That last one must have been from a month ago... I was having trouble getting any of the fence companies to come by or even call me back.  One made an appointment and then didn't show.  A second one made an appointment for 10 days later.  Well, in the meantime, I decided to have my lawn guys put in some of those cheap fence poles along the driveway and... voila, it stopped it!  Of course, they're still parking on the lawn, but they're going in over the curb.  YAY.  Between the posts and the labor, it cost me $120 to do this, but it's ugly.  The fence guy showed up and I decided since this is working, I'd put in a fence instead of a gate - 16' will cost me (sit down...) $1600!  $100/ft.  Is that crazy??  Sounds like it to me.  I could have saved some (about $300) if I went with chain link, but that's not pretty, so I went with this:

It's not actually iron - he says it's aluminum.  Imagine how much iron would be! Yikes!  Anyway, it'll stop this nonsense and look nice.  But it will take a couple months to get it installed.

But on a (hopefully) positive note, I emailed the property manager a couple days ago and asked him to please send someone over to mow the grass over there.  This is what I said...

"Can you please send someone to mow the lawn at 4204 Pacific?  (I think we both know they are not going to do it...)  It's now 1.5-2 feet tall in the back, and probably on the 42nd St. side (which I can't see...)  Of course, where he parks looks ok from my house - nothing to really mow there - but I imagine the other side with the tree needs it, too.

A neighbor was complaining to me about it and talking about calling the city.  I told her I'd see if you can't take care of it, because I know if that happens, it's the owner, not the renter, that gets that bill...  no consequence to the jerks that won't do what they're supposed to do!  (I'm so sorry you're stuck with these people as well...)"

His reply was "This may be the last nail required to close the lid on their lease."  Oh boy oh boy!  I sure hope he follows through because I am sick of these jerks. The view of their back yard from my GH is pitiful.  I'm not implying I have a perfect yard - it can get a little cluttered after a windy day of blowing things around.  But at least I keep it mowed and trimmed.  

On to other things.  Johnny Sortino's, a pizza joint that has been in Omaha for (I guess) 60 years, is closing this next week.  It makes me feel sad because it's the very first place Mark took me for dinner and was always one of our old staples.  And I've been trying to get over there for a last pizza and they haven't been answering the phone.  So today I drove over there with the intention of going in and waiting for a pizza to go and there was a line out the door and into the parking lot with nary a parking space.  It was 3:00!!  Well, I can't stand around that long with my hips/back/knees, so I turned around and came home.  I'm so bummed.  Their closing the 24th, so I'm hoping I can get over there on a weekday before that happens. They're closed tomorrow and Monday, so it'll have to happen Tues., Wed., or Thurs.  

I'm working on the cactus club newsletter early... Kathy, the prez, thinks I should get it out early to get RSVPs for the picnic... our June meeting is at her house and we do a potluck with the club buying chicken, so she needs to know how many plan to show.  She still has illusions that our club has more members than it really has.  I hear her talking to people about how we usually have "15-20 members show up to meetings."  NOT.  Our whole membership is about 19 - some of those are "family" memberships, but the spouses only show up to the Christmas party, so if we have 10 at meetings, we're doing good.

Anyway, my point of talking about the newsletter was to say that I have to come up with at least one article every month and it gets harder and harder to do that.  In the 18 years I've done this, I've written about every kind of plant I grow myself, so that last few years has been taking info from the internet about plants I'm not as familiar with.  I think it's about time someone else did this for awhile, but there's a snowball's chance in Hell of anyone else offering to do it.  It was about 5 years ago that Des Moines lost their editor and asked if we could do a "dual" newsletter "for a while" until they could get a member to take it over.  Well, that hasn't happened.  They're very grateful and complimentary, but it IS more work because I have to get info from 2 presidents, and I feel like it needs more content.  **SIGH**  I like that it gives me a creative outlet, but I don't want to get so I dread it every month.

My plants - there were losses due to my lack of enthusiasm over the winter.  But I'm trying not to have regrets.  I had too many over-sized plants that were making me feel a little smothered.  I'm going to take cuttings from my largest Crown of Thorns and sell the big ones before winter.  I don't want to be overflowing the GH.  I want to be selective about what I keep this fall.

