Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
gardening & landscaping

citrus fail

I got a lime tree last spring. As it turns out, citrus trees are very temperamental. When I first got it, it shed a bunch of leaves, but this apparently is to be expected as the plants do not like change. Once the weather warmed up, I put it outside so it would have full access to sunlight. By the end of the summer, it was full of leaves and blossoms and looking pretty good. I even got a tiny lime from it. But, when the weather turned cold again, I had to bring it inside and over time, it shed all of its leaves. And, then the branches started dying off. And now, all I’m left with is a stick in the dirt. So much for that experiment.

On the other hand, I cut the top off of a pineapple that I bought at the grocery store and put it in a pot of dirt and it sprouted roots, started growing, and looks fantastic. You would think that a tropical plant, such as pineapple, would be harder to grow than a citrus tree. You would be incorrect.

celebrations, health & wellness

the wrapup

We wrapped up Brian’s annual trifecta of birthday celebrations last night. It was the cap to a busy day. Brian and I started off the morning at the eye doctor’s, where we both had our annual appointment. I also had a late day dentist appointment scheduled for Jake, but they called and asked if we could come in early due to the fact that they had a bunch of weather-related cancellations. So, I had to leave work earlier than expected to take him to his appointment. The only good thing was that we were going to have to take two vehicles to Brian’s parents’ house due to the timing of the appointment, but we were all able to go together since it ended up being earlier. The bad thing was that I had to leave work early and I’ve been quite busy at the office. Oh well, I guess the work will get done eventually.

movies

the shawshank redemption

This was another movie from our top 13. Jake liked it so much that he actually looked away from his phone and watched most of the movie. That is a rare occurrence.

My rating: 4/5

do-it-yourself

paint

For someone who doesn’t like to paint, I sure find myself painting often enough. Today, I painted our upstairs bathroom (which is part of the overhaul of the upper floor of our house). I did a two-tone thing–a tan color and an off-white. It turned out nice–it looks so much better than before. It took longer than I was expecting, but isn’t that always how that goes?

Now, Brian will be able to put down the floor in that room and we can finish things up in there.

household stuff

freezing

A couple of weeks ago, my upright freezer started acting up. After a few days of weirdness, it died. Luckily, we didn’t have a lot of stuff in it (and also that I caught the problem while the food was still mostly frozen), so we transported the food to the freezers of our two refrigerators.

Shortly thereafter, we went to Krisay’s to purchase a new freezer. Since the broken appliance was past its expected life expectancy, purchasing a new one, rather than getting the old one fixed, seemed like the better option.

We found one that we liked and they had it in stock, so we scheduled a day for delivery. The old freezer was a tight squeeze, so they had to take it apart in order to get it out of the room–not to mention that the door (and door stop) to the room had to be removed in order to get it out. We bought a slightly smaller capacity freezer, so we didn’t think to check the dimensions when we made the purchase. As it turned out, the new freezer was even bigger than the old one and it would not fit through the entrance to the room (newer freezers have more insulation, so that’s why it was bigger). At that point, they took the new freezer back and we needed to make a decision about what to do next.

After doing some research and finding out that there weren’t any new freezers that were small enough to fit through the entrance, we made the decision to keep the freezer in the family room. Neither of us were thrilled with this idea, but there weren’t really any other options.