My Earth Day/summer project is to have a garden. Not a really big garden, something modest with pretty, yet useful plants. We have this area in the front of the house that I’ve hated from Day One. There used to be some kind of bush growing there, that I’d have cut back on a regular basis (Yes, I know that sounds dirty). The bush was surrounded by a bazillion white rocks. Then the bush died and I went a little psycho with a chain saw so all that was left of it was a hideous stump.

It took us a year to clear out most of the rock and hours to dig up that awful stump. There were a lot of curse words hurled at the stump and by the time we gave up on getting the entire root we were only about two miles from China. Last night Chris chopped it up into trashcan size pieces and it will be officially out of our lives forever come Wednesday morning.

The next step was to get some plants. I went with Mom this weekend to the Herbal Festival in Sand Springs. There were so many plants and people, it was a little overwhelming. Mom had put together a make-shift cart and in no time we had it filled and I was carting around a flat of marigolds. We saw women pulling plants right out of their plastic containers because they didn’t think they’d get the ones they wanted. It was like a Macy’s After Thanksgiving Sale, but with plants.

My plants made it home safely and I put them in the ground Sunday. I ended up with way too many marigolds, but they’re pretty and they smell good. I can’t wait for some of the bigger plants to really grow in like my sage and lavender. I also got this oh so cute elephant sprinkler to keep my plants moist and happy.

Now, we’ll see what happens with them. Bwahahahaha!

I have these little tiny silver elephant earrings that I wear all the time. They’re pretty much the only earrings I wear with the exception of the pearl earrings that Chris gave me. I wear those with dressy stuff. The elephants are my every-day-wear earrings.

I had the first pair for so long that no one could remember where they came from. This became a big problem when I lost one of the earrings down a drain. All of my family hunted everywhere in just about every store for these earrings. We just couldn’t find them. Two years went by and I had just about given up hope on ever replacing them. Then my Mom found them in a random gift shop in Silver Dollar City (Chris’s first and last trip to Branson). My heart soared. I had my earrings back.

Wednesday I reached in my jewelry bag at the Y and only pulled out one earring. I searched all over the floor at the gym and in the house. No earring. As a result of not having my everyday earrings, I spilled ice buckets and knocked over microscope samples. I tripped over air. It was bad. I can’t find the earring any where. It must be with the curtains.

Luckily I found the exact pair on Amazon. Chris is ordering me a dozen.

It’s not that I’ve been on a blog hiatus; its just that I’ve been neglectful. I’ve had plenty of topics for blogging I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to get any of it written down. Ever since Chris and I got back from our trip to Arkansas, I’ve been swamped with projects at work. When I’m not working or I’m not at the Y, I’m usually slaving away on getting my new flower bed ready for spring (pictures to come someday).

Chris and I have also been pretty social the last couple of weeks visiting friends and family and doing nerdy things like going to seminars. Last week we went to hear Jared Diamond speak at USAO. Two things were really cool about this. First was the fact that we had a Pulitzer Prize Winner speak at our alma mater and second was that it was JARED DIAMOND! I’ve only read two of his books, but all the rest are on my list to read. His talk focused primarily on his latest book, Collapse which deals with why societies fail. It seemed that his number one reason for society collapses has to do with man’s effect on the environment. Makes you really want to recycle and by an electric car.

My sister said that when he spoke at OSU many people referred to Jared Diamond as an extremist. I didn’t see any evidence of extremist theory. He did not speak to us with a Southern Baptist minister voice saying “RECYLCE or suffer in HELL!�. When asked what we could do as citizens, Jared Diamond said the most important thing we could do was to get out and vote. That doesn’t seem like an extremist theory to me, but then again many people thought Richard Clarke was an extremist. So what do I know?

Tonight we are going to hear Jane Goodall speak at Oklahoma City University. This must be my astrological month for intellectualism.