I've got everything I plan to put outside out now.  Well, except the one Epiphyllum that bloomed recently.  Now that it's done, I'll put it out.  When I pulled it to go outside, out popped a big ol' bud that was facing the window on a bottom shelf.  I didn't want the drastic change of going outside to make it drop, so I left it to open, and here's what it looked like:

It's one I got from Dave Shorney, a member of the club who passed a few years ago.  It's Epiphyllum 'Raspberry Ribbon'.  So beautiful!  But now it can go outside.  

I've planted most of my pots with stuff this year.  I'm feeling a little more ambitious about the outdoor flowers this year, but whether that will last or not is questionable!  I actually spent about 10 minutes weeding in my Lily of the Valley patch this afternoon!  I wish I'd gotten a photo when they were blooming - I just love those tiny sweet flowers.  That patch of Lily of the Valley was here when we bought the house in 1987 and it's very thick this year.  I've planted other things in there over the years, so there's a couple nice Hostas.  But Columbine came and went and I see little signs of it but it doesn't do much.  Then right in fron't of the GH, I planted this...

I had to look it up - it's called variegated Ground Elder, and it says it's an invasive species.  It has filled in beautifully and is starting to get up into the Lily of the Valley, so I suppose I'll start digging it up when it spills over in there and I can always sell it at the Farmer's Market.  I just love it, though.  It's so lush.  I'm very fond of anything variegated.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And that was 9 days ago, and today is Memorial Day.  Update... the neighbor's managed to get my other neighbor's nephew to mow their lawn.  He was over mowing for Marcy and Terrance apparently approached him and offered to pay him to mow his yard, which was 2' tall in the back by then.  His mom came over and helped him.  They didn't do a great job, but it's at least whacked down.  We'll see if it was a one-time thing or if they come back to keep it decent.  I have no idea where that leaves Rick (the property manager) and his position on eviction.  I'm feeling less hopeful about that...

As for Sortino's, Sat. was their last day and I never did get over there to get a "last hurrah", a pizza at the very least.  Fri., I called 79 times and it was busy every single time but one, and that one time it rang about 30 times then on came a recording..."this business is not accepting calls, please try again later."  And when I drove by at about noon to hopefully order and pick up later, the line was clear around the building!  That business is a gold mine - after this crazy last month, they could probably sell it for a fortune!

Everything I put in pots is doing well.  I planted some Marigold seed in the grow bag in the corner out front and also put my biggest VooDoo Lily out there.  Well, the tip got damaged and I wasn't sure if it would grow, but it either continued to grow and you can't tell it was damaged, or it spit out a new tip.  So the slow process of that umbrella of foliage has started.  Maybe next year it will bloom for me.  But there are several baby Marigolds growing now, about 2.5 or 3" tall.  They will bring in that orange Mom loves so much...

Some photos...

I have two pots in front of my raised bed that sits under my picture window.  Right now, that raised bed is a mess.  All but one of my pygmy Barberry bushes have died.  And the one that's left looks like shit!  So right now, it's mostly a weed bed - I will have my lawn guys pull the weeds when they come by this week.  I have a new front window on order, and once it's installed, I will have that are landscaped with some new bushes, have it filled in with additional dirt and rock.  But back to this pot, the Sedum (which is species kamtschaticum) is one I put in another pot up in the raised bed.  Probably 5 years ago, I found this flat of mixed Sedums for $20 - it was a beautiful mix and I loved that look!  So I came home and put it in a big shallow pot I got from Kathy, one of my plant buds.  She says she gets these pots from her son who has a ranch out in west Nebraska.  (I think she said he gets something in them from the feed store...)  Anyway, eventually, this Sedum choked out the rest of them.  And then about 2 years ago, I moved some of it into this pot in front and it's been spreading ever since.  So I just put a Coleus in there with it.  I try to buy at least one Coleus every year.

This pot...

...sits next to the other one.  I know - I should remove the clover, but I love clover and will leave it until after it blooms.  I just looked it up to see what species are native to Nebraska and this one is Oxalis stricta.  It gets yellow blooms which are just lovely!  At one time, I tried to get more oxalis in my back yard and actually bought and scattered seed.  Either the grass chocked them out or they didn't have good germination.  Anyway, I put two nice flowering annuals in there that are both budding up.  I believe the dark one is a Dahlia.  The other might be African Daisy.  I didn't save the tags, so I'm going by Google's ID feature.

