6.14.2009

Busy day

So we have had some active days recently and my camera is getting used. Not just the normal things like silly faces and moments to remember but really fun things. We had a litter of kittens born in our back yard under our rosemary bush a few months ago. Bet those kittys smelled wonderful, so I tried not to let the kiddos in the yard too much unattended. Every time we would venture outside the mom would take off. Leaving the kittens mewing loudly... my children would have loved to keep one I assure you. So to keep love wants from happening I just tried to avoid it as much as possible. Since we hadn't been out there much we had neglected the yard a touch.... to say the least. The weather has been so nice that this past week and being that the family of kitties has moved on we started working on the yard. The weeds are gone. The rocks raked. Yes I know I know why on earth would you have rocks in your yard let alone rake them... we live in AZ where like most of the west coast there is a drought. Mind you everyone and their monkey has a pool here.... go figure. And the yard mo...
ok so while I was getting ready to mow the weeds we found a broken sprinkler head. Now we are renting our place but a broken sprinkler head is hardly a need to call the landlord. So off to Wmrt to get a new one. Looked for 1 hour. Found someone who said that 'they were here. last week saw em here.' well after that they were gone. Went and researched the areas in the store where he said that they could be. Nope. Back outside. Lemme call 'leon' yup they were here but now they are here.... 100 feet away and we didn't see em. There are now only 4 of them and all 4 have no innards. The springy thing is there but I need all of it. Hummmm maybe this would work. Can I get it anyway. He checks but it is out of the system. I'll give it to ya. Um thanks? is this wrong? Well I had to get other stuff. Went inside then came back and they were closed. I totally forgot that the inside stays open but the garden section closes around 9pm. Oh well. I went to the register and the nice lady charged me a buck. Alrighty. Back to the yard. So this sprinkler that is broken I look to see if the kids ran it over with a truck or the youngest beat it with his shovel. Nope it jammed and the force of the water pressure blew it to pieces. It literally was broken from the inside out. I took it apart then used the cap and some other pieces and crossed my fingers. No my yard is very pretty normally but after this kitty/broken sprinkler there has been a serious lack of water in large patches and overgrowth where the water would probably shoot out like a fountain. Since I wasn't going out much I never saw... and it goes off at 5am.... for the birds not me. The head is fixed tested and passed! Now to start weeding and mowing. . . WAIT!!!!! There are praying mantis EVERYWHERE! I must save them all. (here is where the normal person would laugh or look at me like I am totally weird. Well I am weird. I love saving creatures in the wild/my messy backyard. so you may proceed to scoff at my crazyness. My hubby does.) Ok so the sun is quickly setting .... or not so quickly but hubby is working hard and keeps glaring my way when he sees me trying to catch a mantis and set it free. I grab the edger/weed eater to some and begin working frantically on a corner of the yard where there is little mantis growth. I soon finish that area and mow a portion of the yard. Ahh hah daughter got caterpillars for Christmas and they had a cool tent pavilion thing that I can put the mantis in. Running to the room I jump over toys elated that I can watch them for a bit. After arriving back outside with the 'mantis pavilion' hubby again looks at me in amazement at my insanity. Within 10 minutes I had 5 mantis from 1/2 inch to 3 inches in the net. HEE HEE this is so fun. Well I had to keep mowing to keep him happy so I would wack down some grass with the eater then I would catch more... 10, 11, 12 and he just kept staring. I kept calling myself crazy for catching these cool creatures and then said I was done as I picked up 15, 16, 17 and this went on for a bit. So then I was getting ready to do something and my loving hubby stated that 'you can't save them all hun. I think that you did great. Let the rest just survive.' UM no praying mantis has a fighting chance against an electric lawn mower!!! I was on all fours trying to save these little monsters in the grass bidding for daughters help while daddy got the mower going again. AAAAHHHHH STOP. this is a big one. And I quickly grabbed one before it got in the way of where he was mowing. He again had the look of ' what did I marry??@??@?@?' ok so by the time it was all done I had saved over 27 in the net 10 or so were put on other plants too. Then came the funny sad part... what was I going to do with these little monsters? As we sat there watching them . . . wait what is that one doing??? Eating another mantis!!! The largest mantis had another in its claws happily eating as the front of its dinner was trying to run away. The poor thing. Well hubby reminded us that mantis get big by eating lots of protein. And what are smaller mantis... protein. I grabbed the phone and began calling anyone in the area with a possible active garden. I found a few but by the time I was ready to leave for the evening it was late and I had one option. We proceeded over to their home where the two youngest girlies (under 6) were happily awaiting their new residents. They had never seen or held a mantis so I helped them to their new pets. They were so cute! They wanted to hold every one that came out of the tent. So after a bit of coaxing we got all but one mantis out and into their garden. Hopefully they will keep the garden clean of little monsters. The last mantis went to my grandpas house to live on his grape vines. I thought that it would be a perfect home since I have never seen one I hope to see more now... it was a fairly large one. I took some photos of them... have to put them up soon. So if you were wondering where I have been that was just one day.

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