Grandkids, hula hoops, and resilient plants

WHM and NCN (mom and dad of the grandkids) wanted one last fling before WHM's classes start up next week, so Mrs Notthat volunteered for us to keep the kids overnight last night. NCN (Needs Cool Name, the dad) just picked the kids up, and I'm greatly enjoying the quiet (and golf on TV).

The kids are fun (mostly - they also can throw the most bizarre fits) but they never stop. It is a massive challenge to try to keep up with them.


We "watched" Alvin and the Chipmunks (the new movie) last night. You can see how entranced the grandkids were with it - they did everything BUT watch it.

This morning we made blueberry pancakes and donut eggs and got out every toy in the house - all by 8 AM. (Riley woke up twice in the night - both fixed by Mrs Notthat - and they both got up at 6 AM. Heavy sigh...)

And then we hit the garden.


Riley helped by dealing with some weeds.


And then we picked LOTS of cherry tomatoes. Riley is better for quantity, although his quality is a bit dubious - he probably has the same color blindness issues that The Boy has, which leads him to not be too choosy about picking only red tomatoes, plus he is not exactly gentle with what he picks. Darci is better for quality, but a lot of tomatoes never make it as far as the bowl.

Now for two completely unrelated things. We had this cactus that was not exactly attractive. It ended up getting temporarily moved to an out of the way location, where it was left for a year or so. A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning up that area and saw it. It looked awful and my first thought was to toss it. But I have a hard time doing that to any plant, so I instead gave it some water for the first time since the winter rains stopped. When I looked at it today I found that it has not only perked up - it now has a beautiful bloom on it. (See the tiny bloom within a bloom action going on? Nifty!)

The second example of the resiliency of plants (and why you should be patient with them, even when all seems lost) is this plumeria tree.


The picture on the left is from a post I did on June 14 when Darci shoved a dead tree branch in the container with the apparently dead tree. The picture on the right is what it looks like today - it's been transplanted to a smaller pot to make it easier to bring in over the winter and it seems to be happier than ever.

So the lesson is to never give up on a plant. And to maybe not rely on me to watch your plants since I seem to have a knack for bringing them to their knees.

That's it - move along...