Recently in Home/Garden/Home Improvement Category

Since I am off today and it has rained for the last week my grass is almost knee high in some places. I'm planning on cutting the grass shortly if I can get off of my ass, but there is a slight problem. I put down some fire ant pellets in early spring and haven't had a single problem all year but noticed yesterday that they are finally coming back. I have at least two new colonies in my front yard. I think I have some ant killer in the basement but all that seems to do is make them move to another spot. Then I ran across this story.

Damn, that's gotta suck. I hate freaking fire ants with a passion.

I've always loved to cook and whatnot so back in middle school we were able to take some electives. One of the classes I took was Home Ec. They call it something else now. Hey, ya' can't spend all the time being bad and skipping class. Besides, at thirteen or so I was still behaving and making decent grades.

...anyway, in this class we had to come up with a project. We had to draw our dream house out on graph paper and then furnish it with cool stuff out of a selection of catalogs using a predetermined budget. I suppose nowadays they would have you look on the Internet rather than catalogs but this was back in the late seventies so what do you expect anyway?

So of course being thirteen my house was furnished with all manner of funky things like lava lamps, beanbag chairs, boatloads of ceiling fans and weird looking furniture. I still like the ceiling fans which is what got me to thinking about this whole deal in the first place. We even have a couple of lava lamps here in the house as well :)

As soon as we moved in here we made sure to buy ceiling fans. There was one or two in the house when we bought it and we added in ceiling fans in each bedroom as well as one in the dining room. I am considering putting some of these Monte Carlo ceiling fans on our front porch if they will fit, maybe two or three. Either that or some regular old Hunter fans. It will have to wait a while though. I still need to get the chimney cleaned and I need some roof work done this fall as well so anything extra will just have to wait until next year.

Earlier in the week I decided that I was tired of the fact that my neighbor won't do anything about his Yellow Jacket nest in the back corner of his yard so I took the fight to their territory. Gasoline didn't work so I dumped a bunch of Sevin Dust on the bastards. Apparently they didn't take very kindly to that so have brought the fight to me, the fucking asshats. Check out these pics...

If you look real close you can see the little mother fuckers buzzing around the bricks on the edge of my flowerbed. I don't have a lens good enough to get a really good shot and I damn sure am not gonna get out there while it's ninety degrees and the fuckers are already excited.

Not on my fucking flowerbed you don't...

I will be making a trip out to their new home this evening with more Sevin dust and maybe gasoline as well. Details to follow!

Yesterday evening I went and poured gasoline down the hole where the yellow jackets live in my neighbor's back yard. I figured since they weren't going to do anything about fuck if I am going to get stung again. I managed to get two stings yesterday when I was working in the garden and fuck if that wasn't enough for me.

Apparently it didn't work because the little yellow bastards were flying around my yard again today. This evening I snuck up on then and dumped enough sevin dust to kill a small person on their abode. Hopefully that shit'll do 'em in. I would love to have some serious damned bug killer. DDT or something. It's not as if my children are going to be up there licking the fucking ground anyway...

I've spent the great majority of the weekend working on another new site for the crime stories I post. I may or may not keep posting them here but they will definitely all end up over there. Sick Crimes is the name of the site. I will most likely add on a forum as well. I seriously considered using Wordpress for it but for right now I am running Movabletype. There are a couple of issues with the templates I'm using but everything should work fine.

In order to comment over there you have to sign in. You can either sign up as a commenter there or you can use Wordpress, AIM, Livejournal, etc...to sign in with. Basically anything that supports OpenID. The site isn't 100% ready but what the fuck. This way I get some user feedback before I go completely "live".

Oh by the way, I also finally met my neighbors on the day that we had our trees cut down last week. At least the father. He seems like he's a pretty nice guy after all, being a preacher notwithstanding. That and the fact that I am having to kill their fucking Yellow Jackets. I also had a new set of neighbors move into the other vacant house up the hill as well. I still don't know if they bought it or if they are leasing it though. The For Sale sign is gone but that doesn't mean a damn thing. Other than waving at them while they were moving in I haven't had the chance to go over and say hi yet.

