It's done! The planting is done! (Ok, as good as.)

The tomatoes are in. The radishes. The leeks. The snap peas. The string beans. The cucumbers. The sweet onions. (At which point I said, "Hell, that's a meal right there." and Halfast said, "Yeah, maybe with some meat." and I said, "Of course, meat. I can't grow a fucking cow, dude." Because I'm charming like that.) The thyme, rosemary, oregano, lemon balm, and lavender. The lemon verbena, the sunflowers, the liatris. The rose garden has been divested of every fucking hollyhock in the joint. (Shame too, some of those things had roots in excess of 4 inches across. As they sucked the nutrients from around my roses, the bastards.) The tree trunk garden has been completely weeded and Preen'd.

That just leaves some Malva, Yarrow, Dianthus and bizarre morning glories in the little greenhouse I bought for Mom a few months ago. The Dianthus is slow coming, but the others look pretty good. And the tickseed, don't forget the tickseed.

And all that accomplished after I come home from work in the evenings, all this past week. The roses are looking downright fabulous this year, so I had to get rid of the choking hollyhocks. Left the columbine, and the wild coneflowers and wild daisies.

I'd post some pictures and I have some to post, but I've been having trouble with my camera. First I thought it was firmware, but it's not. I was already up to date. It's the compact flash card. The first one I had for years is finally crapping out, so I got another bigger one. But that size isn't proven compatible with the camera, as I found out. So I went shopping again, ended up with SD cards instead of compact flash - because the stupid Nikon site said, "Here are the compatible compact flash cards" and proceeded to list all SD cards. So took those back and just went to Amazon.

Meanwhile, my Dish Network is acting fucked up. I'm convinced it's a conspiracy to try to get me to use their DVR instead of my TiVo. I have their DVR upstairs, and next to the TiVo it's a '59 Edsel. Halfast thinks it might be my cabling, and while I'm not disputing that, I think it's a little weird that more than half the week the Dish box down here with the TiVo on it craps out at exactly the same time every day. At 5:10am, give or take a few minutes, it "loses" the satellite signal. But the other day it lost it in the middle of the afternoon and Mom was down here watching Masterpiece Theaters we'd TiVo'd on Sunday so she didn't notice. Then we went to watch Bones, and no Bones. Just "Acquiring Satellite"... which you can get out of easily by pushing the button on the satellite remote - another bullshit factor. So I missed an episode of Bones, THE episode of Bones. But I was also recording it upstairs on that shiity DVR, and it recorded fine up there.

Whatever the problem is, screwing me out of the season finale of Bones was the last straw. I'm going back to cable. They'll be here on the 27th to install it. Which leaves me one digital recording device short since they'll be taking that shitty DVR. So, I ordered another TiVo! This one is a Dual Tuner! It came today, but I haven't hooked it up. Maybe tomorrow, but first I have to get the shows off the shitty DVR upstairs because I've been stockpiling up there. Bad news is I can't just transfer the stuff to the computer like I do with the TiVo, I actually have to watch it through the computer. Ugh. But I've got to do that before I send these receivers back to their maker.

Anyway, feeling pretty good about it. Got the TiVo (Series 2, Dual Tuner) for $99 from the TiVo website. Their TiVo wireless adapter was $59.99, but I got the exact same TiVo wireless adapter from Amazon for $29.99. Made 4 separate calls to the cable company asking questions and getting quotes before I finally settled on a package and service, which turns out to be about $25 less that I'm paying for the Dish stuff. Got the lifetime service on the new TiVo (happy to see they reinstated that), so no fees there, and the Dirtfarm TiVo I already have is on my old multi-device discount so it's still all $6.95 a month.

Now I just need one more thing, and that's an external DVR drive.

Whoops, don't need that anymore, just ordered it. In for a penny, right?

Tomorrow I'll write a long and thoughtful post. Or maybe I'll just stand around the yard watching the plants grow. You never know, I'm unpredictable that way. But for now, it's bedtime. See ya!