Why I Oughta...

This weekend, I was able to find time to clean up the raised beds and plant everything.  We have eight tomato varieties going this year along with a few other vegetables including peppers, squash, corn, potatoes, and even a few garlic cloves.

Had a wonderful night watching the Good Guys beat up on the Cubs last night.  All things considered (NATO, etc) we got to the game relatively easy and had great seats!  Thanks Dennis and Angela!

Between Menards and Home Depot, we finally were able to buy our vegetables (along with a couple of ferns and a grafted daisy tree!) today.

Here's the final version of the DIY Rocket Launch Pad that I made for my nephew yesterday .  The pad is made from a 1X8 with the bottom and back cut into 7.5" squares.  The front lip is 7.5" X 2" tall.  The sides are 7" tall and fill in the gaps between front and back.  I used decking screws because this thing involves water and pre-drilled the holes to avoid splitting. From there, I painted it white then painted on an orange and blue rocket, added the VASA '12 logo (a space organization named after my nephew, of course!) and even a motto on the back.    I wrapped it up in the typical wrapping paper:  the days newsprint. Also included in the Rocket package was this custom modified bike pump needle.  All you need to do is grab your needle, lay it next to a cork and then chop it down so the air holes just poke through. Here's the launch vehicle.  I used a Diet Orange Crush bottle.  But any 2 litre bottle will work fine. Just fill it up 1/3 of

I put this cryptic white box together using some decking screws and a treated 1X8.  I have to do a little bit of detailing with paint, but after those designs go on, this thing should be good to go.  I tested the other part of it this morning and the test vehicle landed all the way in our neighbor's yard.  This *is* going to be fun to play with!

I was driving behind this squad car and saw the url on his bumper:  www.vil.north-aurora.il.us/police.  Could that be the worst url to display on a fast-moving vehicle ever?

Just north of Second Street, North Avenue has very little going on for it.  Sure, there's Francesca's and City Hall and even a Fruit Bouquet place but on the east side, there's long stretches of vacant spaces.  And on the west side there's a weird hookah shop, a travel agency (really?), a store that sells pencils (I think?), a salon or two and even more vacant space. But the west side of the street received some good news with the 'coming soon' sign at 193 N. York from Flexeon Rehab and Therapy.  They're going in just south of Salt Creek Pottery and just north of this vacant space where you see the $10K grant sign.  Flexeon is a nice addition - even though it isn't retail.  A healthy downtown needs a good mix of uses as they feed each other.  Flexeon will have patients come downtown who now might be there during the middle of the day and they could stay for lunch.  Or they could waste some time before their appointment and shop for some toys.  My on

I picked up 5 lbs of seed potatoes a week ago and chopped them up into little segments in preparation for planting them  in the next week.  The sack says that 5 lbs will produce up to 75 lbs of potatoes.  Woah.  That's a lotta potatoes.  Guess we'll be eating a lot of mashed potatoes later this summer/fall.

They won't be opened by Mother's Day, but they're getting pretty close to popping open.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to putting all of the Peony plants inside of cages, so some of them are starting to droop to the ground under the sheer weight of the flower buds.

I was asked to be a 'special person' by my nephew at his school's Special Person Day yesterday.  That's him in the photo above with his recycled-product battleship.  While there may be some dispute about which kid made the best recycled-product item, there's no debate about who's was the biggest.  The battleship was - by far - the biggest! I had so much fun reading and counting with him and I couldn't have been happier to be there or felt more 'special' than I did in his classroom yesterday.