Join

I've spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks working in the yard. I mentioned a couple of days ago that we had removed the patio and put in another garden. In addition I dug in a bunch of stepping stones around the pond and planted a bunch of grass there today. We've added some more wire to support the Wisteria that is just getting huge. It stretches about 30 feet across from the back deck to an arbor near the pond now. I also planted some pretty cool Purple Hyacinth Bean vines by the arbor as well. Between that and the Wisteria they should look really nice in a couple of months. I also put in the Hyacinth Beans on the back deck as well in addition to the Morning Glories, Blackeyed Susans and a couple of other vines as well. Once they thicken up and start flowering I will post some pictures.

I have some dayliles in the yard as well as other types of lilies. These are some of the new lilies I have planted this year.

They sit in one of a pair of cement flower beds that belonged to my great-grandmother before she passed away. They've gone from Atlanta to Florida back to Georgia over the last 40 years. I don't know exactly how old they are but I do know she had them before I was born. My grandmother and great-aunt had them for years and then they went to my mom who brought them out to me a couple of years ago. It means quite a bit to me to have them sitting on my front walk.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

A little over a month ago I pulled up all of the bricks in my little patio by the pond and put in another garden instead. Then I took said bricks and made a path up the side of my house and around the pond.

This is what the area used to look like. The patio is just beyond the pond.

This is what the patio area looks like now. Keeping it in perspective the pond is just to the left of the pictured area. I really like the way it look snow. I planted one of our 20-year-old philodendrons, a cherry tree, some kind of flowery vine and some other plants and crap that I bought off of eBay. I don't remember what it is off of the top of my head because I don't mark that stuff. I just check to make sure it's perennial in my area and plant the shit. If it grows and flourishes then great, otherwise I will put something else in next year. Not too scientific but I like low maintenance stuff that just grows for me.

Anyhow, when I put the path down I just basically threw the bricks down which of course makes it difficult to mow the lawn. I went out with the intention of digging them in a bit. I finished several of them around the pond but by the second time I was stung by one of those bastard Yellow Jackets I was finished for the morning. The last little fucker got up in my sandal and stung me underneath my toe in the tender area. I was jumping around trying to smash the fuck doing the monkey dance in the back yard. I don't think my neighbors saw me but if they did fuck 'em anyway.

I'm in the mood now to just spray the back yard down with gasoline and rid myself once and for all of the little buggers. The nest is in my neighbor's back yard as we discovered when we were having some trees cut down last week. Or the tree cutter guys discovered anyway. And they had to haul that shit out of there. I can definitely say those guys don't get paid enough...

I love the early morning. It's a shame that I can't do this more often. I went outside for a smoke just a little while ago and just sat listening to the birds. Near and far they were all chatting with each other. In the pre-dawn hour it was almost overbearing there were so many birds chatting with each other, but pleasant at the same time. As a matter of fact I think before I get ready for work I am going to sit back outside again for a few...

Speaking of birds, we have a Hummingbird Feeder mounted on our kitchen window just off the deck. As I sat there yesterday afternoon a little hummingbird flew up to feed. It only stayed a few seconds as I moved a bit trying to see if I had my camera with me. Of course not.

The Hummingbird returned a few times yesterday evening. By the time I located my tripod so I could go ahead and focus the camera and sit still it was too late and didn't come back. I think I will save it for today or tomorrow afternoon and get an earlier shot. Part of the fact that it didn't come back was the fact that the girls kept running out on the back porch like a pack of wild dogs every few minutes.

Even after having to get up so early yesterday I stayed up pretty late. Of course I should have been to bed early but we decided to sit down and watch National Treasure: The Book of Secrets. It was pretty decent actually. The wife turned off disbelief mode for a couple of hours and got to enjoy it with me. The thing about being married to a science teacher is that it makes it difficult to use your imagination and just enjoy shit that you know CAN'T possibly be true or couldn't happen. Hell, who gives a shit. It's a movie...

I probably should have already gone to work but I am going in a few minutes late today. Actually more like an hour and a half. The two manager trainees are just going to have to deal with it for a while. One of them was at my Tallapoosa store yesterday, which is about seventeen miles from my house. She didn't pull them enough food so the store was calling me at 11PM last night out of stuff. I ended up getting it to them but was not particularly happy about it...

This post is going to serve as my weekend open trackback post for July 25-27th. What's Open Trackback? Well, that's where you share your link to other people that might not have been to your site before. Share something witty, your best work, your wost work, or just slutty pictures of actresses. I don't care (up to a point). Ping or trackback this post and your link will show up here in the body of the post as well as on my main page for everyone to see. If you want to do something like that regularly then check out one of the trackback blogrolls from my blogrolls page or click the link on the graphic above for more information.

