Christ, January is almost over...Happy 2019

I had to work on December 31st, so last year's New Year's Eve was a non-event. The closest I got to a celebratory mood was saying to my staff "Happy New Year" as we all exited the building at 11:30PM. I worked so hard in January that when MLK Day rolled around, I didn't even recognize it as a day I got off work for a hot minute.

I bought rocks for painting and a new rosemary plant to replace the last one that I had for years. I'm going to plant that in the one medium planter/pot and the other with basil. Or maybe I'll move the onions into a pot this year. Last year's cherry tomato self-seeded and I currently have a hedge of chinka cherry tomatoes. It's spectacular. Best this plant has ever looked.

I decided this Spring is the time to go get my mortgage refi in order. I need to get the place all spiffy before the appraiser gets here. So I'm doing things like completing the LVP floor project for the two closets that I didn't do. FINALLY painting my bathroom. Throwing away the broken cheap ass mirror over the sofa and putting up a more stylish one I found at Target with a shelf. Have to paint the living room and the kitchen. All of this so I can get a chunk of the equity out of my home to get two windows, two patio sliders installed, maybe a new kitchen and bath remodels and pay off some bills. But because we've lived here since 1999, it's a cluttered mess. Not packrat, hoarder type piles, just little piles of stuff that need to go be donated, better organized if it's going to stay or put away.

The idea to get all this stuff done in a reasonable amount of time for this professed procrastinator is a simple one. I know I'll be financially in a better place and I'm using the following to keep me on track and motivated each day:

> Clean one thing;
> Fix one thing;
> Put away or organize one thing; and
> Donate one thing I don't need or want anymore.

Stephen's closet took 3 days for the floor during the week and yesterday, I went to Home Depot and bought the baseboard moulding. After I made my purchase, and with the molding in my hands on the way to the car. some random guy was laughing at me in the parking lot about getting that moulding home. Umm, yeah, 9 ft of moulding fits in my car with the back passenger seat down, thankyouverymuch. That's why I cut it that length. Jerk.

The fig tree that once seemed like a miracle when it popped up growing in my #1 raised planter box is now a nuisance. Between Winter, the rain and the wind, it looks like shit and from what I read it takes a year to get figs from it if the birds and rats don't get them first. At one point I saw two on there, but that was months ago and I didn't attend to the fruit to keep it for myself I mean atleast grow it because I can't eat seeds anymore. So really what's the point of keeping the fig tree, right? So I'm planning on cutting it down and/or digging it out.

W/e 03/20/16

My head is in a bunch of different places this Sunday morning.

I've received papers in the mail to execute in order to releave my obligation to the timeshare condo I bought and don't choose to maintain anymore. That's good news. It's value went from the high of $7k which was what I paid in 1999 down to today's assessor's value of $502. It's value is so low now, the county doesn't even bother to send the tax bill anymore.

I'm contemplating whether or not I want to stay at my job. I've gained ReverseVision, HECM, FHA, Ginnie Mae and advanced MS Excel experience in the seven months since I've started. There was a sobering statistic disclosed at the last Operations town hall which stated sadly only 33 percent of staff were there for over one year. An audible gasp came from the audience. Being #1 comes at a cost having to deal with the sheer volume which makes it hard to attract and retain employees, not to mention favoritism. So between now and June will be the time for me to either figure out where I fit in or find a new job. And the latter is looking more attractive. The stress is so palpable, my eyelids twitch just thinking about the place and I hate that.

So I'm really looking forward to the week's vacation I put in for even though it has it's own level of stress and sorrow built in. In 58 days, I'll be in New York with my family for Uncle Frank's memorial.

Last weekend, I bought supplies to build another two raised planting beds on my patio. I almost killed the tomato plants I bought drying them out without watering them for a week. they seem to come back to life after being drenched on Friday and Saturday. I have more coming up where they the cherry tomato plants were last year, now the where the peas are planted.

It's tomato time!

