L is easy

Lobelia! And lithodora (the flowers are just as blue, but instead it's a perennial and it doesn't bloom for long. I keep getting the names mixed up)

More lobelia, some kind of double this time. Look, it's been a few years since I grew this.

It's time for my Monday freakout. Perhaps I should start self-medicating with alcohol now.  I have less than 2 weeks and some rooms look like a windstorm came through. A very selective one that threw away a bunch of non-working pens and cleaned out the desk.

This week will also be contractor hell as they come in and rip up the carpets, scrape off the ceilings, and recaulk and grout in the bathroom. Current plan is to sleep on the futon; not sure how or where we will fit the mattresses and box springs in the front room. Fortunately I have a wonderful friend with a strong teenage son who needs cash so I don't also have to be freaking out AND throw my back out. I just need to make his life easier by moving all the plants and books and junk out of/off of furniture.

I have a really strong urge to bake cookies right now. Hey, I had something nutritious for dinner last night: broccoli! OK, it was raw, and dipped in cheese dip, but it could be worse. And then there's the asiatic lilies. How can you resist this face?

You know what's sad? Finding a box of your old floppy disks. At least it's harder to be sentimental about hunks of plastic. I also found a box of old letters and I just closed that one back up and ignored it. I can deal with that later. Also why the hell didn't I sell ALL my textbooks back when I had the chance?

 There's also the callas:

I did have a partial day off Saturday, going off to commune with the alpacas and llamas and sheepies at the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival. It was, as it has been every damn year I've gone, gorgeous weather: sunny and like the air was just honey-colored. Although sadly my usual OFFF partner in crime was laid up (literally) after knee surgery and couldn't make it. :(

Back to work (whipcrack)

Keep Kalmia

I'm really not sure how it became mid-September.
I better hurry up, I'm running out of year.

This is my late, lamented Kalmia (Mountain Laurel) in spring bloom. It was another of the All Pink All The Time shrubs in the backyard: pink roses, pink rhododendrons, pink kalmia. Oh, and a lilac, but I think that got added later on.

The blossoms are pretty and unusual. Right before they open they look like little lanterns to me.

Cookie says I am not allowed to fall apart until after the move. I have a date for the movers now, which is coming up in just a few weeks, and I am not taking the stress well. Also there is much headdesk and facepalm with some of my coworkers today and ongoing. Others of them are so great I don't want to leave. I don't know when I'll be able to dye again, so I'm using it for my pretty much only creative outlet right now. Which would be going better but I'm trying to dye a special request and I'm not getting the colors right at all. Aggh. Back to the dye pots. But I am running out of time.

Look at me and my first world problems. We even have (hoorah!) full service movers coming, who will box up all my crap and lovingly carry it on their laps to my beautiful new empty apartment so it can get filled with my crap.  Current plan is to sequester Frances the cat and everything that is not going (clawed-up old couch, old Ikea chairs, silly old antique vanity I once bought on an ill-advised whim) in one of the bedrooms and tell them to have at all the rest of the house. Then when it all arrives up to 2 weeks later (WTF movers, what are you doing in all that time?), to drive Cancer Kitty Who Cannot Fly Because She Can't Have A Rabies Shot It Will Kill Her. Did I mention how much my cat detests the car? I can't really blame her, as it's associated with really horrible things in her past. 11 hours of sad cat wailing. I cannot wait.

I am going to be having a massive yarn sale on Rav. If you want, I'll keep you posted, it'll be Any Day Now (tm). I have a couple of huge boxes full to sell, and I'm not even done sifting yet. I try to be ruthless, but it's not a skill at which I excel. I just feel like such a loser, having acquired all this and never even used it. I keep trying to think that it doesn't matter, it's a mistake in the past, I don't have to continue this way, but I need more yoga or meditation or something because detachment is difficult.

I have one sad set of boring socks on the active needles (that don't see much action). I need something more distracting but not too distracting. The latest lace project was perfect, just enough of a mix of interesting but repetitious. I need to block it and pictures, ha, I'm only a couple years behind on those.

Time to end this pitious party and go to bed. I'll end with my little snail friend, who although he has munched through most of my hostas is still cute.