100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan
3. Rose of Sharon, Althea
4. Potentilla
5. Vinca
6. Grape Hyacinth
7. Tiger Lily
8. Lespedeza
9. Plantain
10. English Ivy
11. Boneset

12. Poison Ivy

Okay, I've never been good at identifying because I'm not someone who reacts to it. At least, so far I haven't reacted -- I've heard that you can build up intolerance over time. So when we were tromping around in that scrubby little section of our yard trying to fix the sprinkler, I kept thinking, "I'm pretty sure that's poison ivy, and I should probably do something about that." But I had to go look up whether the central leaflet of of the three has a long petiole, because I remembered that as one of the identifying characteristics.

So I'm pretty sure this is poison ivy:



And I should probably do something about it. I have friends who are highly allergic, and would cringe at the thought of our cats wandering around in this stuff and then rubbing against their legs.

Of course, you've gotta wonder what positive use poison ivy has. I've read that cows and goats eat poison ivy without issue, and that if you then consume the raw milk your sensitivity to the urushiol (that's the oil that causes the problems) will diminish. And I used Rhus tox as a homeopathic remedy when Thalia had chicken pox (it worked great, by the way).

Steve Brill mentions here that its roots provide erosion control, and it provides cover for small animals.

However, none of these things need to happen in my yard -- I'm not keeping cows or goats, I'm not making any homeopathic remedies (too lazy to do all that shaking), and small animals seem to have plenty of cover in the other weeds. So, theoretically, this plant will be killed now that it has been identified.

Tagged!

Ami tagged me for this meme a few days ago. The idea is to write one word answers. Sometimes I drifted into two words, but I made up for it by typing everything with one hand (a cat just fell asleep on my other arm). Sheesh, I used to do this one-handed business all the time when the kids were tiny, but I'm really out of the swing of it now. So much so that I'm skipping the part about tagging others, and just doing a cut-and-paste before I go bonkers.

By the way, since this was from Ami I considered using the same word for every answer -- that word being "wig" of course.

1. Where is your cell phone? purse
2. Your hair? unruly
3. Your mother? talkative
4. Your father? quiet
5. Your favorite food? cookies
6. Your dream last night? detailed
7. Your favorite drink? Water
8. Your dream/goal? big
9. What room are you in? family room
10. Your hobby? reading
11. Your fear? pain
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? here
13. Where were you last night? bed
14. Something you aren't? tall
15. Muffins? no
16. Wish list item? embroidery machine
17. Where did you grow up? Indiana
18. Last thing you did? drive
19. What are you wearing? clothes
20. Your TV? off
21. Your pets? asleep
22. Your friends? assorted
23. Your life? hectic
24. Your mood? overwhelmed
25. Missing someone? Yes
26. Vehicle? new
27. Something you're not wearing? glasses
28. Your favorite store? grocery
29. Your favorite color? blue
30. When was the last time you laughed? 6:45pm
31. Last time you cried? unknown
32. Your best friend? absent
33. One place that I go over and over? dance
34. One person who emails me regularly? Uncle Chelsea
35. Favorite place to eat? home

Gem City Feis 2009

Friday we headed over to the 5th annual Gem City Feis in Dayton, Ohio. It's about 6 hours away, which is far enough to watch both Narnia movies on a laptop in the backseat. And it rained the ENTIRE WAY.

But it's a pretty easy drive, given that the directions can be summed up as: "Head west on I70 until you get to Dayton, then find your hotel."

We once again stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Huber Heights, using a free night from the stay-2-get-one-free promo. The room wasn't quite as nice as last year, the pool was freezing cold, and the whirlpool was broken. Boo, hiss. I'm not sure whether we'll be back. We saw at least 3 other feis-going families there, so they did pull in some business from the feis.

It was about a 10 minutes drive up to the Airport Exposition Center on Saturday morning. The Exposition Center looks like this:


and has gobs of free parking.

We set up camp with our New Camp Chairs (we're getting so hardcore with the feising)



And the chairs came with handy medal-holders for the kids to store their medals in.


The feis a nicely laid out area for used dresses, and we tried on gobs since we are in the market.

