{"id":139,"date":"2009-08-08T21:10:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T04:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/post139"},"modified":"2009-10-11T12:21:13","modified_gmt":"2009-10-11T19:21:13","slug":"cutting-down-the-forest-one-tree-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/post139","title":{"rendered":"Cutting down the forest, one tree at a time."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have a crazy headache right now. *WhineWhineblahWhine.*<\/p>\n<p>At least today was pretty dang productive. Of course, there is never enough time in the day to do everything you intended to do. I mean, I get 5 books for my birthday and you expect me to actually WORK?! I believe that truly falls under the 8th amendment in the US Constitution: &#8220;No cruel and unusual punishment.&#8221; You lock an English teacher in a room with some great classics, new and old, and then tell them to scrub the walls. WITH A TOOTHBRUSH. What do you really think is going to happen?<\/p>\n<p>(Note: this is a partially true story. I wasn&#8217;t an English teacher -obviously- when I was growing up, but my parents would take away my books as punishment or if they wanted to make me do something I didn&#8217;t want to do. Cruel. I KNOW.) Love ya, Mom and Dad.<\/p>\n<p>But I digress. Despite the obvious distraction, I was surprisingly productive today. Slept in (yay!), got up, had a gourmet breakfast of off-brand cereal, and then Jared and I did a whole crapton of work. In no particular order: went to the apartment, cleaned, got some more stuff that I have to put away at the house. Went to the bank. Did grocery shopping. Vacuumed. Price-checked products at Lowe&#8217;s and Home Depot.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Jared price checked. By the time we made it to Home of Pot (if you know latin languages, you&#8217;ll get it) I was not feeling so well and decided to distract myself at the flower section. I was able to identify several of the plants in our backyard. So far, I found <a href=\"http:\/\/z.about.com\/d\/phoenix\/1\/0\/A\/H\/purplesage02.JPG\" target=\"_blank\">Texas Sage<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/pics.davesgarden.com\/pics\/frostweed_1096413412_564.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Autumn Sage<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/34\/114792338_00dac037eb.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Mexican Heather<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.landscapedia.info\/images\/plant_images\/Lantana_camara_Citrus_Blend_Lantana___citrus_Blend__.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">lantana<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bexar-tx.tamu.edu\/HomeHort\/F1Column\/2005%20Articles\/Graphics\/Plants\/Crape%20Myrtle.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">crape myrtle<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/z.about.com\/d\/gardening\/1\/0\/o\/f\/Pennisetum_Rubrum.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">purple fountain grass<\/a>. Oh yeah. I was busy at the Home Depot. I also know we have some lilies and a rose of sharon tree, but really, I knew that before. And as you read that your eyes probably started to close and you were threatening close to nodding off, but hey, PLANTS ARE EXPENSIVE! It&#8217;s good to know what you have so you don&#8217;t kill it off, and then you have to replace it or look at dead ugly plants in a dead, ugly yard.<\/p>\n<p>When we got home, we decided to have a delicious dinner of Costco cake and ice cream. OH YES WE DID! I still can&#8217;t beleive Jared was okay with that, but I&#8217;m not complaining.<\/p>\n<p>Then to work off all those fatty calories, we did a lot of yardwork. To give you an idea of the comfort level, we were doing yard work at 7:00 PM in the evening. It&#8217;s now 11:00 PM and it&#8217;s STILL 88 degrees.\u00a0 I took comfort by trimming bushes back and wagging war with the many, many mini trees in the area that we call &#8220;The Forest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/theforest.jpg\" title=\"TheForest\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/theforest.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"TheForest\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the infamous Bee Tree. This picture doesn&#8217;t even begin to show the immensity of The Forest, but when you are in the middle of it, it can be kinda overwhelming. It did surprise me how much I enjoyed cutting down all the sprouts. I think it would have been even better if I hadn&#8217;t been covered in sweat from having to wear jeans and a long sleeved shirt to protect myself from the bugs. Bugs are attracted to me as if I covered myself in chocolate and asked little kids to lick me. And then when they bite me, I am left with several days discomfort from bites that swell up to the size of a discolored, mottley orange.<\/p>\n<p>And still, Jared loves me. Am I a lucky woman or what?<\/p>\n<p>Hence the eau de &#8220;OFF!&#8221; and battle armour to protect Jared&#8217;s sanity. I am still awed by how I found it mysteriously satisfying physical labor for the hour I did it. And still, the majority of the forest is still there. And will need to be removed, because it&#8217;s a bug breeding ground.<\/p>\n<p>So. I guess you could say I am just working on destroying nature, one tree sprout at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a crazy headache right now. *WhineWhineblahWhine.* At least today was pretty dang productive. Of course, there is never enough time in the day to do everything you intended to do. I mean, I get 5 books for my birthday and you expect me to actually WORK?! I believe that truly falls under the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-house","category-special-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisabethboothe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}