This past weekend, Phil and I went up to his parent’s lake house to fish. While we were there, I noticed this little Anole chilling on the porch and took a picture of him. Being spring and all, I’m surprised he was brown instead of green.

He wouldn’t let me get too close to him, so I credit my camera with the nice crisp clean shot that I got. I swear he was posing for me. He kept turning his head in different directions, as if he were saying, “This is my better side.” After his photo session was done, he crawled in between the screen and the wood.

Well, that didn’t take quite as long as I expected.  My little blog now has a permanent rent free home! That is, if you don’t count the 10 dollars it costs a year to keep my domain.

So now I can start blogging more regularly again. Horrah!  I know you’ve all just been heart broken that you haven’t been able to read about my exciting life.  If you click on the photo link at the top, you’ll notice that there aren’t any pictures to see right now.  I decided I didn’t like the way I had them organized.  I’m going to go through all of them and pick the best ones out and then put them back on.    Phil is also going to be working on the look of my blog again soon. It looks alright now, but there is always room for improvement.  So, sit tight, I’ll try to get some of postcards or something up to keep you entertained.

This is what happens when you throw left over, supposedly dead seeds into a pot and have no intention of them becoming anything.

When they first sprouted, we thought they were all cucumbers, so we we let them climb up a tomato cage. Big mistake. Turns out, a lot of our supposed cucumbers are actually cantaloupe. Now we have to support the cantaloupes hanging in the sky by pantyhose. Yes, pantyhose. At least, that is what the internet suggested for people who don’t have a lot of space in their garden. You can’t really see it in this photo, unless you look really, really hard, but there is a cantaloupe hanging 3/4ths of the way up(center). It is a slightly less green. I really hope this pantyhose idea works.

I was invited to my school to judge an English competition on my birthday. At the end several students and teachers sang songs. They asked me to sing, too. I don’t know any songs by heart, especially with out the music, so I sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Laugh if you will, I was just having some fun.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdTdQCchyIk[/youtube]

Here’s an update on the garden, if you’re into that sort of thing. I had thought that it hadn’t grown that much in a week, but when I looked back at the old picture – I could see the growth.

Grow Garden Grow!

I was a little too happy to find this tomato.

This little cucumber must have been growing for days, but I didn’t see him because he was hiding under a leaf. He’s about two or so inches long.

My blackberry bushes have flowered and are now starting to produce berries. They are all green berries at the moment, but they’ll turn red and then black soon. I can’t wait. I love blackberries.

My little kitty, Morgan, is always hungry.  She climbs the screen on the door when she’s starving.

Another self portrait. I think I look better in black and white.

I thought I would go ahead and put up some of the pictures of the garden that Phil helped me put together. Well, help is an understatement. He practically broke his back getting the soil prepared for my baby plants. Gardening is hard work, that’s for sure. It took us the better part of two days to get the garden up and running.

Phil keeps reminding me that this whole garden idea was supposed to be a few plants on his patio, not a freaking farm. My response to him is that he shouldn’t have encouraged me as I held three greenhouses capable of holding 216 seeds(and then some) in Lowe’s one Saturday afternoon. 🙂 Everything I do, starts small and then grows into something completely uncontrollable. I know this, and so should he. It’s all a part of being Gabe and in some cases, knowing Gabe.

Phil dug and that entire plot of land and then decided that a tiller would be a good idea. We rented ours from Home Depot for four hours and it ended up costing something like $40.00. Not too bad really. And had the tiller died, I would have only had to pay $3.00. Also, not too bad.

I don’t work him hard to kill him. I work him hard to make him strong! You should have seen him working that tiller. It shook him like he was a rag doll. His muscles hurt for a week.

Ah, everything is planted. Well, the plants that would fit that is. When I took this picture, there were probably another 100 plants sitting behind me. Yes, 100.

A few weeks later . . . I was afraid that my plants might not do very well in the clay, but I think they’ve done okay. I’m sure next years crop will do even better.

This is where some of the extra plants went, but I still have some more, about another 30 or so. If you live near me and you want some tomato plants, contact me and they are all yours.

Morgan Rose Ireland Yvette DeWitter. I love my kitty! She won’t eat dry food anymore. I’ve now got to shell out the money for gourmet wet food. She’s 15 years old, she deserves it.

This is Dopple, one of Morgan’s boyfriends. She has two more that visit her pretty regularly. Dopple is an enormously fat cat that reminds me of Garfield. He’s very adorable and loves to get his belly rubbed. I just hate that he constantly tries to steal Morgan’s food.

Me. I think I look a lot like my father in this picture.

Just in case you wanted to know, there is a new pano listed in the photo section.  Click on the photo tab at the top of this page, then panoramas, and in the list of panos, you will see Goodale Park.  Enjoy.

Postcrossing is making me obsessive-compulsive about my mailbox. Seriously.

