Just a couple things I need to get off my chest

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Donalyn

You can’t keep stuff like this inside, or eventually it will make your head explode and who is going to clean that up?

Dear Yoplait:
Whilst out shopping the other day, I needed a snack. Since it was a somewhat stressful day, I was feeling the need to self-medicate with a little chocolate. At the same time, I am working on losing a bit of weight, so I was looking for that perfect mix of chocolate and not flinging myself headlong into a vat of something with a lot of calories. That is when I saw this, on the shelf in the dairy section:
Fat Free Boston Cream Pie Yogurt! I love yogurt! I love Boston Cream Pie! This will be perfect! I realize this is not a particularly great photo, but you can clearly see the picture on the container right? It is a picture of an actual Boston Cream Pie, right? And just in case, you are not familiar with BCP – here is a pic of one I grabbed from Google. I don’t have time to make a BCP and take a photo of it myself so this one is from the internet:You’ve got your cake part, and you’ve got your custard part and you’ve got your………CHOCOLATE part. BCP is always, always made up of these 3 parts. They are like the trinity of BCP and never shall one be separated from the others. I have been to Boston several times, so I know these things.

You can, I am certain, imagine my dismay upon retiring to my van and opening my yogurt container, to find there is NO f-r-e-a-k-i-ng chocolate in there at all!

I am sure this is some kind of oversight on the part of some foolish underling and as soon as you read about it here on my blog, you will fall all over yourselves getting some chocolate in there. Otherwise you need to change the name to something like “pretty good tasting custardy type stuff that could be the filling for BCP”. Because you are very likely dealing with women a lot of the time, and you should know how we are about chocolate. If there is a picture of chocolate on the outside of the container, there had better be some chocolate inside the container!

For the sake of all involved, it was an incredible stroke of luck that I must have brushed my cart up against a shelf or something, because a package of these was somehow mixed in with my other purchases: They are the perfect shape to scoop up fat free yogurt and stood in quite nicely for the missing chocolate. Next time you may not be so lucky and I urge you to take steps to correct this problem sooner rather than later.
Yours Truly, dlyn

Dear Major Shipping Company with Yellow and Red Trucks:
For the I-don’t-know-how-many-eth time, you have once again managed to deliver my package to the wrong address. I know that the address where you delivered my package does have the same digits as my address, but I would like to call your attention to the fact that they are not in the same order as the digits in my house number, which makes it a different number, and thus a different address entirely. Which means I don’t live there. Which means my packages should not be delivered there.

I must give you credit for at least actually finding my road this time, beating your old record by close to a mile. You are making progress of a sort, indicating that you are working, at least in part, toward actually getting my packages to me, instead of to assorted other people who happen to live within [literally] a country mile of me. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that your competitors in the big brown trucks, as well as the guys in the white and red trucks regularly find my house with virtually no problem. Maybe next time, you could get one of them to show you where I live.
Sincerely, dlyn

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Sunday Prayers

Posted on February 3, 2008 by Donalyn

C.S. Lewis wrote some great books. A lot of people know him best because he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. But he also wrote a lot of books geared more toward adults – very clear and logical arguments that deal with the truth of Biblical Christianity. Here is one of my favorite quotes from “Mere Christianity“:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Posted in Sunday | 15 Comments

I love Daylilies, part 3

Posted on February 2, 2008 by Donalyn

I’m crazy about daylilies. I have a ridiculous number of them already and I have a sick compulsion to get more every year. Fortunately for me, there are thousands and thousands of cultivars out there. And we have two acres. Think of all the gas we will save on mowing! Anyway – the first 2 parts of my series on daylilies are here and here.

One of the most amazing things about the daylilies that we have today is that they all came from just a couple of kinds of plants way back when. There are maybe 20 original species [most of them not native to North America] that can be classified as daylilies. I only own one of them – hemerocallis fulva. Around here, people call them ditch lilies because they grow in huge drifts along the road. These ones are along our creek.

There are lots of pictures of some other originals if you are interested, but you will have to Google the names to find the pics – I can’t put them here, because they aren’t my photos. Google images for these names: hemerocallis thunbergii, hemerocallis citrina, hemerocallis fulva kwanso, and you’ll find examples of them. Go ahead – we’ll wait for you to come back.

