So it's come to my attention that I haven't posted anything here in over a month. Things have probably happened since then! So I guess I'll write them down. This will probably get long. I realize I'd probably get more comments from separate posts, but too late now. I'll at least divide into sections so you can skim ( the longness... )

By the front path of our house, we have a whole bunch of fuzzy lamb's ear plants growing. In the spring they send up these really tall stalks with little purple flowers. I usually leave 'em for a while, 'cause they're reasonably pretty, but after a while you have to cut them back, since if you leave them they'll eventually fall over in the rain ( Read more... )

The one (perhaps only) nice thing about early DST is there's suddenly a lot of daytime for doing things after work. Like on Wednesday, when akiko is out at Tai-Chi class in the early evening anyway, giving me just barely enough time to get in a decent bike ride before making dinner. Since they're practically the only decent exercise I get (barring new ( Read more... )

Because I'm feeling lazy (and should go to bed soon), I'm just gonna post a bunch of recent tweets. I did edit out the extra boring ones, though. Would anyone be interested in me expanding on any of these topics? ( Let me know. )

Since I've been out of town and/or busy (and/or procrastinating) I haven't actually sent off anything on my HOA lawn issue. The only substantive opinions I got on my last post were observations that if I'm trying to be relatively non-confrontational as long as I can, perhaps immediately going over the head of the person who sent me the initial ( Read more... )

So I corresponded with someone I found on our neighborhood's online forum who'd had an issue with HOA rules-lawyering before. Unfortunately their experience was not encouraging. They said the actual board showed a tendency to want to defer to the management consultant, who encouraged them to be inflexible with the letter of the guidelines. Ugh ( Read more... )

So as some of you who read akiko's journal or twitter may have heard, we recently got a letter from a representative of our HOA saying that they took issue with the state of our lawn. Specifically, the fact that it's pretty much half clover at this point. They suggest a wide-spectrum herbicide followed by re-seeding ( Read more... )

So, hey, stuff's been happening and I haven't posted anything recently. Still got plenty to do, so I'll sum up ( Read more... )

Guess who's moved in to my lawn? Again? Yellow jackets. I think this brings them up to a solid one-for-two record on years I've lived here that they've decided to make a new nest under my grass. The minor victory this time is I narrowly managed *not* to get stung in the process of discovering them (which is good, since I seem to be developing ( Read more... )

Bushes. They can be substantial. Especially when you need to remove three of them to make way for a new garden, and some of them are like eight or nine feet tall ( Read more... )