When I first looked at this, I was like, “Did someone just send me a picture of naked people?” Then I looked at it a little closer and figured out it was Adam and Eve and that they had just watched their underpants. I found it pretty funny. I’m confused why Adam is wearing shoes though. I didn’t think they had that type of attire in the Garden of Eden.

The kitty Keller is speaking of was temporarily possessed this past Saturday. She was panting like a dog and looked very, very evil. I knew something was very wrong when she let me pour several water cans over her and she didn’t move. She seems to be better now, but she would have been a perfect fit for the resurrected cat in in Pet Sematary.

This is one of the most unusual cards I’ve received thus far. I had no idea this was a Salvador Dali painting. I’m telling you, I learn something everyday.

My mother and I both got a card from Germany on the same day. I noticed that both senders wrote their 1’s exactly the same. I’ve never seen anyone write a 1 like that before. It looks like an upside down V. I wonder if all Germans write their 1’s like that.

New Zealand. Phil really wants to visit this country. Neil and Kaliah, two people who taught with me in Fuyang lived in New Zealand for a spell. They showed me pictures of the view from their house. Man, was it beautiful. It didn’t seem real.

I found it odd that the stamps weren’t canceled out like ours. Does this mean I can take the stamp off and put it on another postcard if I happen to be in New Zealand? If you are from New Zealand, and you are reading this, please comment.

Yesterday, I wore a skirt to work. It’s not something I do very often. To give you an idea of how often I get all girly, yesterday was the second time since February 13th that I’ve worn something other than pants. So, you can imagine the surprise my boss had when she saw me in one for the first time. (She had been out the last time I wore one). She came into my office to say good morning, but before she could even say that, her eyes got all big, and she said, “You are wearing a skirt?! You mean you have legs?!”

It’s probably silly to you, but it made me laugh.

I had a similar thing happen to me when I walked into my school’s office(WECL) one day wearing a purple dress. The entire staff said, “Wwwoooowwww”, like I had just had a head to two make-over or something. They had never seen my white little legs before either.

Also, yesterday, my mother was nice and gave the three Dennis the Menaces living next door to us each a bag of M&M’s. She did this because they are constantly coming over and asking if we have any snacks or candy. The kids are sweet, they just don’t have any manners. And they most certainly do not understand personal space. We can’t even pull up in our driveway some days without having them swarm our car like vultures. Some days we take bets on whether or not they are going to run over to us when we get home. My brother has started smoking out back so as to avoid them, but because we don’t have a high fence, they can see him back there, too. When they catch a glimpse of him, they hang on the fence and ask him what he is doing or what my cat, Morgan Rose Ireland Yvette DeWitter is doing. They don’t call her that of course. They call her Black Cat.

“Hello, Black Cat! Can we pet your Black Cat? Is your Black Cat mean? Will Black Cat bite us? Is your Black Cat tired? Why is your Black Cat laying down?” The questions never end.

Well, I told my mother that by giving them candy that she was just encouraging them and that it would probably just make them worse. She said she wouldn’t do it very often, but I told her the damage was already done. When we got back from the store a little while later, all three of them came running over to our car.

“Do you have any more M&M’s?”

I looked over at my mother. “I told you so.”

“No, I don’t have any more M&M’s. Sorry,” my mom replied.

My mom and I got out of the car and started walking to our front door. The three of them followed behind us like lost, lonely puppies.

What I heard next both shocked me and made me laugh.

“I wish I was your son,” the little boy said. Like I said, I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I laughed. I laughed very loud.

I don’t know who he was talking, me or my mother. I’m guessing my mother, since she was the one to give them the M&M’s in the first place.

“Well, that is very sweet of you,” my mother said.

The two girls then chimed in. “I wish I was your daughter!”

Whether or not they meant it, I don’t know. Perhaps they were trying to pull at my mother’s heart strings in hopes that they would get more candy. When they say that they weren’t getting any, and that we were going inside for the evening, they decided to run back to their house.

Phil and I wondered off into the middle of nowhere and found ourselves at Goodale State Park. We thought we were going somewhere new, but as soon as we entered the gates, we discovered we had been there several years ago. It’s a pretty place and it’s free, so we weren’t too terribly upset.

We walked down to the water to get some pictures of the really unique trees, when we noticed that the grass was moving. At first, I thought what I was seeing was lots of insects jumping around, but then I figured it out. The grass was alive with hundreds of little, itty, bitty, baby frogs. We actually had to stand in one place, for we were afraid that one step would smush four or five of the little critters.

I bent down and picked one up, and had Phil take a few pictures. It was quite difficult. The little frog kept wanting to jump off my hand or up my arm. I don’t blame him, though. He probably thought I was trying to eat him.

He finally sat still long enough for Phil to get a half decent photo, but it took a number of tries. Thank goodness I have a digital camera, or I would have wasted a roll of film.

“Oh, please, don’t squish me, ” the little frog said.

You are just going to have to forgive me. I’m a tomboy and I like to play in the dirt. Focus on the frog, and forget the dirt under my nails.