foot long earthworms, yay, but ginormous underground spiders scattered my brain cells
Tomorrow I’m going to be getting some pictures up of the garden projects underway. I built a compost tumbler from a kit (and the city will give us a $75 rebate on it, so it only cost $25). I’m working on getting the raised garden bed into shape with the intention of combining the bio-intensive method with square foot gardening. This means that you dig down a foot and remove all horrible, nasty weed roots (ours is riddled with them) and then loosen the soil a further foot down. After I do that, I’ll cover the ground with newspapers to kill off any missed weed rootlets and put 6 inches of “Mel’s mix” soil on top and then finally be able to plant and transplant. But the spiders…
Ok, the spiders that are living in abundance about a foot or so deep in the garden are, at nearly the size of my palm, not quite as horrible as the tarantula that ran up my Ema’s dress a couple of years ago and then leaped onto her chest. That sucker was nearly the size of a dinner plate and heavy –she felt a big thud against her. She was wearing black, the tarantula was black. Too afraid to look down (she knew something HUGE had just jumped on her) she asked the neighbour she was talking to if she had a spider on her by chance….the neighbour looked and then screamed bloody murder. Yeah, if that had happened to me, that would be the end of my gardening experience, like, ever. The palm sized spiders I’ve uncovered have significantly dimmed my enthusiasm for digging out every rootlet and making sure the soil is super ‘friable’ with my bare hands.
I’ve started a course on the development of apps for android phones and tablets and am very excited about it. Let me repeat the very excited but also very nervous. I am seriously not a techie person. So many of the people taking the class have been programming for years, work as software developers and so forth that I am like eeeeek. I’ve managed to get through the first video and a half, with getting the android sdk program and the Oracle JDK 6 development kit downloaded, unpacked and installed. Go me. Now the hard part is about to begin…
Leaving you with the song that is currently playing and it seems relevant given the darn spiders and even scarier tech stuff! Credence Clearwater playing Bad Moon Rising:
israeliminx 
You are hilarious with the song….lol. And I have no idea what half of the tech stuff is you are talking about so as far as I am concerned you are totally a techie. I still don’t get this “cloud” business….
Okay the spider stuff is just creepy. And Ema..I’d have had a serious heart attack if a spider of that size landed on me. Matter of fact I might have nightmares after envisioning your horrid experience.
How are the meowsers? Did you add back in some protein on the diet so you won’t be so tired?
So you are going to be one of my competitors.
Erin — I’ve decided to go back to doing the south beach diet. Unfortunately, the first night we tried it we were watching one of the episodes of Call the Midwife (an amazing series, if you haven’t seen it) and something unexpected and upsetting happened. Ema was out of the room and I was like damn I want chocolate and we don’t have any–she came back in and was like yo we are eating the cookies we bought for your cousin. Sorry M!! Yum they were good and totally necessary for recovering from the episode shocker. 🙂 The meows are doing ok overall. We’re taking Nipper in to see a respiratory specialist this afternoon. How is little Vlad doing?!
Pirate –lol definitely not a competitor…maybe a future collaborator though 🙂
I thought we had big spiders in Australia, but…wow. Sounds like everything really is bigger in Texas. The earthworms sound great, though. Just what you want.