I won't show a photo of a pot out in my landscape by the GH - I put two different Begonias (tuberous types), one with red flowers and one with yellow.  Those big, rose-type flowers.  I'm going to wait until they're more settled in and have grown to post a photo.

Out back, I have a big pot on the patio that has chives that come back every year - about half the pot.  I planted some basil seeds in the other half of the pot.  Have they come up?  I thought they had but I looked closely - the leaves definitely didn't look right so I broke a couple off and they had no smell at all.  They were weeds so I pulled them.  There are some other tiny seedlings in the pot, but who knows if they're basil or just more weeds.  I suppose I'll just buy a plant and put it in there and if the seeds germinate, they'll just fill it in...

In the other pot I planted the second small Voodoo Lily (a different species) but there is no signs of it coming up yet.  It's been cold and wet, so maybe it's just not ready to grow until there's more heat.  I also planted these tiny (TINY) Sempervivums - the whole mother rosette is about the size of a dime at maturity.  It gets these tiny ball offsets all the way around and they come loose from the mother.  When the pot is full of the tiny rosettes, and the baby plants detach from the mother, the little "balls" roll down the pile of mature plants, looking for a place to root into the soil.  Karin (the friend who grows them) says they spread pretty fast and they are winter hardy.  I've also got some of my Drimiopsis bulbs in there, hoping they will get some size to them so I can sell a lot of them by summer's end.

Down by the fence, I have 5 grow bags I've tried growing veggies in.  This year, I'm just putting in pretty stuff.  I got some horsetail reed in one.  Another the Cardinal vine.  One has a native plant whose name escapes me, and it's doing kind of so-so.  And the other two need something in them.  I may try to find something perennial to put in those two.

I planted several things around the generator.  My only criteria was that it wouldn't get too tall, so I got a couple different species of Ajuga.  The rest were just eye-appealing plants.  I have somethiing called "Jacob's Ladder" that I got from Kathy a few years ago that I planted right next to the deck - they sure do fill in slow!  And there's an old Hosta there, too.  One of the plants I added is a SUPPOSEDLY winter hardy, a cool pure white Senecio.  

So, I feel like I've accomplished a lot this year and I'm hoping to keep everything watered so they get settled in and then come back next year looking fabulous!  It's all about patience when it comes to cultivating a nice landscape and I've never been as good at the "outside" gardening as I am on the stuff in the house!

Continuing driveway saga and more...

 The irritation continues and gets worse.  A couple weeks ago, the neighbor's only vehicle got stolen right off the street in front of Marcy's house.  At 7:30 that morning, I hear a raucous BANG-BANG-BANG on my front door.  I was still sleeping, or more or less dozing in my chair in my easy-going wake-up process... and came popping out of the chair, looking out the door and there was Terrance.  I cracked the storm door, in my jammies mind you, and said "what's up"?  He said, "Sorry for getting you up (at least he could tell!) but our vehicle is missing and I'm wondering if you saw anything overnight?"  I glanced over where it's usually parked (facing the wrong direction) and said, "No, I saw it there when I went to bed."  I wish I'd thought to say, "Did you check to see if it got towed for facing the wrong way?"

Anyway, he was wondering if I had cameras that might have caught the perpetrators, and I said I do have cameras but they face my door. A day or so later, they were out front and I asked if they'd heard anything about their vehicle and they said they found someone a few doors down that had a camera that caught someone pulling up in a light colored sedan and a few minutes later, both vehicles driving off.  Of course, no clarity on the license plate.  

Within several days, they show up with another vehicle I suppose they bought to replace the suburban - a chevy equinox, I believe.  It's kind of loud, like the muffler is going out, so I hear it every time they start the car.  And they went back to parking on the lawn and coming through my driveway.  Last Sunday, he knocked on my door and I came out.  "What's up?" He says, "I just want you to know I'm going to be parking in the yard again.  I'm afraid to leave it on the street since it was stolen out there."  I told him it didn't seem likely it would happen again since I've been here for 38 years and never heard of ANY of my neighbors ever having a vehicle stolen... unless of course he thought it may be someone he knew messing with him.  He told me they moved here from Spencer, Iowa and really don't know anyone...

