Home Improvement

My apologies to the half dozen or so readers of my blog. I’ve just not felt the inspiration to post much lately.

The nice thing about getting out and visiting new places is that I find lots to things to take pictures of and write about. But there’s always a lull when I get back to Houston in terms of inspiration. It’s already been several months since the trip to Copenhagen and I must confess, the photographic and blogging inspiration is STILL at an all time low.

The Pi(e) Day Card was a fun project. We’re still pondering what’s next in the esoteric holiday card lineup.

Cynthia and I have been hard at work trying to get the front and back lawns into shape. We lost very little during the recent snow in December and the more recent hard freeze where temps stayed below 32 for awhile, so that’s good.

In the loss column was one of my favorite plants, the giant pink Hibiscus we’ve had since our first apartment in the Heights over 15 years ago. Call me sentimental, but I always looked fondly on the soul survivor of our futile efforts to maintain a patio garden in Houston. It had a place of honor in the front yard just to the side of the front door. Now that it is dead we’ve replaced it with a somewhat neglected Sago Palm we’ve had in a pot in the backyard. It’s a bit of a runt due to living in a pot in the shade in the backyard, but hopefully it will reach it’s full potential now that it has been moved.

We also lost the giant and hateful Bougainvillea that dominated the back garden. It was pretty and really doing well before the freeze, but just didn’t manage to survive so we spent the better part of two weekends cutting it down and chopping it up enough so that the trash collectors would haul it away.

We managed to get most of it gone but not without some parting shots from it’s numerous and sharp thorns.

There’s still a lot of work to be done and hopefully this good weather will hold for a few more weeks so we can finish it up. We’ve really had some gorgeous California style weekends with low temps and low humidity with lots of clear blue skies and sunshine.

Oh, and speaking of the good weather. We’ve been taking the opportunity to walk a few miles each day after work. That, in combination with a revised diet and some Wii Fit excercises I am personally down 20lbs!