about “the big old expensive phone company.” Here’s a link to the ad on YouTube. The tune kind of got caught in my head for a while and I didn’t think beyond that (and the humor), but the other night, it hit me. Wait a second. The cable company is accusing the phone company of being expensive??? Does anyone else see the irony?

Now granted, the phone company isn’t cheap either, but this is definitely a case of people who live in glass houses not throwing stones. My cable bill just went up this month and Comcast eliminated several channels from my service. Cable also is more than I pay for electricity or natural gas. gulp.

I had a new gardening catalog in my mail yesterday from a place I’d never heard of. They mostly carry roses which means I’m fairly safe since I’m not much for that particular flower. They’re too fussy and require too much work. They did have a few other flowers that looked cool, but I’m going to be strong. Um, especially since I have another amaryllis plant on the way. I had to buy it. It was half price!

BTW, I found out the amaryllis is native to South America and the Caribbean, which explains why it’s a sissy flower. I was reading instructions on how to care for the plant I have and stumbled across that fact.

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Tropical Paradise

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

I’d ordered a calendar and some research books from BN.com on Dec 30th and they just arrived yesterday, which I thought was a really long time since I had the three day shipping option selected. But I digress. Anyway, this year’s calendar theme is Tropical Paradise. I loved last year’s Greek Isles calendar so 2008 has a lot to live up to.

It was another tough writing day yesterday. Not only was I my usual Monday tired, but I had to make a difficult transition in a scene. It was something that would have given me fits anyway, but on a Monday…. Especially a Monday where I was busy at the Evil Day Job and not mentally calm when I went to write on lunch, it was extra tough. BTW, I was so busy yesterday, that I was late leaving the EDJ and that almost never happens.

My last amaryllis flower bloomed Sunday. I hate to see the flowers wilt and dry up because I’ve loved having the red and green in the house. Okay, I loved it after I dosed the dirt enough to get rid of the gnats. But I’m not ready to be flowerless. Sigh. At least I’ll still have my poinsettias. The red one doesn’t look too great, but the white one is beautiful. When’s spring coming?

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Holiday Blooms

Monday, December 24th, 2007


Yes, that’s fresh snow on my deck in the background. Sigh.

Two shots of my red holiday amaryllis. They are now gnat free–hurrah!–and while one side is still only buds, the other two sides are either blooming wildly or about to open their flowers. It’s amazing how fast these things grow, but I’m absolutely loving having a splash of color in my house this winter. And to think, I was determined not to have indoor plants. I’m scared I’m going to end up with a jungle in the house now that I’ve decided I like it. :-)

In that vein, I have two poinsettias added to my holiday plants. I was too lazy to take a picture of them, sorry. One’s a beautiful cream color and the other is a deep, vibrant red. I’ve been reading up on this flower and they should last until February. My plan was to keep them alive all year and force them to bloom again next holiday, but apparently it’s very difficult to do. I must be a masochist because I think I’m going to try anyway.

I did watch a movie this weekend, Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle, but I’m not going to blog about it. I don’t have much to say other than I liked it well enough, but not as much as the first one. The first movie was totally over the top, but in a fun way that I enjoyed. This second film was further over the top than the first one and it was just a little too far for me. I’d give it about 3 stars and I’d watch a third installment if it comes out, but I didn’t love it.

I’m still on my second read through on the galleys, which means I won’t have time to make a third pass. I’m really worried about how much I missed and I hope my mom and the proofreader my publisher has going through it spot everything I miss. I’m a perfectionist and it makes me crazy when I find mistakes.

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Some Assembly Required

Monday, December 10th, 2007

My new furniture is assembled! Yea! My dad came over on Saturday and we spent about seven hours or so putting it all together. On the plus side, the size of the coffee table is perfect and I was exactly right–anything larger would overwhelm the space and make it impossible to walk. On the minus side of things, the furniture was cheap and it looks it. :-( Considering it took me more than a year to find this stuff, I’m keeping it. I figure in a couple of years I can start looking again and this time get nicer tables. I just needed something now because it was darn near impossible to spread papers out on the couch and I was using the step ladder as an end table. And as I look, I’ll at least have something usable.

Of course, the assembly did not go smoothly. In the first end table, my dad used the long screws in the drawer and cracked the wood. It was an easy mistake to make because they had pictures of all the parts and labeled them with letters. The directions said use the M screws, and in the image, the M screws looked longer than the N screws. It was a misrepresentation. Looking at the picture of the screw heads, the N screw had the Phillips head and that was what was supposed to go in the drawer.

Second piece that went together was the coffee table. The left drawer would not fit. It got stuck like half way. We decided that maybe the drawer was just bigger or something and my dad worked to sand down the piece it slides against. It still wouldn’t fit. As it turns out, the two sides of the drawers were designed differently. Once he disassembled them, switched the sides out, and put them together again, it all worked.

By the time we were finished, I had bits of Styrofoam all over my house and sawdust from where my dad was sanding the inside of the coffee table.

Saturday we also dosed the amaryllis with the gnat killer stuff the nursery recommended. It doesn’t kill adults, though, just the larvae, but how long can adult gnats live anyway? And without any little replacement gnats being born, their residence should come to an end, right?

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Bugged?

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

It snowed again yesterday. :-( That meant my usual 25 minute commute expanded to an hour and a half. Make that a white-knuckled hour and a half. Top speed was about 30 miles an hour, but most of the drive was at 1o mph. That was a good thing because the roads were horrible. It’s up early today and out the door ASAP because of the conditions.

The only thing that made the day bearable was arriving home and finding my coffee table and end tables on the door step! Yea! The problem was dragging snow covered boxes into the house. I’m hugely excited to have these tables and absolutely can’t wait to fold up the step ladder (my makeshift coffee table) and put it away. I just have to get my dad to come over and assemble the new furniture. :-/

On the plant front, I talked here about the bugs in my amaryllis. The nursery suggested some stuff that mixes with water, goes into the soil, and kills them. I can’t wait for that to arrive. They said the bugs are harmless, just a nuisance, but I don’t like them in my house. I don’t care if they are harmless. I’ll also have to dose my bamboo plant with this stuff, I guess. The guy said that the bugs will make their way to other plants in the house and that’s all I have.

Speaking of bugged, last night just before midnight, the phone rang. Wrong number. Not only was it a wrong number, it was someone’s computer trying to connect to the internet. I’ve had calls like that on my voice mail when I’ve gotten home from work, but I never had a call in the middle of the night before. You’d think the fact that they’ve never connected dialing my number might encourage the person to delete it. Apparently not. Grrr.

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