Willpower (posted by Lani)

Yours is obviously much stronger than mine. Seriously. I'm looking at those pictures and trying to zoom in and see what kind of yarn it is and there is absolutely no possible way I would have not at least walked down and looked at it. Of course we know that having looked I would have bought, but I blame that on the well-known fact that foreign yarn (or yarn discovered in unusual places, for that matter) has powers unknown to local, more domesticated yarn. What? You didn't know that? It's true, I swear.

And since we're talking about yarn I've picked up my needles, and my crochet hook as well, after a hiatus of a couple of months. I'm not fully back into the swing of things, but I attribute that to the sheer volume of other stuff going on right now. On the fiber front I'd started and am now again working on a sweater in some fabulous silk-blend yarn that I got from Beth last year; I actually picked Mom's afghan back up and am working on that again too; but mostly I've been doing quick swatches of various stash yarns and contemplating what small, easily portable project I should start to take along on trips. I have some ideas, but I haven't settled on any one thing as yet.

As to the "other stuff" referred to above, it ranges from the ordinary spring cleaning, to persuading the field mice who want to live in my garage to vacate since we really don't want to add mice to our menagerie. I've cleaned the garage out and removed mousie nests repeatedly, finally we bought a mouse mover since I can't bear the idea of traps or poisons, our cats *sigh* think the mice are great playmates, and having a nice chat with the mice wherein I politely ask them to move hasn't worked well so far -- cross your fingers that it works.

I've also spent some time weeding my flower beds (and none too soon I might add, I'd like to be able to see the roses through the weeds and that was getting to be an iffy proposition). I had to do some pretty severe pruning on a lot of the bushes last fall because of disease, but I'm happy to report that they're coming back well. I'm not sure why the previous owner planted that red climber where she did, with nothing to climb on; I'm contemplating transplanting it this fall, or else building it an arbor or trellis. Any suggestions? My white rose, the huge bush towards the left, is so covered with buds that once it's in full bloom you won't see anything but flowers. It's super fragrant, too ... I can't wait!

The rest of my front yard is doing pretty well. My daylilies are happy happy this year and starting to bud out nicely. Some of my daisies are in bloom and others are in bud, and the pansies haven't been heat-killed (or replaced by petunias) yet, so my front yard is looking pretty damned good if I say so myself (aside from the nasty plastic edging stuff along the beds which is by god getting replaced this year). Also, check out my ice plant! I have a planter under the front windows that stays dry as dust no matter what I do; I can water it until it's full of mud today and tomorrow it's a smaller but no less dry version of the Sahara desert. Late last year Chris and Susan, my hard-working and dearly beloved garden helpers, suggested we try ice plant as a last resort. We stuck a few little ice plants into the box, and I water them when I think about it which averages out to roughly once every other blue moon, and once again I owe Chris and Susan. The ice plants are loving it, and I'm loving them.

What else am I doing? Oh yeah ... planning a real-estate hunting trip to Colorado later this month. Yes, that's right. Real estate. Colorado. I'm a Florida girl at heart and I think I always will be, but it looks like I'm going to be, at least partially, a Colorado girl in the future. The plan is to look for a piece of property with an eye towards building on it in the future, whether that future be near or distant. So with that in mind I've roped Beth into going along as devil's advocate and my second set of eyes and ears, and we're heading out to look around in the mountains west (and southwest and northwest) of Boulder. I have a realtor lined up to show us around, and a nice little list of properties to take a look at, and it should be a lot of fun. I'm not sure what our perfect property may be, although I do have some ideas of what I want; but one thing I'm absolutely certain about. It won't be this one. I think you can see why.