I really, really liked this one, but it cut into her windpipe:



You can say all you want about Siopa Rince and Swarovski crystals, but I look at these sleeves and think Hamburglar:



Oh, oops, I forgot that I was going to try to stick to positive comments. We'll skip over the purple one that had skirt panels that were apparently made from those lead aprons they put over you at the dentist's before x-rays ("hey, you could curl this a few times to make up for skipping weight lifting this morning!").

This one was nice; we sent the photo to our teacher to see what she thinks:



Okay, anyway, what about the feis itself? It got off to a late start because of a large accident south of town that caught a lot of competitors in the traffic stoppage. Which was nice for those competitors, but we knew we'd all be paying for it at the other end of the day. The competitions kept moving at a fairly brisk pace -- many of Annabeth's were danced 3 at a time -- but we still didn't finish until AFTER the beginning of the Ohio State football game, which was shocking. Also, they didn't have little televisions in the lobby this year for the more football-oriented to watch (definitely an attraction last year).

The people were helpful and friendly. One of the kids commented afterwards that Irish Dance is interesting because the dancers all sit together chattering and wishing each other luck, and then get up and compete against each other. At least, that's the way it goes in the midwest. I imagine the tone of the competition varies by location.

In spite of missing a week and a half of classes, and hanging around the house sick, Thalia earned some 1st place medals, and placed in all of her dances. Annabeth placed in all dances except one, but 1st place still eluded her.

We stuck around this time to pick up our results. We got the actual, handwritten notes from the adjuticators. Here are Thalia's:



Okay, that last one is definitely "watch your ending" (that was on Trad. Set -- she did Job of Journeywork). And on the 3rd one down (which was Light Jig) I think it recommends to "raise ..." something or other, possibly something that starts with a T or a J or some other letter. The other 2 are total mysteries. Remind me to never volunteer to enter this stuff on computer -- I have new respect for the people who put this stuff together to email out to us, or put it on Feisworx. Also, the judges have a split second to jot some pithy remark down before going on to the next dancer, so I'm not complaining about that -- I'm just fascinated to see what this stuff actually looks like. You learn something new at every feis.

Also, since it bugs me that the results for the grades (beginners through prizewinners) weren't posted online last year, I thought it would be clever to photograph the results sheets and post them online. Except my camera batteries conked out after 3 pictures. Oops -- too many dress pictures, I guess. Here's what I got:





Overall, another great feis by this group. During the day I saw volunteers walking around analyzing what they could do better for next year -- pretty cool how they're trying to continuously improve. And we'll be back next year to see what's new!

General Busy-ness and Jumping Through Hoops

It's raining. It's supposed to rain all day. And it's supposed to rain tomorrow. But we got all of the outside stuff done that needed to be done this week. This included:

Fertilizing the lawn. We only fertilize in fall, because in spring it's growing like crazy anyway and in summer it's dormant. This time we used a product to kill weeds. Although I'm generally okay with weeds, I'm not okay with plants that turn into bullies -- and the lespedeza is a bully, folks. It's taking over the place.

Repairing the sprinkler system. This is the first house we've had with a sprinkler system. It is So Annoying -- there's always something going wrong with it. This time a line got broken while planting a tree (a spruce to eventually replace a white pine that's dying a rather dramatic death, as white pines tend to do). Several trips to Lowe's, and a trip to the irrigation place that turns the stupid system on and off each year (because legally you have to have the system turned on and the back pressure valve checked every single year whether you use the sprinklers or not). The irrigation place was very nice, and turned out to be a cheap place for do-it-yourself repairs. This scenario also involved several nights with lanterns and flashlights wallowing in mud. So those mud-caked pants I was wearing this week weren't a fashion statement. Also, Rick isn't planning to become a lawn-irrigation guy as a career move -- what dismal work.

Indoor adventures included:

Thalia's ear. After a terrible earache the pain subsided and yellow stuff came out of her ear, followed the next day by an ear full of dried snot. This seemed worth a visit to the doctor. They peered inside her ear, but didn't see a huge, gaping hole. They gave us a prescription for antibiotics ... we rarely use antibiotics, frankly. But, after much consideration and discussion, she's taking them. It hasn't exactly been a miracle healing. And last night her eyelid started swelling up. A stye? Who knows.

