A birthday. :-D

Song of the day: “Penguins and Cats” by Katie Melua. That’s a first, I think. Though I often have Melua in my head, this is not one of the songs I gravitate towards. Peculiar.

Oh great, new song just popped up: “Cool Rider” by War…remember Gone in 60 seconds? The old timers (including Nick Cage and Angelina Jolie) have a moment of silence before they start on a night of stealing cars? The beats, the pings, the bass, and then that really dry voice…Nicholas shakes both fingers in the air and mumbles something along the lines of: “Let’s get to it”. A classic, in my opinion.

Yesterday: well, it was a busy one, I’ll tell ya; I’d overslept and due to that extra half hour I ran behind time all day…of course there is no such thing as too little time for anything, considering there is always another tomorrow (for as far as I know anyway, hah). Besides, I always remind myself that if you don’t take time, you’ll never have it, so…let’s just say that yesterday was a nicely busy day for everyone.

There was laundry, of course, the usual doggie melee in the morning, and cleaning out Tika’s (Eclecto parrot) cage of the pile of debris she had once again scattered on the bottom. Seriously, that bird can eyeball you. All the while we were busy, she would turn the eye on me as if she were saying: “What are you doing with my stash? Stop that, get away!” Hysterical, hah.

But anyway, the chore took only a few minutes, and by then it was time to head out into the yard…or in my case to the greenhouse. What with that minor miscalculation I mentioned the other day, I still needed to add half an inch to the plaster of the smaller walls of the greenhouse.
It didn’t take all that long, thankfully, just some quick slapping on, and then smoothening the mess out. Got it right too, so the error has been corrected and I could head down into the yard.

It was a day for planting (and always weeding, of course), during the course of the day we planted more than twenty pepper plants, six pumpkins, thirteen chamomile, seventeen basil, four parsley and three oregano plants. It took some doing, what with all the watering needing to be done between it, and the yanking out of weeds, but in the end it worked out nicely. We got it all in and the lot is looking grand.

While busy, we found our first tiny tomatoes on the bushes, by the way. One fleshy tomato, and one normal, a few more weeks and we’ll be able to eat our first home grown tomatoes, yay.
Considering that the fourth batch of Swiss Chard was ready for harvesting, we cut a basket full of the leaves for dinner.
The zucchinis are growing like mad too, and I, for one, am looking forward to those; I’m thinking ratatouille with all home grown veggies, hah.

Tenant walked all the way down in the afternoon, a solid 70 yards, and half way up, so that’s a definite thumbs up. She appears a little downcast at the moment, however, I tried to talk to her about it, but she says that the weight on her shoulders feels just a bit to heavy at the moment, but that she can’t really explain why she feels that way. We’ll have to wait and see if we can find something that’ll make her feel better again.

Ambah (cocker spaniel) is feeling poorly again. We’re afraid it’s about time to start thinking about having him put down, ‘cause the poor old feller is beginning really go on a downhill slide now. He stopped eating since the evening of the day before yesterday. Not good at his age, that’s a fact. I’m surprised he made it this long, really, considering he’s past twelve and has been blind and arthritis ridden for three years now. I had so hoped that he would just fall asleep some night and not wake up anymore, but apparently we’re going to have to go to the vet to help him along. I hate that.

On the positive side the new black Irish Setter (Sita 4) is adjusting nicely to life in the pack. She’s really attached to the younger sibs already, so that is definitely a good thing, and the pack…well, they don’t appear to notice the new addition. Hah.

The younger sibs are busy as heck with all the market stuff, so yeah, everyone is doing their bit…which reminds me; last night big brother and I came upon a slight hiccup in the edit, a scene he didn’t entire agree with, and strangely enough that got my hackles up. I don’t even know why, since I am not particularly attached to it, or anything. Heck, I barely remembered writing it; but it was late, and I guess I was starting to get a little prickly. I’ll have to see later today if I can do something like write the scene anew to both our satisfaction.

Mom made me new curtains for my bedroom, and they look rather splendid. A light green with a print of bamboo and leaves on it¾much better than the vague beige, I used to have.
Since it put up the new curtains, I also took the opportunity to clean up a little, and that was really necessary. That, and a rather late edit, did of course mean that I didn’t get to bed until after two in the morning, darn it, making me a little bleary eyed now.

This morning was spent making cheesecake for middle sister’s birthday, which is, yep, today.
Twenty-six years old…I think…drat, I’m terrible with dates, I’m from ’79, making me 31, she’s five years younger so that…yes, twenty-six, okay 26. Gotta remember to sing happy birthday when I push a plate of forest fruits and peach cheesecake in her hands. Hah.

Well, I’ve gotta get to work now, I’ve got leek to plant, a tenant to help up onto the porch (the sun on the terrace is a tad too much, I think, and we’ve got to fix grandpas tire. Considering we’ve got rocks to fetch later today, I’m on a schedule.