Brown thumb

At the beginning of the year, or some time around then, one of my bosses friends brought us giant pumpkin seeds from his 700+ pound pumpkin from last year.  There were twenty in all and we split them between three of us.  Of course my boss always has to have a competition of some sort so we bet that we each would get the biggest pumpkin out of the bunch.  I started growing mine in little pots in the house and they did great.  I then transferred them to a nice spot (or what I thought was a nice spot) in my front yard when they got too big for their pots.  That was around May.  There were seven in all and I have been struggling to get them to continue to grow.  I lost three of them to some animal and the other four really have not grown.  I was out  marketing with my boss today and he told me that one of his plants is huge and he has two pumpkins.  I had been wondering if my plants were far behind the growth curve and that confirmed that they were.  I actually had not looked at them since last weekend because it has been raining every evening and into most mornings so I did not need to go and water them.  I looked at them when I got home today and they are not doing well at all.  They look the same as the last time I saw them and another one has been eaten.  I don’t think there is any rescuing them.  I did talk to my boss about what we did differently and his are in a raised garden area.  He said the soil was imported and he had been adding ashes from his fireplaces all winter.  So, I don’t know what I am going to do.  Maybe I will pull them back out of the ground and try putting them back into a pot with just potting soil this weekend.  I guess I am not going to win the “bet”.

P.S. The third person has since left the company so we have no clue how well hers are doing.

I’m a slacker

I’m a slacker on the whole blogging thing lately. I just haven’t had the time, it seems like my whole life revolves around work lately. Good thing I like my job, right? Because of that nothing exciting has been going on in my life. Of course there are all kinds of things going on in the world; dead miners in WV and the whole mix-up of saying that they were alive and giving the families false hope, more attacks in Iraq and VRE trains derailing in our area. EC when I heard about the last this morning I made sure it wasn’t in your area. Speaking of EC, I was thinking last night about whether or not you still go by EC?

Boo-Boo and I don’t have any plans for the weekend, all I know is that we have to be home in time for the Redskins (or Stinkskins as I call them) game on Saturday. My plans are to finish cleaning up our house and maybe I will be able to see my dining room table for the first time in a year and to trim up my rose bushes in front of the house. I neglected to do this last winter and they were totally crazy during the summer. I had to do all kinds of rigging to keep them from draping across the stairs and grabbing hold of people who tried to come in and out of the house. The other thing I need to do around the yard is trim the grape vines on the side of the house, the only problem is that I have absolutely no clue how to do so. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to add your two cents.

Did anyone watch The Biggest Loser Family last night? I wanted the Samuels to win because of the families story of the father getting laid off and then the mother being diagnosed with kidney cancer a few months later. Regardless of who won, everyone looked great and that is really the point of the show; getting healthy, losing weight, adding years to your life, all that good stuff. Well I am out of here and headed home. I have more episodes of the 2nd season of ER to watch before CSI and the current season of ER come on tonight.

I Like Potted Plants

I have to bring my potted plants in for the winter becuase one of them is a hybiscus, a tropical plant that doesn’t like Virginia winters. When I bring them into the house I have to cover them in towels so that my cats don’t throw the potting soil all over the place. I walked into our spare bedroom where I keep the plants and this is what I found. Apparently I have made my cat the perfect bed, it is soft and it gets sun throughout most of the day.