Storm? What storm? | Chicago Tribune Before taking off for dinner, David and I pulled all the patio chairs off to the side of the house and secured some lighter things so they wouldn’t blow around. I stuck the last few unplanted plants in the ground in the “kitty garden” and along the side of the house. The wind had been blowing hard all day, but it was hot and humid, a very weird and unsettling sensation. All through dinner, we watched people out on an outside terrace eating their dinners while clutching their hair and belongings to keep them…
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It’s been a long, exhausting day – I worked in the yard from about 10 am on until 730pm, with breaks for when I got too warm and wobbly, or to run errands. But I’m pleased with the results – almost all the mulching is now done, several new plants are in the vegetable garden, which for the first time ever will possibly have vegetables in a month or two, and the “kitty garden” has been dug out and replanted. I say “dug out,” because the lawn care guys so helpully cut back everything in there to the ground and…
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Chicago Tribune | The Chicago Gardener Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are going a little crazy waiting for the 17-year cicadas to emerge. I’ve lived here 11 years, and apparently the noisy buggers that annoy the shit out of me every summer are nothing compared to the much larger swarms of noisy buggers that emerge on the 17-year cycle. As I was leaving work, there was a “puff” piece on the local news with a lady newscaster and a whole bunch of schoolkids dressed up in pink construction paper cicada hats. They were all mighty disappointed, because the cicadas failed…
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Lovely days like today don’t come often enough. It was warm, pleasant, and I had time to both tinker around online and dink around outside sticking plants in to my two whiskey-barrel containers. David drilled a whole in the one barrel that didn’t drain properly, and now it’s useable and not a yucky object that looks and smells like a swamp. I added a couple of handfuls of rock mulch to keep the drainage hole clear. Tore out some more of the prickly bush that insists on growing up through the roots of the one bushy pine shrub, and even…
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What’s it going to be? Warm and sunny (yesterday) or cold and rainy (today)? I’m so confused! At least I won’t have to water stuff for a couple more days. I’ve got a bunch of plants to get in the ground and will have to put that off now until at least Thursday or later.
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EMBRACING THE ENVIRONMENT | Chicago Tribune When Steve Levinthal got ready to build his house in Glenview, he knew he wanted it to be environmentally friendly and energy-efficient–translation, "green." Levinthal chose a green architect, Nathan Kipnis Architects in Evanston, and green builder, Sturm Builders in Northbrook, to help him design and build his green house. The result is a house that is ahead of its time in green features. Instead of a furnace and air conditioner, its geothermal system heats the house in winter by pulling heated fluid from the Earth, then cools it in summer by sending the fluid…
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so make it up I'm getting married. I got engaged to my long-time boyfriend about two weeks ago, and I've decided to blog about the whole ungirly-bride process. My attempts to make sense of (read: mock) it all should yield infinite hits, as other like-minded women (not to mention cultural studies professors and other Paglia types) scour the World Wide Net Superhighway for scraps of sanity amidst the wedding machine madness. In addition to writing about my impending nuptuals, I will continue to deconstruct, harangue and satirize the rest of girl culture as well. In some ways, the wedding industry…
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It’s been a busy week at work and at home and at church. I’ve gotten through a ton of work at work, done not so much work as a lot of thinking at home, and did some interesting new things at church. Saturday, didn’t do too much – I was thinking a lot about family members near and far, hoping for the best for one person in particular. Schlepped around and relaxed, otherwise. Much playing with the cat. David went in to work for the whole day, leaving me to my own devices. Sunday started out with a big last-minute…
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Rats rats RATS. One of the issues that came up in the staff meeting last week was the problem of people who come to work sick. One of my cow-orkers has been down with strep and a cough the last week or so, and since the policy is you can’t be out more than 3 days in a row without having to get a doctor’s note and or go on salary continuation, people tend to come back too soon. Now it seems the annoying sensation at the back of my throat has become something that feels like the beginnings of…
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The storm we were threatened all weekend has finally blown in with a vengeance; We heard stuff hitting the house that sounded like rain or sleet, but no, it’s heavy snow and maybe also sleet too. High winds, and white stuff coming down fast. Tomorrow’s going to be interesting, because we could have a lot of snow on the ground by morning. Weather