see you on the flip side

Did I mention we are going on vacation this month? We're leaving Tuesday and taking the twins to Hawaii for a week to reward them for all their hard work, four days on Maui and three days on Hawaii. Not looking forward to the actual traveling part. We'll have to leave the house about 4:30 in the morning to pick them up and get to the airport and all that stuff. Our flight leaves at 8:30 AM.  Leaving politics behind...no news, no FB, no Twitter.  It will be a relief.

The corn man was at the market yesterday, sweet hybrid corn, organic and comes with the occasional worm. Fewer this year than previous years. Worms, that is. 20 ears for $7 with two extra thrown in because...worms. Somehow last year we missed him altogether. So yesterday I was putting up 21 ears (only one total reject) because I don't have enough to do between then and Tuesday when we leave. Still have a bunch of tomatoes to put up too because otherwise I'll just have to toss them in the compost pile which may be their fate anyway. Those damn plants are still putting on fruit though they aren't getting very big now before they start to ripen. Those that ripen while we are gone will be my sister's problem.

So a couple of days ago, something stated smelling bad in the kitchen. I thought maybe it was something in the compost bin so I dumped it on the compost pile but it didn't seem to get rid of the smell. I took the bottom drawer in the row out thinking maybe there was something dead down at the bottom of the cabinet but nothing but roach parts and crap so I cleaned out the mess and emptied the drawer, then I checked the next two, nada. Finally pulled out the top drawer where the few cookbooks and printed out recipes are kept and ewww, a dead mouse! How the hell did it get in there and why the hell would it want to be in there in the first place and if it got in there to begin with why didn't it climb back out? And why the hell did it climb in that drawer to die? So of course that nasty smell had impregnated everything in the drawer, had to spread everything out on the outside table to air out all day and sprayed it all liberally citrus air freshener. The cookbooks are OK but the loose recipes still have a lingering odor. I didn't put those back in the drawer and I'm hoping it will have dissipated by the time we get back. Sure am glad it didn't wait til after we left to climb in there and die. Wouldn't that have been a wonderful homecoming.

So I don't leave you with the image of a stinking dead mouse, here's a few things seen around the yard the last week or so.

a new bromeliad

the same bromeliad with toads

Big Mama

a little snail on the toad lily

a fungi that was shriveled up an hour later

a plumeria seed pod that popped

native hibiscus