WHAT MADE YOU GRIMACE & GRIT YOUR TEETH TODAY?

Yes, I'd say as many groups as is necessary. I know that's what saved two old beaches, several cherry trees, and a massive old weeping willow across the street from me.

Yep. Looks like like the way to go, k.
Gets pretty time consuming, doesn't it?

Um... I don't know. My local groups are so, I don't need to participate.

Ah. We're the "initiators" in a melting pot suburb. New ground.


OMG, next door's tree has vanished! All this blue sky that was never there before. My backyard looks entirely different.

Check your sun - may affect your plants.

Exactly what I was thinking, k. Sigh.

It's a north/westerly aspect, which really cops the sun on summer afternoons. (Great in winter, though.) Luckily I've planted lots of native bushes which are very hardy. But I think I'm going to have to rethink the vegetable & herb spots. Far too much sun for them now, I think.

(After a peek over the fence) First the good news: the tree is not 100% gone. A third is still there & growing.

Now the bad news: not nearly enough tree left for most of the birds. If they even return at all after something like this.

A third gone and still growing? How?

The top 2/3rds was cut off, k. The rest is still in the ground.

some kind of plumbing problem
yuck
plumber is on the way
I hope it is just a minorly plugged drain
my chequebook is ready

mr expressrooter has come and gone and will be back tomorrow

the upside?

if a city-owned tree is the source of the problem, there is an up to $2000 rebate from the city

set and the dogs will have to be on work crew supervision tomorrow

the huge downside - can't shower, wash, toilet, do laundry, clean the mess in the basement until sometime tomorrow

Went out to get in the truck today to find that the battery that I just bought (last tuesday) was dead ad the truck would not start. After jumping it off and then driving around, going into walmart and coming back out to find it dead again, I realized that my alternator wasn't charging the battery and that I had to get it replaced.

Ooooof... I live in fear of that happening to us, will eventually (knock on wood).

Gotta figure out which neighbour to approach - errr, excuse me, can I take a shower at your house? the neighbours I would have approached moved about 3 weeks ago ...

probing around for my firewood pile. The snow is so deep that everything is covered and drifted.
The easy wood pile that was on the front porch has been all burned so now its hard work.

Bugger!

Update on the damned cellulitis.

I actually ended up taking a WEEK off work!!!

The locum over-prescribed the antibiotics, and this had the effect of making me so tired and dizzy that I couldn't really do anything.

By the time I saw my own doctor on Wednesday, and she cut down the dose, I was a wreck, so she kindly told me to have the rest of the week off.

Now, I go onto some truly awful and different antibiotics later on today, so hopefully they'll kill the rest of the germs. (The leg is a lot better but by no means clear.)

Now, the weird thing is they tell you not to exercise, but to keep the foot up, so the blood and lymph circulate and the thing doesn't swell.

What on earth makes that happen better than walking, I ask you?

Does anyone know what that is all about? I mean, I COULDN'T exercise when it was all really bad, but when the infection began to clear?


Anyhoo, all that bloody lying around made my damn back get really bad, but I am doing its exercises, and have begun walking again, so hopefully that will improve.

I have to say the back is still causing way too much trouble generally, so I'll try some concentrated physio, to see if that does anything the exercises I am already doing don't.

If not, I guess I will really have to consider surgery.


Ewwwwww!

Double ewwwwww.
That sounds awful.

Well damn. I should've known better than to think no news was good news. That's altogether sucky, sorry. (Well no altogether, at least the infection is clearing up, that's good. May it get completely clear posthaste.)

I was at the bathroom sink Saturday morning, bending over to rinse off my
face, when something in my lower back went twang. So I spent the day
walking around like Walter Brennan as Grampa McCoy.