Mystery Flower and Recycling�

2003-09-22

I have spent very little time in the garden lately. It�s just been to hot for working in the yard to be appealing. I�ve been doing the bare minimum even on watering.

I am having a rather strange success with one plant, though. It actually kind of amazes me. I got it from the Cactus Man nine or ten years ago. He said it was a bulb from South Africa. It looks like chives, with thin, grassy foliage. The Cactus Man told me that it got purple flowers. In all the time I�ve had it it�s never bloomed. This year we got a yard umbrella. Umbrella stands were $30 for the cheapest one, so we made one with a length of PVC, a large plastic pot and some cement. I decided it looked a little naked with the bare cement and I�m always looking for places to put plants, so I put several of them in the pot. Everything I set in the pot has taken off and the plant has a ton of buds coming up. I�ve very curious, after all this time, to see what the flowers look like. It seems like they�re taking forever to open. And I don�t think they�re going to look anything like I expected.

I went to the cactus shop this weekend. I swear I�m a plant addict. Somebody stop me! I spent too much money. And lusted after another couple of hundred dollars worth of plants. There were a couple of very unique caudiform plants that I really wanted, but they were also really expensive.

I remember when we bought our house that the real estate agent had said that it was in very bad shape when the current owner bought it; that they had some very strange ideas about decorating. Pulling up the carpeting in one of the upstairs bedrooms and down in the office gave us evidence of just how strange.

There was an aqua colored, patterned vinyl flooring in the upstairs bedroom. It was an awful color and a horrible pattern. I can�t imagine any era when it would have been in style, or any room where it wouldn�t have looked awful. Maybe in a bathroom, preferably one with a very small floor. Having had a teenage stepson, I can see the practicality of having a vinyl floor in any room he occupied, but having that floor would just be torture.

In the office downstairs there was vinyl flooring in a brick pattern. It would have been hard to picture a pattern of a more unrealistic pattern or color. I get the feeling they must have bought it all on clearance. I wonder what other surprises we�ll find as we take up the carpeting out of the rest of the rooms.

The wonderful spouse put together one of the new bookcases for the offices. I have to say, for a cheapie, it doesn�t look half bad. You pretty much take your chances when you buy furniture out of a catalog, and in the catalog it looked much lighter. I was willing to live with the lighter color to have the style I wanted, but when he opened the box I could see that it matches most of our stuff almost exactly.

I�m more excited about getting the office done that I was about getting the kitchen done. That might have something to do with the fact that I spend more time in the office than I will ever spend in the kitchen.

I�m very proud of my husband. In cleaning out the office he�s been throwing stuff away left and right. Old software, boxes for games. Games that won�t play on any computer that we own. It really was time to get rid of the 51/4� floppies.

I�m just as bad about keeping stuff as he is, but I�ve been getting tired of the endless clutter. It just makes it so hard to clean anything. Or find anything. So I�ve tried to be ruthless. If it doesn�t fit, toss it. If I don�t use it, toss it. If I don�t read it, give it to the used bookstore.

I don�t actually toss that much stuff. There�s a charity that comes around every other month to pick up stuff, but they mostly take clothes. And there�s a guy that comes around every Monday before the trash trucks come around. He picks up recyclables and any he thinks would be useful. We�ve been getting rid of so much stuff that last time he came by; he picked up all the stuff, but left a high chair. I guess not everything would fit.

