Ohhh...more flowers! www.wintersown.org will send you 6 free packs of seeds for a SASE!
So, here at work, we needed to get some roofing materials onto the roof...long story short, the city here requires that you put some sort of fencing around the roof air conditioners...they claim it's to make the building more attractive from the highway, but frankly, some of these places have just a chain link fence around them, so it's not like it has to be pretty, and it's not like you're fooling anyone, we still know it's an air conditioner, and who the hell, by the way, has ever driven by a building and said "gee that's a nice place...too bad those air conditioners are on the roof" but whatever. Anyway, so we had a wood fence around both of ours, and when we had storms earlier this summer they blew over and damaged the roof and now we need new ones. We decided to go with a white vinyl trellis mounted on a frame...looks nicer, wind can go through it, instead of blowing it all to hell, and it's a ton lighter then the wood. All good plans. The catch is, everyone here with the exception of me, is terrified of heights. So this morning, I had to stand on a pallet, on the forklift forks, balancing the damn trellis pieces while I got lifted 3 stories in the air. Then I had to maneuver the trellis onto the low roof (over the canopy of the door, sort of) without falling off. Oh, and the hook on the safety harness wouldn't "catch", so I was clutching the forklift with one hand and trying to move the trellis with the other. and it's windy. and the forklift sways. Oy. I'm pretty sure both my hands are bruised...they hurt. One from the death grip on the forklift, and the other from the damn trellis that kept catching on the roof flashing and I had to fight with. Now I have to do it again with all the wood for the frames, and then I have to step over the edging, to stand on the low roof and hand all the stuff up to the top roof. Mind you, my heart hasn't returned to it's standard rate yet and that was 10 minutes ago. and now my hands are all shaky with the adrenaline coursing through me. I'm making them go get me a new safety clip before I go up again though...since I know the wood will take two hands.
In other news...we just can't find any chrysalis from the monarch caterpillars...it's been bumming us out. So last night we emptied out the HUGE Costco pretzel container we've had sitting on our dryer to collect loose change, and turned it into a butterfly habitat. We hope. We put in perilite and potting soil, cut a bunch of milkweed, treated it with rooting hormone and arranged it in there, then we took the only caterpillar we could find last night and moved him into his new home. It looks like it will work pretty good, as long as I can figure out where to put the container where
#1. it will get sun
#2. the little one's won't pop the very sophisticated wax-paper and rubber-band top off
#3. the puppies won't knock over and destroy.
We've already talked to the kids about it (which, right, the kids would NEVER do something I told them not to...ha), so I'm mostly worried about #3. And remembering to keep the potting soil moist, and hoping the milkweed roots enough not to rot. Course if it doesn't, I can just cut off some more and replace...but I'd prefer not to. Being as it's just one more thing I'd have to remember to do, and lately, my remembering-to-do-things part of the brain has been overheating pretty easily.