I have made two runs to Roger's Garden's this year so far and came back with seeds and tomatoes. Last weekend was the annual "Tomatomania.com" event. I was bummed not to be able to locate parking on Saturday morning within the first hour of them opening, so I tried again at about 3PM on Sunday and I had absolutely no issues then... with parking. Somehow by dumb luck or sheer timing, I ended up behind a mother and her daughter who, I would kindly say, were a generation older than I was struggling to get up that hill where the rear entrance is to check out.

Once I ditched the cumbersome green garden cart for a black wire shopping basket, found my four plants, which included two Chika cherry tomato plants, one Texas hybrid and one German heirloom, I trailed behind these two aforementioned ladies. The older of the two was worn out from the trip and dropped her velour warm-up jacket on the sidewalk while heading for the exit. I bent down to pick it up, but allowed the daughter of the of the pair to complete the retrieval. A man passed by going downhill and asked the two women before me if they needed any help with their cart, but declined. They had one 5-gallon plant and were doing just fine by me, just going slow. I felt like I was their spotter. I even allowed these two to line up in front of me at the check-out instead of going round them or getting into the one other line which didn't look as though it was moving any faster than a warm Sunday afternoon needed to. The daughter escorted her mother to the car for her to rest and get out of the sun while I kept their cart moving forward waiting in line to pay.

I should have replanted them into the raised beds when I got them home. It's now the Thursday after the daylight savings time change. Friday is almost here...

The never end saga of the tomatoes in my back patio

I was a bad tomato farmer last year. I let the fruit fall and I didn't pick it up before it sprouted and made tomato babies in my flower bed. This is called self-seeding. I honestly though that the flower bed would never be any good for growing anything but weeds. For years I did just that. Two years ago I gave it my best shot and landscaped that thing, pulling up all the weeds and laying down black landscapers cloth and topping it with bark. Then I planted three topsy turvy planters with various varieties of tomato plants. They hang over the flower bed off of the roof beams from the right side of my neighbor's condo unit which buts up to my patio area creating the back wall of my patio.

In 2011, I first started with three:
Chika Japanese cherry tomato
Pink Lady
Beefsteak

In 2012, I got ambitious and planted four:
Chika Japanese cherry tomato I grew from seed (the star performer from last year)
Sweet 100 cherry tomato
Cluster tomato and
another cherry

So at the end of the season in March which is also the start of the next season and coincidentally is when the batteries decided to die on my rainbird automatic watering system, I salvaged two stalks from the two best performers, placed them in a vase full of water and threw the rest out. And on the day before I was scheduled to pack and leave for my trip, I bought all of the supplies to plant my tomatoes for this year and promptly left. It appears I'm still a bad tomato farmer. We'll see if I can salvage the drop when I return from vacation.

It's September already?

Where did the summer go? I'm sitting here writing this blog entry one weekend after Labor Day listening to "Breakfast with The Beatles" after having made lemonade and iced tea.

Mine started with a trip to Chicago and ended with a movie laden three day holiday weekend. I never really liked to do much of anything on Labor Day weekend. Let the others drive to where they planned to go. I'll stay home and BBQ and catch up on TV. It went by so fast, I forgot to paint my toenails this year.

What I've noticed as I'm growing older and more people call me "Ma'am" is that the days are longer and the nights are shorter which is not really a good thing for someone who only sleeps 6-7 hours anyway.

I started to walk more this summer... by design or by... accident, you could say due to the July 4th weekend fender bender I had on a freeway near my home. After the collision center threw away the damaged bumper with the condo's parking sticker on it and not wanting to deal with the idiots on the board, I started to park outside of my complex about a 10 minute walk away. It's helping me in two ways: 1) more exercise and 2) to de-stress after a long drive. When I was on b/c for years, they, the doctors, always tell you you can expect to gain weight because of the monthly hormones fluctuation. Because I don't eat any dairy, I think that helped not gain huge amounts of weight over the years, but I know if I eat tons of sugar and chips, it tends to creep up. And I love chips. If I keep it below 120, that would be good. If it was closer to 110, that would be better. I was 108 when I graduated from high school 28 years ago.

