Sunday, May 11, 2014

May 11, 2014

Well, this time a whole month has not gone by in between entries here.  I would like to keep that up but know that is unlikely!

On May 4th (May the 4th Be With You) I really had to do something Star Wars!  I had the opportunity to do an event in Orland Hills, so that was nicely close to home.  One of my fellow Rebels and an employee of the Walmart in Orland set up a fundraiser in conjunction with Walmart's overall fundraising effort for Children's Miracle Network.






I loaded up Artoo and we joined several other members in the front of the store taking photos with customers for a donation.


We had a great response and filled up our donation jar quickly.  The donation jar had to be emptied and we filled it again.  At the end of the day we had collected nearly $600.00 in donations!  Not too shabby for a bunch of geeks.....lol.




I have also been doing a LOT of work at my restoration site.  I worked there on Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday night and yesterday.  This time of year is really a "beat the clock" sort of thing.  Getting garlic mustard sprayed before it sets seed is a huge job.  While out spraying garlic mustard, I have also been spraying seedlings of honeysuckle and buckthorn and tons of other invasive species as one tries to get them while the plants are still small.  We had some warm weather this week so plants are really taking off fast after a sleepy spring.  I still have not gotten out for my first butterfly monitoring route of this season yet.  Like last year it has been to cold, too windy, or too overcast most days.

With the warm weather and rain this week (the garage flooded again on Friday) the garden is also taking off and so are the weeds!  Earlier this past week I had finally decided that it was time for the Korean boxwoods to go.  I planted them about 15 years ago fully expecting that they would have died long ago as they are not winter hardy.



They were extremely cheap, so I didn't really care if they lasted.  They got so big that for the past years I have had to trim and shape them.  They made it through some very tough winters but this years polar vortex was too much for them.  I am sure that they would have recovered, but they looked terrible and that was a good enough reason for me to finally cut them down.  I took the chainsaw to them and then ran them through the chipper to use as mulch.


The vegetable garden is doing better this year than last year.  I had terrible germination of both beets and carrots last year.  This year the seeds are up...a little too up as a lot of thinning will be necessary.  The snap and snow peas are also up as well as lettuce.  My tomato and pepper plants are not doing well though and neither is the cucumber seed I started.  Sometimes I just wonder.

Today for a change I am staying home and getting some housecleaning and work done around the house.  I did pack a nice, large box of clothing and other things for the Morning Star Mission re-sale shop and finally delivered that this past week.  I may go out to Lowe's today to pick up a few (stress few) annuals and possibly some vegetable plants to make up for what mine are definitely lacking!





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