I said, "Well, you DO know it's illegal to park on the yard, don't you?"  He shrugged and said, "The cops told me they really can't do anything about it."  I said, "Well, whatever, just don't use my driveway."  He said, "How am I supposed to get there?"  I said, "Over the curb, of course."  "I'm not gonna do that."  I said, "Dude, it's MY driveway, stay off it!  You don't have the right to damage MY driveway!"  Of course, he launched into that spiel about just driving over it for one second and how can that do damage.  I said, "OMG, didn't you read my email?"  He acknowledged he'd read it - I explained all of that in there - what a dunce!  "I said, "Oh, are you offering to help pay for the damage when it's time to fix it again?"  His moronic response was, "Are you going to help pay for the damage to my car from going over the curb?"  I said, "It's MY FUCKING DRIVEWAY and you do NOT have the right to use it!"  To which he shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, I'm gonna."  And he walked away.

I'm surprised I didn't just explode and make a terrible mess all over my porch!  My BP was probably off the charts.  What a entitled fucking prick.  I came in and called the cops to see what I can do.  They suggested I call the mayor's hotline and report the parking on the yard, which will start a process of stopping the behavior.  I did that the next morning - they said first, they send them a notice to stop.  Then they ticket them.  After that, they tow them and will continue to do that until it stops.  And you can believe me that I will be calling every single time I see them on the lawn when it gets to that point!

And as if all of that isn't bad enough, it seems they have had more people move in with them.  Now there's some guy who comes and goes who has a pit bull that gets tied up in the back yard.  He drives a big old suburban like vehicle.  And there's a mini van, both of which are packed in the "driveway of death".  And now there's someone who drives a Jeep renegade staying there as well.  I have no idea how many people are living over there now, but I would say more than 4 adults and I have no idea how many kids...

Tomorrow, I'm going to call a fence company and see what it would take to have a gate put across my driveway.  Yes, it will be a HUGE pain in MY ass to have to open, exit, park, close and lock it and leave, and do the same thing in reverse when I come home.  But it will be so worth it to win this battle!  Today is Easter Sunday and he has come and gone at least a dozen times - I'm sure he's really fucking up that lawn royally as it's been raining all day.  I haven't been hearing back from the property manager and I'm pretty frustrated with him not helping.  With a little luck, maybe he's trying to evict them...

***************

And now it's Monday and I woke to the news that the Pope passed away overnight.  This is quite a shock after he was well enough to offer a blessing on Easter Sunday and make an appearance in the Pope-mobile.  Then he dies overnight, as if he was holding out for Easter.  I think this is evidence that we do have a hand in when we transition.  I think Mark's mom did the same thing - she was in the hospital, and it really didn't seem like it was that dire.  She had ALS and had fallen, but I honestly think she saw that fall as the beginning of the end and took it as an opportunity to "get out" before it got worse.  It was Dec. 19th, and we had the holiday party at our business that night and we went - I felt I should be there as one of the owners, and Mark said he would go as well since his mom had Bernie there with her.  We saw her the next day (which was Mark's birthday), but she had fallen unconscious... I don't remember what their explanation was, but I remember wondering if she would be going home...  We went back the next day and things were the same.  We spent some time there and stepped out for some lunch, but when we got back, she had passed.  I think she had held out to get past Mark's birthday (imagine having that memory every birthday for the rest of your life...) and waited until we weren't there.  

Anyway, I find it fascinating that he made it through what he perceived as the most significant religious day, then let go to join Jesus within hours.  WOW.  I am so happy for him to have made the transition, but terribly sad for the world losing such a good man.  He made the world a better place, defying the religious right who condemn people for being WHO they are.  It seemed like we were moving in the direction of tolerance, and then Trump and his cronies have pushed and pushed to exclude everyone who isn't what THEY perceive as "normal". I imagine the Pope had a lot of frustration at the backsliding of our country.  We can only hope they choose another progressive Pope!

I guess I didn't get back to this one or get it published last time, so I'll do it now so that I can start a new one...