Image via Wikipedia

The gentlemen with the chain saws paid my humble abode a visit bright and early this morning. Not the massacre folks, mind you, but the tree guys.

See, we have several trees that have needed removal for a few years. There are still more to come in the next year but these six were the deadest and closest to the house therefore they had to go. There was one that was completely dead that stood between my house and the neighbors' and which was leaning dangerously toward their property. The last thing I need is for a tree to fall on their house. Homeowner's insurance won't pay for it so I would be out of pocket quite a bit more than I was just to have the trees cut down.

One of the ladies that have waited tables for me a couple of different times over the last two decades is married to a gentleman that co-owns a tree service, so I got a pretty good deal. Six trees and cleanup for $550. Not too darn bad. It helps to know people I guess and damned if I haven't met a few over the years. Some of them I'll even talk to...

Anyway, the guys showed up bright and early at 7AM this morning. The wife called me to let me know they had arrived and had already started. They were quick too! A few minutes later she called me and was very excited that they had the chipper going. I was sort of hoping that they might get to that late in the day as I have a couple of ex-employees I would love to have chipped up. Mainly the stupid bitch that didn't come to work last night causing me to get two and a half hours of sleep.

Apparently one of the trees crash landed on a yellow jacket nest in the top corner of my neighbor's yard. A very large nest judging by the concentration of thousands of Yellow Jackets flying around in our back yards. Once it gets dark I will go dump some gasoline in the nest if my neighbor doesn't get to it first.

I've gained quite a bit of clear space in the yard as well. I am excited. I need to clean up some of the underbrush and then will throw some more grass seed down. It has really brightened up the back yard but of course that has it's bad side. Too fucking hot right now. I will also have to keep a close eye on my goldfish pond (#1) since so much sun will undoubtedly create more algae. More food for the fish I suppose...

Hmmm...now there's an idea of what to do with employees. fish food...

I've got a couple of fish ponds in my backyard. I love having fish. I don't currently have any tanks inside the house but have been thinking about it. Rather than goldfish or any other freshwater fish I've been thinking about some of the saltwater fish like they sell at Reef Hot Spot. There really isn't anyplace around here to buy decent pets or supplies (don't forget I am in a pretty rural area) so I would get them online anyway.

Reef Hot Spot is a pretty cool Saltwater Fish Store. They sell supplies, aquariums, aquarium saltwater fish and some other pretty cool items needed to set up a decent saltwater environment.

Hey look, it's Nemo!

When we went to Epcot back at the beginning of June we made sure to go to the Nemo and Friends exhibit. The girls had a blast. They have a huge saltwater aquarium with Dolphins and Sharks as well as all kinds of other fish, including the Ocellaris like that one.

Since I would want to have a pretty cool environment for the fish I would most likely get some rocks and plants that belong as well as Live coral. They have a pretty cool selection of live coral too!

The pictures are OK but you really have to go over to the web site to see what they have.

They are based out of Los Angeles and have a store there as well as the one online so if you are near LA you can just go to the store. They offer gift certificates too if you need a gift for someone else that might love saltwater fish.

What is your Bills IQ?

This is a pretty cool site. I stopped by to check it out after someone sent me an email telling me about it so I figured I would share it. You can go over to Bills IQ and see if you are "financially fit" or not. Yeah, I know it's not quite that easy and there are a lot of different ways to look at how your finances are doing. I scored a B+ on their quiz myself. I am saving more than 10% of my wages for retirement, saving for my kid's college, know my credit score and generally try to pay off my highest interest debt first. The reason it's a B+ instead of an "A"? That's because like quite a few Americans I carry more than my share of debt and credit cards. I know it's not a good thing and my balances are higher than I would like them to be as well. The biggest thing that worries me of course is the fact that I don't have a big enough backup fund available should there be an emergency.

I will have most of the credit cards paid off this year and then start trying to save a bit extra. I could have already done it but we chose to spend a bit extra on vacations this year instead. Yeah, bad decisions but it's one of those things. Work hard, play hard.

If you don't know what your budgets are or what your credit score is, get your tail on over to Bills IQ and get some information. If you are familiar with your finances and know where your retirement is going then you still might want to check it out and see what your score is.