Saturday, September 01, 2007, 05:15
Gone Again
Our Internet access has been down again. In fact, it has been both up and down, but mostly down this week. When Randy checks at work, it shows that the connection is there, but that doesn't help when I can't get on the Internet or check e-mail because "the server cannot be found."
Thursday night, Randy and I headed into town about 9:30 p.m. so I could get Internet access to watch videos I needed to see for a newspaper story. I was at a meeting until 8:30. Then we ate supper. And then I spent a certain amount of time trying to access the URLs for the videos. Without success. It was midnight by the time we returned home.
The Internet access was still down Friday morning, and it did not come back up until midmorning. I was relieved because then I didn't have to go to my brother's house to try to send my newspaper stories by landline dial-up access. But our Internet access is still an "up and down" proposition, and it isn't very good for my nerves when I've got work that has to be submitted.
Snowflake
My little black kitty cat Snowflake is home again after her spay surgery. I don't mind saying I was a nervous wreck while she was gone. I took her in Tuesday afternoon and brought her home Thursday morning.
When I walked into the back room at the vet clinic Thursday morning, Snowflake's eyes lit up as if she were thinking "there's my mom!"
She spent the rest of Thursday resting, and by Thursday evening, she felt like eating a little bit. She is very carefully moving around. She has also been getting drinks of water from the faucet. She loves to get in the sink and then lick at the end of faucet. That's my cue to turn the water on in a thin stream or to let it drip. Sometimes she bats at the water with her paw.
I envy Snowflake, finding such pleasure in a simple thing like water dripping from the faucet.
Friday morning, she tried climbing up on my shoulders. She loves to lay across my shoulders and Randy's shoulders. I don't think she should do that until her sutures are healed up. It's going to be a matter of watching her to make sure she doesn't try to do too much right away.
On the other hand, after she tried climbing on my shoulders, she decided she wanted to get on top of the kitchen cabinets. I tried to stop her but was unsuccessful. She managed to jump to the top of the cabinet. I thought she would sleep up there for a while, and then when she wanted to get down, I could help her. Didn't work that way. She stayed on top of the cabinet for a few minutes, then, before I could stop her, she jumped down.
As of Friday evening, she seemed none the worse for the experience and has been eating snacks of dry kitty food and drinking from the faucet again.
I have to say, though -- Snowflake jumping up on the cabinets and jumping down wasn't very good for my nerves, either!
Mowing Again
All summer long, we ended up mowing the lawn about three times because it was so dry. We got a couple of inches of rain in the last couple of weeks. We mowed the lawn last Friday evening because it needed to be mowed. And now it needed to be mowed AGAIN this Friday. What a difference a little rain makes. The world just generally looks greener, too, and not so parched. But whether we are out of the drought pattern or not remains to be seen.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Thursday, August 30, 2007, 03:14
I'm Baaaa-aaack
I'm back on-line. Finally.
It all started Sunday evening when thunderstorms rolled through. Constant, flickering brilliant lightning for hours and hours. It started storming around 2 a.m. and it was all over, eventually, by 8 a.m.
Our electricity went off at 6:30 a.m. and came back on at 8:30 a.m.
After the electricity came back on, our Internet was down. Randy kept thinking it would come back on its own sometime during the day on Monday, but it did not.
So, while I was covering a meeting for the newspaper Monday night, he kept checking different things with the router and rebooting the router, but he couldn't get it to come back up.
Since we no longer have land-line telephone service, Tuesday morning, I had to head over to my brother's place with the lap-top computer, phone cord and the mouse to send my newspaper stories by dial-up.
All day Tuesday the Internet connection remained down. It finally came back up during the day on Wednesday. I hope it stays up and running. We shall see. If it does not, we may have to consider going to a satellite service.
Muskmelon and Watermelon
I'm so disappointed. All summer long my muskmelon and watermelon plants have been struggling and struggling. The plants started out fine. I got them going in peat pots last spring, and they were looking just marvelous. I set them out in the garden, and that's when the trouble began.
The biggest of the watermelon plants sat there for a long time, as if frozen. When it was in the pot, it grew so fast I could practically watch it grow. The other two smaller plants sat there doing nothing as well. The muskmelon plants seemed stunted too.
Finally the muskmelon started growing, and they were doing fairly well. I watered both the watermelon and the muskmelon frequently because it was so dry. Every time I dumped Kajun's water tub to scrub it out and give him fresh water, I would carry the five gallons or so that was left out to the garden to put on my watermelon and muskmelon.
The muskmelon plants finally started getting muskmelon fruit. The plants continued to look quite healthy.
The watermelon, unfortunately, just sat there. The biggest vine never grew beyond a certain point and got only a few small melons on it. The other three smaller plants never grew one inch beyond the size they were when I transferred them to the garden. Not one inch. About mid-summer, one of the plants abruptly withered and died. And the other two continued to sit there, doing absolutely nothing.
Then came the week of cloudy and rainy weather, and I didn't bother going out to water the muskmelon and watermelon. It was raining a bit, and they were getting some moisture.
When the clouds finally cleared away, I took Charlie for a walk around the hayfield one day and went back around by the watermelon and muskmelon to check on them.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
All of the vines were withered and dead.
You would think, after a week of cloudy and misty weather, they would be looking green and vibrant.
But they weren't. They were dead.
Tuesday evening, I discovered what had been the problem all along.
Bugs. Beetles of some kind. The few muskmelon and watermelon fruit out in the garden were black with the things.
And then I remembered one other year when Randy had problems with a pumpkin plant a few feet farther away in the pumpkin patch. Same thing. The pumpkin vine sat there doing nothing while the others were growing like gangbusters. Then one day while I was watering the pumpkins, I saw some tiny things crawling on the stunted pumpkin vine and figured that was the problem. That evening, Randy took the horse fly spray out to the garden and sprayed the stunted pumpkin plant.
A few days later, the pumpkin plant took off and really started to grow. It caught up with the others and turned out fine.
I wish I had thought about the stunted pumpkin plant earlier this summer when my watermelon and muskmelon were struggling on so valiantly. To tell you the truth, though, I thought they were just reacting to the severe drought and the fact that we have no subsoil moisture.
Wednesday evening, Randy took the fly spray out and sprayed the bugs on my watermelon and muskmelon. It's too late for them for this year, but maybe spraying the adult bugs will keep them from laying eggs in the soil. I hope so, anyway.
LeAnn R. Ralph