spring has sprung
Apr. 29th, 2013 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateLast week I put my computer upstairs in the writing loft where it technically belongs these days and then we visited it about three times all week. Here's some of what happened instead:
*the Megatherium survived her first shots with fairly minimal trauma; the doctor's office was running slow, so I ended up feeding her in the exam room while we were waiting and so she was well-fed and smiley up until the nurse stuck her with needles. Then she screamed for about three minutes and went to sleep. The rest of the day was mostly food and sleep, and she had a mild fever on the night of day three that most of a dose of baby tylenol kicked easily ("most of" because she spit the first try all over her father, so we had to supplement with another half dose, rounding down.) And then we had to take her back to the doctor for pinkeye. But for such a rough week, she's been very sweet about it.
*This baby is a morning person. Fortunately she is the sort of morning person who's perfectly content to wiggle and sing to herself until I drag myself out of bed.
*Lovely spring weather-- mid-60s-70s and sunny, and today it's raining (which is also good) and I need to figure out back carries or put mosquito netting over the bouncy chair or something so I can pull things out of the garden without causing fuss. But plants I thought hadn't made it through last year's spring drought are not just coming up, but blooming all over the place, and apparently the ostrich fern came with a generous helping of Virginia bluebells I didn't know I was planting. And we're now entirely boxed in by yards with dogs, so we have a mad generous showing on the part of the violets, since they are not being constantly mown down by rabbits as in previous years.
*Those of us who made it through the piedmont class & volunteer hours are now fully certified MD master naturalists (rather than just interns) and I'm still terrible at outreach; I completely failed to explain to my neighbors why having french drains at all is a bad idea (as opposed to having them drain out over the sidewalk, which was the complaint under discussion at that moment.) Uh-- for those of you who haven't heard far too much about suburban watershed drainage, there are two problems: a) french drain pipes will eventually get filled and/or crushed & flood your basement, and b) water that goes straight to the gutters rather than being filtered through groundwater hits your local stream/river warmer, going faster, and in larger blocks at a time, and thus carries with it not only all the gunk people have dropped in the gutters, but also large amounts of dirt from wherever the pipes and pavement let out. Also, you're robbing your lawn/plantings of the groundwater that would otherwise keep them going longer between rainfalls. So, generally not a good idea all 'round.
*We got an anniversary porch glider, but now we need a back porch to put the grill on so they're not in the way of each other. (The back deck is on the list labeled "5 year plan" on the white board in the kitchen.)
*the Megatherium survived her first shots with fairly minimal trauma; the doctor's office was running slow, so I ended up feeding her in the exam room while we were waiting and so she was well-fed and smiley up until the nurse stuck her with needles. Then she screamed for about three minutes and went to sleep. The rest of the day was mostly food and sleep, and she had a mild fever on the night of day three that most of a dose of baby tylenol kicked easily ("most of" because she spit the first try all over her father, so we had to supplement with another half dose, rounding down.) And then we had to take her back to the doctor for pinkeye. But for such a rough week, she's been very sweet about it.
*This baby is a morning person. Fortunately she is the sort of morning person who's perfectly content to wiggle and sing to herself until I drag myself out of bed.
*Lovely spring weather-- mid-60s-70s and sunny, and today it's raining (which is also good) and I need to figure out back carries or put mosquito netting over the bouncy chair or something so I can pull things out of the garden without causing fuss. But plants I thought hadn't made it through last year's spring drought are not just coming up, but blooming all over the place, and apparently the ostrich fern came with a generous helping of Virginia bluebells I didn't know I was planting. And we're now entirely boxed in by yards with dogs, so we have a mad generous showing on the part of the violets, since they are not being constantly mown down by rabbits as in previous years.
*Those of us who made it through the piedmont class & volunteer hours are now fully certified MD master naturalists (rather than just interns) and I'm still terrible at outreach; I completely failed to explain to my neighbors why having french drains at all is a bad idea (as opposed to having them drain out over the sidewalk, which was the complaint under discussion at that moment.) Uh-- for those of you who haven't heard far too much about suburban watershed drainage, there are two problems: a) french drain pipes will eventually get filled and/or crushed & flood your basement, and b) water that goes straight to the gutters rather than being filtered through groundwater hits your local stream/river warmer, going faster, and in larger blocks at a time, and thus carries with it not only all the gunk people have dropped in the gutters, but also large amounts of dirt from wherever the pipes and pavement let out. Also, you're robbing your lawn/plantings of the groundwater that would otherwise keep them going longer between rainfalls. So, generally not a good idea all 'round.
*We got an anniversary porch glider, but now we need a back porch to put the grill on so they're not in the way of each other. (The back deck is on the list labeled "5 year plan" on the white board in the kitchen.)
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-30 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-02 01:58 pm (UTC)And possibly my terminology is off, since actual french drains are *supposed* to drain to groundwater more or less the way that a rain garden is; it's just that all the ones in this neighborhood are very much designed to get roof drainage off the property, which is bad.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-02 02:04 pm (UTC)Luckily, our yard slopes perfectly for the buried spouts on three sides. On the "high" side, we need to dig out a shallow channel to help the water get to the property line which has a very gentle slope down to the ditch. They built each house on it's own little mound. We are getting the wash-outs at the ends, though.