The tomatoes I planted in the spring grew finally. I grew a Japanese heirloom cherry tomato plant from last years seed called Chika and killed the strawberry, the thyme and the rosemary bush due to not watering them. All four tomato plants are on drip irrigation and a timer in which the run off falls into other potted plants below them.

I didn't get to any of the fairs or festivals that go on throughout the summer months in Southern California either.

Yesterday was a great day

I just absolutely love a bright, sunshiny day where I can feel the surface of my skin become warm from the sun's glow and yet not feel so warm to where I need to escape into the cool of the A/C to be comfortable. I think it's seratonin's effects kicking in for me: http://www.angelfire.com/hi/TheSeer/seratonin.html

I did a little gardening on my patio:

• I did my weekly watering. 
• I chopped the flat leaf parsley down to nothing, 
• trimmed the mini roses,
• pulled the dead growth off of the strawberries,
•  replanted one strawberry plant, 
• I think ruined splitting one strawberry plant. Live and learn.
• I noticed I have two baby sprouts from the Chika seeds!! I'm truly elated. My first tomatoe plants grown from seeds I harvested.
• pulled weeds
• I have two bulbs sprouting from last years plantings. I think they are some variety of gladiolus? I'll know better after they bloom.

Everything You Never Wanted to Know about...

...Tomatoes.

Last year, I bought three plants at a TOMATOMANIA! (http://tomatomania.com) event at Descanco Gardens (http://www.descansogardens.org/) in La Canada-Flintridge. If you view the map below, you can see that's about 46 miles away from my home. This year, I found that same tomato crazy event is going to be held at Roger's Garden's (http://rogersgardens.com/) in Corona Del Mar, which is so much closer.

But, hearing about how my Rideshare buddy just planted strawberries in her grandmother's community garden, I thought I might try to grow some this year in a container.

So, I went container shopping last weekend at this place called Pottery Manufacturing and Distributing (http://potterymfg.com/) Their name says it all. And it's all they do. The place is chock full of pottery. It's great. It's right off the 110 Freeway in Gardena. I found it because I drive that way home from work sometimes.

I was able to locate a beautiful 14 plant container in cobalt blue. Then I trotted over to my local Armstrong Garden Center and found enough strawberry plants to fill my new container. Fast forward to an impending storm, and by the time I got all of my purchases home, it was too cold to plant. I pulled the plants inside last night to prevent them from freezing. Yes, it was that cold. On the news, the snow levels were reported at 3000 feet. That makes Orange County a mighty cold place to be. How cold? As I type this blog, it's 43 degrees. That's cold enough to set off my car's road ice warning.

O.K., so back to the tomatoes. So my three tomato plants from last year died this past weekend. I wasn't sad about loosing the Beefsteak or the Pink lady because, to be honest, they just didn't perform like I thought they should have. Maybe I was giving them too much water because they were planted in a Topsy Turvy, or maybe I didn't feed them enough high test chicken poop AKA Tomato Tone (http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/tones_tomato.html). I don't know. But the star of the three plants was the Chika Japanese Cherry Tomato plant. That thing grew like gangbusters and had a good amount of fruit. In a last ditch effort, I harvested all of the green and semi green cherry tomatoes and seeded them. Then I read this:
http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/grow-tomato.htm

So now I have a glass bowl of unplanted tomato seeds.

A bright, bright sunshiney day

I think Old Man Winter has finally gone away from California. It was in the 80's both days this weekend even though it was pretty breezy. I pulled more weeds from my patio flowerbeds. I replanted the thyme and basil I bought at the bodega on Saturday. They were both dry and pot bound. They seem to be perking up. I also took the new growth out of the aloe vera plant. The new growth seemed to be choking the main plant. We'll see if it perks up this week. My three tomato plants are OK so far. Two have flowers and one has tiny tomatoes already starting to show.

I called for an appointment to get an estimate for new windows on my condo. Well, two new windows and two new sliding glass doors. It's all I got. The first estimate was botched and had to be written again with a different product and different installation method. I'm not happy with the price which was over $6k. I'm going to call for more estimates.

An Unintended Benefit

This is what happens when you place a bird feeder over a flower bed - sunflowers. This specimen was the biggest one yet.