In the meantime, Annabeth was still sniffly. She made a concerted effort to eat and drink super-healthy things yesterday. Because of this and the easy accessibility in our house to Emergen-C, she now understands the concept of how a body rids itself of excess Vitamin C in the digestive tract. Ahem. And guess what -- the sniffles are totally gone, and she seems perkier than she's been in weeks. So, a startling, memorable experience with a happy ending.

Cat news:

Me: I think we should teach the cat some new tricks.
Thalia: How about if we teach her to do quadratic equations?
Me: I was thinking more along the lines of jumping through a hoop ....

So, Monday the hoop-jumping started. The training has been a little erratic, what with running to the doctor and all. So far she simply steps through the hoop and then pauses to receive her reward. Wow, that cat loves to eat. Anyway, video to follow when we either get her a little more air-born or else she starts solving quadratics while stepping through the hoop.

100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan
3. Rose of Sharon, Althea
4. Potentilla
5. Vinca
6. Grape Hyacinth
7. Tiger Lily
8. Lespedeza
9. Plantain
10. English Ivy

11. Boneset

A couple of weeks ago while I was mowing the lawn I was thinking that I needed to identify these plants that are growing around the edges of our yard



and sort of hanging into the lawn itself, at which point I run over them with the lawn mower because they're in the way.





Except I kept forgetting about it, so I never looked them up.

But today I discovered that Susun Weed has youtube videos. Who knew? I love Susun Weed. She knows so much about plants and nutrition and healing. So I noticed that this one had been uploaded recently and was about flu (very topical) so I clicked on it:



HEY! That looks like the plant in our backyard!

I grabbed Annabeth and announced that we were going to go do some science -- plant ID time!




Googled various websites for more pictures like these. And discussed the ways we identify a plant -- how are the leaves placed? the flowers? What is special about what we're seeing? Are we in the normal range of this plant?




Too bad ours are a bit past their prime for making a tincture. If they're back next year, we'll be harvesting some. I think we had a lot this year due to the cool, wet summer -- that part of the yard tends to stay damp. In the meantime, I finally get that the name "boneset" isn't about broken bones. I need to look up and learn more common names of this plant.

Weekend Road Trip

Friday we headed to Grandma and Grandpa's. We originally planned to leave very VERY early so we could go horseback riding, but the windy, damp weather squelched that plan. Plan B was to arrive a little later, go to Skiles Orchard and buy cider, then go bowling. But, alas, Skiles had lost their entire apple crop this year (although they had some apple butter -- we bought 2 cases). And Annabeth really didn't feel up to bowling -- extremely tired, and bad headache. So we spent a quiet evening watching My Fair Lady.

The next morning Annabeth was feeling perkier, which was good because the kids were headlining at the festival going on:



Note the lack of wigs -- they decided if they weren't required to wear the wigs they were going to leave them home. They put on a show that lasted about 20-30 minutes, with me talking in between some of the dances, dispensing the wisdom I've picked up from watching dozens of shows plus a little googling about some of the dances. Aunt Elaine, Uncle Mark and Aunt Cindy were also there.

Rick and I headed for Purdue Homecoming after that. The game started out great, with Purdue taking an early lead. After the 1st quarter things started to go downhill. I commented, "It could be worse -- we could be sitting here in the rain watching them lose." After which the temperature dropped and it started raining, But we stayed until the bitter end.

We headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's apartment, with a short break to help a girl with a flat tire -- her dad had bought her a used car the week before, and it didn't have a jack or a usable spare, plus the front passenger-side tire apparently was bad from the beginning (NOTE: if you buy a used car CHECK FOR A SPARE AND A JACK!). Arrived back at the apartment to discover that Thalia had spent the afternoon asleep on the couch. A quick supper, then we took Annabeth (now in good health and bouncing around) swimming, while Thalia stayed with Grandma and Grandpa and was feverish.

Sunday? Home again, with Thalia still sick. Time will tell if we spread the germs throughout Grandma and Grandpa's community.

R is for Rest

After a tough night of

Jumping in and out of the window,
Playing with the cord of the window blinds,
Running over the beds (and everyone in them),
Chasing the other cat, and
Sniffing everyone's faces to see if maybe they're awake even though it's only 4:30 a.m.

You just need some REST!



Thank goodness the bed is empty now so she can get a good nap.

And, could you get that camera out of here? It's keeping her awake.