stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

sadly our neighbor to the north of us passed away. he was a good guy, but with what happened to him recently it was a blessing that he could go quickly. RIP friend. i spent quite a few hours sitting and talking with him.

 

[flowerbug]

killdeer are back today. no robins yet, but they should be here soon.

 

[Dahlia]

as a kid i was very allergic and reactive to many foods including peanut butter, citrus of any kinds plus many other things including eggs.

i went once a week for many years to a doctor to get stuck with needles full of things to get me to where i could survive most buffets without too much to worry about.

however, i've also had bad batches of peanut butter that did get me to react to them and i stopped eating peanut butter for a few years and was careful when i started up again. now i eat roasted peanuts and peanut butter practically every day. with citrus i eat a small orange or some lime or lemon once in a while without any problem but if i eat a lot i will break out in small bumps in reaction and i have very bad reactions to cleaning stuff that has orange oil in it. lemon is not so bad, but overall most smelly stuff will bother me and garden plants of various kinds are also reactive for me so i have to be careful around plants i don't know (lavender i can react to like poison ivy and lilacs are also very bad and i have to get away from them if they are blooming).

I feel lucky not to have many food allergies. I once had a bad reaction after eating dungeness crab that was exposed to too much red tide! That was scary! My lip swelled up after I ate so I quickly took some Benadryl and then I was ok.

 

[flowerbug]

winds really knocked things around here and took the power down yesterday and again this morning.

i have a piece of that heavy black plastic edging that was on the pathway that is now moved 30 feet to the north. it was down on the pathway and it is protected by some fence so you would think that would have kept it from being blown around. it's not moved much before since i moved it there last summer. what it actually looks like to me is that some drunk got out there on a Friday night and tried to drag it away, but there's a fence up that they'd have had to get through to get to the edging and really, why?!? just why?? so no, i don't think it was that... just the winds were rather ferocious.

 

[flowerbug]

robins are back. i mentioned to Mom that they should be back soon - i was looking out the window and saw a lighter colored bird that wasn't a grackle so it might have been, but without my glasses on at the moment i wasn't sure. after putting my glasses on one of them decided to fly up on top of the clematis trellis and yep, it was definitely a robin.