Here's the dirt.

So, in the last two days I've put 960 pounds of dirt in my back yard. This is per the structural engineer who checked out my house a couple of times (before and after the foundation was fixed).

There's something about working with dirt that is just great. I don't know what it is, but I really enjoy it.

I also have put down mulch. A lot of mulch. I think I like working with the mulch even more. There's something about the warm mulch in my bare hands that is just earthy and lovely.

Hurray for dirt and mulch!

Oh yeah, it's helping my foundation too!

April Showers bring April Flowers - Peony

Well, even though I lost almost half of my buds off my only flowering peony bush/plant, the ones that survived are blooming!

Because of the placement of my other two peonies, they won't be blooming anytime soon because they need to be moved ... at least one of them needs to be moved anyway. I have some work ahead of me.

I have lots of plants to move because my swail is going to be redone and there are still lots of plants in there. Also, there are plants in other places when the dirt out of the swail was moved.

Maybe I'll have some time this weekend to work on my yard!

April 17, 2008 Fort Worth Hail Storm aftermath part 2

I think it may be hard to see on the second picture, but you can see how the hail was so hard and icky that it made holes plumb through the leaves of my magnolia tree. The first picture actually has some good holes that you can see very easily.

The last one is a close up of the almost perfect circle hole in a fallen leaf.

I'll have to take a picture of my fence so you can see how pounding the hail was.

Dallas Stars

Hurray for the Stars! They beat the Duck! Even though the Duck were the Stanley Cup Champions from last year, they are one and done this year.

I look forward to more good hockey from the Stars coming up.

Congrats Stars!

Expelled

This is the newest movie/documentary that I want to see. The trailer is pretty funny (Ben Stein in school boy shorts), but the movie is a documentary about how certain thoughts/beliefs (i.e. Intelligent Design) are not allowed on college campuses and how faculty have been fired/expelled for teaching such things. I'm looking forward to seeing this!

The web site for it is http://www.expelledthemovie.com and explains much better than I what the movie is about.

Fort Worth Hail Storm - not so bad

Alright - so afterwards the damage wasn't too bad. The roof looks okay from what I can tell.

I took a few pictures of plants and leaves from my backyard. You can see how the Magnolia leaves (which are pretty tough, btw) got pummeled. My dill and fennel plants got hit a bit too. I didn't take pictures of my banana plants because they are just too sad - I think they'll be fine, but they just look really sad right now.

Fort Worth Hail Storm

Tonight we had a lovely little storm come through. I took Andie to the park an hour and a half earlier and the storm clouds coming in signaled that we should get on home.

The storm didn't hit until later (about 7:50 or so where I live) and it was nasty.

The first picture was taken from my front porch. It shows my neighbor's side yard and you can see the hail on her driveway.

Thank goodness that the hail wasn't bigger because it would have done major damage (wondering if this stuff killed my banana plants that were only 2 inches high or so) like holes in roofs and such.

When the hail was coming down it was very scary. I was in the bathroom with Andie (in the tub) and we had the TV going and the radar going on the laptop. I shut all the doors I could in the house in case it was grapefruit size like they reported west of here. It sounded large and scary, but it was only about nickel to quarter size.

The second picture is of the swail on the side of my house. The hail itself is not as deep as my swail (about 6-8 inches). What that is, is the largest cup of ice water ever. I'm not sure how that worked, but there you have it. I stuck my hand down in it and it was just like ice water except dirtier.

The third picture is of the hail up close. I grabbed some right after the pounding on my roof stopped and I put it in the freezer. I put the quarter next to it for reference. That make the hail look a bit bigger than quarter size!

Loveliness.

Glad that's over and I'm praying that there's no damage on the roof!


They said that there was a tornado that touched down not far west of here. Oh yeah, you know it's bad when the sky turns green. It's the third time I saw the sky turn green since I've lived here. The first time was the huge hail storm on May 5, 1995. The second was the tornado that hit downtown Fort Worth. This was my third. It never turns out good when the sky is green.

Obama, McCain, or Clinton?

You don't have to choose. You can have all three! Check out http://www.folduscandidate.com/
for the instructions and pdfs of each candidate so you can have them be your very own finger puppets. Check it out!

Oh yeah, each candidate has a little saying on their back, also. If Obama's said, "Hope-y, Hope-y, Change, Change," like Gordo claims Obama says all the time (on the Ticket), I'd be laughing for sure and making it!

This was found on one of my favorite blogs - How About Orange by Jessica Jones (she and her blog rocks, btw).

More on Tornadoes

Some more tornadoes in our area. Not as close as the last time, but still ... too close for comfort. I found a web site of live streaming tornado chasers after the guy who does this called into one of the TV news shows that is only talking about the bad weather. [As a side note, it was funny watching the national Weather Channel vs. the local ... the Weather Channel kept saying that people needed to get into their basements ... like we're living in the midwest ... not very many have basements around here ... I don't know anyone, in fact.]

The live tracking can be found at http://www.tornadovideos.net/index.cfm/do/s.LiveTracker and their main site is http://www.tornadovideos.net/.

They have cool videos, live tracking, good pictures, and even offer tours/storm chasing (thought of you, Sandy!).

TAKS is tomorrow

The second of the two big ones for 8th graders is tomorrow!

Go to bed early.

Eat a decent breakfast.

Have a snack and drink.

Take your time!

ReadyMade Magazine - Digital Edition

I'm a fan of ReadyMade Magazine. This month they started publishing their first online (green) edition and it's free (this month)! Find it here: http://www.readymade.com/digitaledition.

If you haven't checked it out yet, or ever, give it a try. It always has some cool ideas in it.

Tornado

Well, I guess tornado season has officially started. This is a photo of the tornado that was a couple of miles from where I work yesterday. We had to duck and cover for about 20 minutes and when the "all clear" was announced I went straight to our little courtyard area. From what I could see it was blue skies and sunny. So strange! Later on, when I went outside and could see a wider area of sky, you could still see dark clouds not too far off, but still sunny, blue skies right above.

I also found this article with amazing photos of tornadoes today in the Daily Mail. Here's just one example of their cool tornado photos:


(click the photo to see the article and more super deluxe cool photos)