My Life is Totally Boring

Yes, my life is so boring I really don't think I have much to write here. It's like that old McDonald's commercial, "I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed..." In a way, one could say that's a good thing. No excitement means that things are going along smoothly and I suppose that's pretty much right. So why the rant? I really don't know. I look around and see so many people with such strong opinions about this or that; living totally exciting lives with accolades to prove it. And I'm just glad that the day went along without anything of note.

Okay, so I had to chase the 5 year old in the soccer field WOO HOO! How's that for excitement? That's right, Goggie thought it would be great fun to wrestle Bubba in the field while I was trying to watch Junior play soccer. That on its own merit doesn't sound too bad, right? Nice wholesome, little boy activity not involving video, TV, computers or who knows what. But then we are in this huge field, with plenty of room all around, miles and miles of space as far as the eye can see (I like to exaggerate but you get the picture right?). Okay, well do you think they go wrestle out in the open spaces available to them? No, of course not. They find the only other person around and decide to wrestle right next to her, almost on her lap. Then Goggie thinks it would be great fun to run. Not out in the open spaces, no, but around and around that same poor woman. Yuppers.

Then, the possessed child runs off, crosses the streets and runs across the soccer complex so I have to chase the little rascal (yes, my life is PG rated so the language has to censored). And then when I manage to catch him 1 mile later, I spank his little hind end. Talk about a screaming banshee. I've never heard one before so I really don't know what a banshee sounds like, but I'm sure it can't be as loud as a 5 year old that was caught by his exasperated Mama. Obviously, I missed Junior's soccer game. Yup, that's excitement!

How about coming home and realizing that it's 8:00, no one has eaten dinner, I need to defrost the meat, put a meal together from scratch and on the table no later than 9:00, so that my OCD 12 year old son can be in bed before 9:30 per his therapist's instructions, all while talking to my sister on the phone (I thought it would be fun to call her since I hadn't talked to her in a while)? That was a rat race but I got it done. TA DA!

Now tomorrow promises to be another boring day. Non-stop boringness from morning till night. Wonder what we'll have for dinner????

Like I was saying, my life is totally boring...

Looks like cocoons are dormant

So much for the swallowtail caterpillars. It looks like they went dormant and will not be emerging anytime soon. I guess it's something to which we can look forward next Spring. Yeah!

Great Painting

Little Googie just loves to do his paintings. Here is one of his latest paintings. When I asked him what the painting was he said that it was a little boy looking for Jesus. This is from the same little boy that thanked me the other day when I walked by him and stopped to kiss him on the head.

Praying Mantis

This spring, a friend of ours hatched some praying mantises from eggs and needed to find homes for some of them; therefore, we offered to "adopt" a bunch of them to place in our garden. We were hoping that they would eat the big ants that were taking up residence around the bean and tomato plants. Well, was I surprised to see this huge "grown up" praying mantis on our door the other day. I couldn't believe how big it was. Pretty cool, huh?

Swallowtail Caterpillar Update

Yes, it's true I'm the proud mother of boys! And as everyone knows, boys love bugs. Hence, my recent focus on bug photos. Here is a picture of the swallowtail butterfly coccon in Bubba's bug habitat.

Pictures of Swallowtail Caterpillars

Bubba, Hubby and I have found at least 8 swallowtail caterpillars in our garden! Just as I promised yesterday, I am uploading some photos. This is a photo of two of the swallowtail caterpillars that we found in our garden today. How exciting! We could even see them munching on the parsley. Bubba also has two in his habitat as you can see below.

Today was also our first day of school. Everything went really well. Bubba started the day with one hour of piano practice and then we all got together at 10:00 for a family Rosary and the official start of our school year. Googi was so excited to start Kindergarten and he spent some time after lessons were over looking over his school books. He particularly enjoyed his new math book and was so thrilled that he already knew most of the things in his book.

Gardening Is So Much Fun!

Yes, it's Labor Day, the un-official end to summer . My garden is still doing well; however, the tomatoes did not do as well as they did last year. Our yield was lower and now the plants that are left look like they might have late blight. I'll probably spray them with an organic fungicide from Gardens Alive. That fungicide helped me save a tomato plant earlier in the season that had early blight. Also, the peppers have been doing so well that I have been harvesting banana peppers, Hungarian peppers, jalapeno, Serrano and green-to-red peppers out the wazoo. We are still trying to figure out what to do with all those peppers. However, I did not have any luck with the cucumbers this year and the pumpkin plant only yielded one pumpkin.

This year I have the most amazing garlic ever. I planted them in the fall from bulbs I ordered from the Garlic Store and I am so impressed with the quality of the garlic I got from them that I just had to order some more for next year. This week we will eat the last of the potatoes from the garden :( No more yummy fresh potatoes until next summer.

It's too bad that the lettuce didn't do too well this year. No problem, next year will be better. Bubba was so excited to find four parsley worms in the curly parsley. He collected two of them and placed them in this "bug habitat." He already raised one swallowtail butterfly this year and last year he was able to raise two swallow tails and one monarch butterfly. The caterpillars really like the curly parley. We can't figure out why they prefer the curly parley over the Italian, flat-leaf parley. We have both of them planted next to each other and have never found a parsley worm caterpillar on the flat-leaf parsley. Of course this is fine with us since we eat the flat-leaf parsley. I'll post pictures of the caterpillars and the butterfly if I get a chance to do it.

Tomorrow will be our official first day of school. Let's pray that it will be a good one.