rain gauges, birdbaths, and other matters.

hello friends!  happy thursday!  how are you??  and please tell me that this week has flown by for you too.  holy cow!

anyway, all is well in my neck of the woods.  i am happy to report that managed to avoid the worst of the big storm that came through.  all we got was some much needed rain. thankyoujesus

oh and that reminds me – tripp got a new wireless, electronic rain gauge over the weekend.  i know you were dying to know about that.  it’s a complement to the wireless, electronic weather thingy my parents got him last year for christmas.  because let’s face it…we’re okies…we are obsessed with weather.

the only problem with the rain gauge is that it didn’t come calibrated.  i know right.  can you imagine a cheap $20 rain gauge that’s not calibrated??  and that kind of imprecise nonsense will not be tolerated by beloved.  so saturday, he spent the better part of FOUR HOURS calibrating this dumb thing.

me?  if i want to know how much rain fell i’ll just go check out the bird bath.  or watch the news.  totally fine with that.

without completely boring you to tears describing the painstaking process of calibrating the rain gauge…

sidenote – i have misspelled gauge every single time i have typed it.

…it involved letting exactly one cup of water drip into the guage gah!!! gauge.  which i know you were wondering and measures exactly 1.68” according to this POS.  so to start with there is the measuring of the water.  the first time he measured it into a dry measuring cup and i was like, ‘hold up there bubba…that’s a dry measure.  if you want it precise you need yourself a liquid measure.’

see how perfect we are for each other??

and so then there’s the whole, ‘make sure you measuring it on the meniscus’ conversation.   and see now you’re bored to tears.  so i’ll just tell you that he never got it to calibrate properly.  because wednesday morning i got this text-

this is my life people.

in case you’re wondering, and i mean why wouldn’t you be, the news guy said that overall we got about a half inch of rain that night.   or approximately .29 inches according to the rain gauge.  take your pick.

anyway.

speaking of bird baths!  we (and when i say ‘we’ i mean ‘tripp’…when he could pull himself away from the rain g.a.u.g.e long enough to help) moved it from underneath the big tree in the middle of yard to garden by the fence.

sidenote…here’s where tripp would tell you that he’s moved that effing birdbath enough times in the last fifteen years since and this is where it’s going to stay.

sidenote…and here’s where i tell you that he whined about his ankle hurting for two days after moving the birdbath.  and made sure to make a production out of looking for the alleve before bed.

but i made him some brownies and that seemed to make everything ok.  because nothing says thank you for moving the effing birdbath like a pan full of triple chocolate chunk brownies. 

anyway, i had really been neglecting this poor flowerbed…the summer was just so hot and i lost several of my perennials.  but saturday i went to the big garden center and bought some replacements.  the big news here is that (my friends laura and teala will really appreciate this) i did not plan out ahead of time what i was going to buy.  i didn’t sketch out a design on grid paper.  didn’t research anything on the web.  just went to the garden center and picked out plants that look fun to me.

i will tell you that several of my choices were inspired by my recent visit to the dallas arboretum.  such as this gorgeous columbine.  can you believe this color?

i also got a new clematis. 

oh and we also bought a peach tree.

truth be told, i was totally pushing for a saucer magnolia like this one in my neighbor’ yard. 

but alas tripp played his ‘but you make such good peach pie’ card. so what are you gonna do right?  make peach pie.  and at the end of the day it’s still a flowering tree.  which i have to tell you… i am totally obsessed with flowering trees right now.

you all know how much i love flowers of all sorts, but there is something about tree in full bloom that just says, ‘stop what you’re doing and look at me!’ which i gladly oblige.  seriously…cannot. get. enough.

just look at these sweet blossoms of my neighbor’s yoshino cherry tree.

and don’t even get me started on this crabapple.

pretty safe to say that i’m obsessed with flowering shrubs too. i took approximately 147 pictures of this forsythia in my neighbor’s yard.  even entertained thought of snipping off a few branches to bring home. but then decided against it.

but i had no problem traipsing through their front yard to snap a couple of pics of this bridal wreath spirea.

now all i want to do is put in another flower bed full of nothing but old-fashioned flowering shrubs.

and omg… i have caught of glimpse of tripp and me 20 years from now.  him with his rain gauge and me and my shrubs.  and the birdbath.  and his ankle and….

oh dear lord.

see what you have to look forward to!

love, kelly