Those orginals all look very similar in a lot of ways and there are only a few colors – yellows, oranges and sort of dark orange or rust. One of my favorites actually resembles those quite a lot. It is called Sammy Russell, and it’s pretty old, having been bred back in 1951. The form is very simple with colors not far from the originals. It makes huge clumps and has tons of blooms.

But look at this one! This is South Seas, bred in 1961 – quite a difference. I’ve only had this one a year, so I don’t know much about it yet, but I love the color.

Go forward about another 10 years and we have Ruffled Apricot, hybridized in 1972. This is a pretty popular daylily – I got it free as a bonus in an order last year. A lot of daylily sellers give bonuses on their orders. It’s just one reason I love them and want to throw parades in their honor.

Chicago Apache was hybridized in 1981. Another very popular plant. This one is blooming despite my benign neglect and the fact that I was an idiot when I bought it and planted it in a spot that is too shady for it. I am not certain, but it may have even been the very first one I bought. Remember before when I told you that they need to be lifted and split every 5 to 7 years? This one has been here, in a too shady spot for at least 10 years, and still blooms every summer. I promised it that I would move it this year.

Forward about another 10 years and Moonlit Masquerade was hydridized in 1992. This has won awards for being the most popular daylily so often that it may qualify as the most popular daylily ever for all I know. Now that I have it, I am not as crazy about it as I thought I would be. It does make a nice big clump and blooms fairly early, compared to most of the ones I have. [I am sure you have heard the latest groundbreaking research, telling us dandelions and nut grass are excellent companion plants for daylilies, right?]

I thought I had at least one plant that was hybridized this decade, but right now I can’t for the life of me remember which one it is. It may be one of the ones I bought last summer, in which case I would not have any pictures of it yet. I don’t have many from the last 8 or 10 years though because new introductions cost about a ba-jillion dollars. Seriously – go Google “daylily breeders” and go to some of their sites. Look on their sites for “new introductions”. Then sob uncontrollably as you decide whether to buy a new daylily or make your mortgage payment this month.

If you are looking for places to buy some daylilies yourself, I can help you out. Ebay is a great place to get them – probably half the ones I have are from sellers there. Just be really careful to check their feedback. And when I write about daylilies, there is usually a listing of daylily retailers in my ads over there —–>. I can’t tell you to go click on those ads, but I have bought from most of the places advertised and I can tell you they are good places to buy. And shop local people – keep a few bucks in your local economy and pick the brains of people who are growing what they sell.

Posted in garden | 10 Comments

Looking for a little green

Posted on February 1, 2008 by Donalyn

A little sign of hope. A reason to go on. Support for the belief that at some point in the not-too-distant future, winter will go and spring will get here. A bit premature I will allow. Especially here in upstate NY. Today is the first of February and we have weeks of wintry weather still to come.

For me though, once January has bowed out, I consider winter to be on the run. So, I went out this past week, to see if I could find anything to indicate that the snow will melt, the daylilies and hostas will begin to rise and I will have to start weeding. Hostas and daylilies, being very sensible, are still firmly tucked underground. But I did find a few other green things in my short walk around the yard.

Moss. This stays green no matter what I think. There are mosses in glaciers and above the tree line in Siberia probably, so it being in my yard in January is not really that big a deal. It’s green though, so here it is.

Holly stays green all winter. This is part of a line of lady holly plants we put in 4 or 5 years ago. They have lived a barren and lonely existence up till now. See – all green with no bright red berries? They have been spinsters, with no male holly bush to flirt with. I finally got them a boyfriend last fall, so they should be much happier now. They are right in front of the house though, so I hope the neighbors don’t talk.

There is a lot of green, here along the steps to the back yard.

We have lots of vinca because it grows well on banks and eventually chokes out weeds.

But wait – what is that?

An amazing, brave little vinca flower! It looks sunny I know, but it was all of 12 degrees when I took these pictures. Vinca are early bloomers but this is ambitious, even for them.

These lilac leaf buds are a little more shy though – it will be quite awhile until we see what is in there.

And this morning, the whole shootin match is buried in snow and ice again. Still – it is the 1st of February…

Posted in garden, photos, winter | 22 Comments

Thanks Flea!

Posted on January 31, 2008 by Donalyn

I got my first award – see, it’s right over there ——>
[you might have to scroll down a bit]
Now I get to pass it along – more on that in the next day or two. :)

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Thanks Flea!