Friday, June 26, 2009

and my garden still grows

mealy bugs!!! oh my gosh, i was inspecting my 4 foot tall tomato plants and found some dead leaves, so i was cleaning them and thought there was a mold type fungus on them and when i went to wipe it off with my wet towel, it moved!!!! i never saw mold move before!! white and fuzzy and it had legs. they are eating my tomato plants. so before i panicked i looked them up on line to see what the heck they were first, then what to do about them, apparently i do not have any parasitic wasps out there or they would be eating them, so Wes found this "organic" mix online, 1 tablespoon dish soap, 1 cup vegetable oil- mix together, then take 1 to 2 teaspoons of this mixture and put it in a spray bottle with one cup water. so i went to the dollar store for a spray bottle and sprayed the whole bottle on my garden. i am going to be gone for the weekend and i don't want my garden to be gone when i come back. i picked like 4 or 5 of those guys off my plants, yuck, then i showered.

oh and my sister made it back to the states, and she made it to new york in record time to see her daughter graduate high school.

i have spent the day dealing with a broken washer, with a load of laundry in the water, then washing the van out inside and out for our trip tomorrow. then we made Paula Deens sugar cookies with icing on them for the road, if my kids want something sweet it is best if i make it, it may have sugar, but it will be a heck of a lot better then the crap they pawn off in the truck stops. plus Paula Deen makes really good sugar cookies, her first ingredient is butter.mmm
then i marinated these beef short ribs and cooked them for about 4 hours, yummy. then i just finished counting out 1521 newsletters, i need to distribute them across the region, usually by mail, but since we are headed out of town i will get about four hundred delivered this weekend to save the fellowship some postage. tomorrow there is going to be a luau in Topeka and they are having a live band and a Tye- dye workshop and speaker meetings and goodies and i just love NA activities. so we will be visiting lots and lots of people tomorrow, then on Sunday we will be going to his family reunion, his fathers people. people neither of us know, talk about stepping out of your comfort zone, have you ever seen the wedding crashers? well we could very well be them since know one will know who we are, just the dead relatives Wes is related to. hey i told him i wanted to meet his family, i just thought he might know them before i did. i picked up some cheap sunglasses oh and borders has an online coupon for a free 12 ounce beverage from Seattle's best coffee, good until the 2nd of July so get 'em quick. i will let you know if the spray works, Wes was digging a little deeper and said another sight used methylated spirits, which is some kind of alcohol that you mix with chemicals so you cannot drink it. i think that if we did that it would cease being an organic garden. so if anyone knows if this stuff works please let me know. i am going to water my garden in the morning and then spray it down again, we will be back Sunday night and I don't want to come back to a dead garden, so i will give you an update. oh Wes wants to go to Missouri this weekend sometime, to get fireworks!! i swear men never grow up. he has boxes of firecrackers, and he never uses them all up and he is like a little kid when the 4th comes around I swear it is just the silliest thing, but i bet he thinks that of me when it comes to X-mas and the other holidays that i go all gaga over. so we may end up in Missouri instead of the luau, more will be revealed. gratitude list 5 things;
1. today i am so grateful my sister made it across the border safely.
2. today i am so grateful that i am learning to communicate.
3. today i am so grateful i have not acted out on a character defect all week. i may have vented online and in meetings and to my sponsor but that is what i am supposed to do.
4. today i am grateful for those two gorgeous smiles that wake me up in the morning. precious moments i swear sometimes my life is a hallmark card!!
5. today i am grateful for my health, i am healthy i know this because i had labwork done and i am not going to need insulin this year. this is good.
there are so many things to be grateful for and i easily forget what those blessings are. it is so important for my recovery to write these things down and read them outloud. this addict has a tendancy to forget the really important things in life. todays thought; "Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more."- Brother David Steindl-Rast

4 comments:

Gin said...

I'm sure your tomatoes will be looking better by the time you get back. MMMM, your post made me hungry. Tomatoes, short ribs, sugar cookies...I've got to go eat breakfast. Have a wonderful trip!

Dr.John said...

I hope your mixture keeps the bugs away. We are having problems with bugs on our rose bushes.
It is hard to go to a family reunion where nobody knows your family. Good luck.
Glad your sister made it back.
I always feel good when I read your grateful list.

Syd said...

I remember mealy bugs from Virginia. Hope that the garden will do well. I've had to use sprays here. There are just too many bugs and the climate is too humid to not do so. I minimize as much as possible. Enjoy your trip.

Lou said...

I'm glad to hear about your sister. And by now you are back home safely too.

I read your last post, about your daughter, I don't know how I missed that. But, this week end I watched "The Wrestler" and it reminded me of that. He wanted to make amends to his daughter, he wanted her to love him. But he kept doing the same things to her over and over. It's sad, but I think you might like the movie.

I hope those tomatoes make it, I know you have your heart set on it;)