Hazer

Ditto!

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Peter Sellers, Patsy Cline, Pink, Sid Caesar and Dragon

Dragon

Thanks Baldur, I didn't know I shared my birthday with any of those people!

Baldur

Here is an interesting video on 'gnome management.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0foMKAxCww

ansara

Yes, these gnomes are really a problem....here in their motherland the landscape in spring is totally polluted...no place without them. Hate to smoke on my balcony, while they are watching me....

Dragon

Hmmm, I know that Baldur has a small population living on his property but I believe they are quite welcome there. I can't imagine Baldur using a tiller on them.

Baldur

I would never till the gnomes that shelter here and don't find them to be pests at all. It seems like most if not all of them Winter in my carriage house clustered around the hot water tank where it is rather warm.
There may be others that have constructed underground homes at Boughbreak, but we've never ventured to search them out and disturb their privacy.
The part about gnomes poking up through the ground in early spring like asparagus shoots was rather silly, they just don't do that.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Angela Cartwright, Hugh Grant, Michael Keaton, Otis Redding, Billy Preston and Colonel Harland Sanders

Dragon

and also a Happy Birthday to Lilalee too.

Arw65

and normal and peasy

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Charles Kuralt, Arnold Palmer and Jose' Feliciano!

Normal

Thanks for the TD wishes. My day is actually 9/11/36. There were three of us in HS who were good buddies, and remained so over the years along with others of our gang. One of the three died this summer after a nasty time due to years of smoking. Her family picked her birthday for the memorial service, so I will be motoring north in IL for that tomorrow. It will be an occasion of great memories and several others of the "Canoe Crones," as we became in recent decades, will be on hand. That includes the third 9/ll lady, motoring from Detroit. Odd birthday, but definitely a celebration!

lynnspotter

: ) http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=117957

lilalee

Thanks Dragon!! Hope your birthday was full of fun and frills!!

Baldur

I had a rather gory nightmare last night. Most likely the wraith of Sister Mary Barbara was infiltrating my mind.

Then Baldur was shaken out of bed at 3AM by a loud persistant 'crunching' sound . It turned out to be Heidi having some 'crackers' in the kitchen.
Robert always calls the dried cat food 'crackers'. It is not unusual to hear him trying to get Heidi into the house saying: 'Do you want some crackers?'.
In any case there is no logical reason why anyone should be able to hear a cat chewing from clear across our house, but in the otherwise quiet early morning this particular sound carries well.

Baldur

The nightmare was an odd pastiche of short vignettes.
In one it is nighttime. Baldur was walking along a parapet of an Art Deco style building. This one was a bit taller than the surrounding ones, but they were all connected at their bases with a series of staircases, courtyards, and terraces.
There were small Klieg lights, perhaps the size of snare drums on this parapet and on several others in the distance. They were all pivoting about and the beams of light were dancing up and down the walls of the other buildings and occasionally illuminating the dark grey billowing clouds overhead.
Plenty of other people were milling about; When I looked down there was a small group of college-aged people seated on the floor of the terrace below me. They were all carving out pumpkins and making Jack O'Lanterns.
A man appeared on the parapet with white clown make-up on his face.
He grabbed one of the Klieg lights and sent it hurling down at the terrace.
It hit one of the seated young men squarely on the head and he exploded into a bloody pulp. There was a mess of human entrails and pumpkin guts sprayed across everything.

Then I am on a bicycle, riding down a street that seemed familiar from my childhood.
It is a Summer afternoon and the weather is pleasant.
There is a big broken tree limb laying in the street and I maneuver around it and park my bike in my friend Scott's driveway.
This didn't appear to be Scott's street, but it certainly was his house.
(Baldur has not seen Scott since at least 1980).

Next I am in a kitchen in an older house, not Scott's house. If anything it reminded me of one of the houses I'd lived in years later. It had the layout from the kitchens in the tenement buildings that were put up in Southern New England at the turn of the century and until the Depression, but it wasn't a building I remember ever being in.
There was Baldur looking for something in the lower cabinets, behind each door stood several 2 litre bottles of water (no labels), scattered 10 penny nails, many of which were bent, and lots of cobwebs. I continued opening doors and looking behind each one.
Then I picked up a hammer and used it's claw to start tearing up a section of the linoleum, and then to start prying up floorboards.
Just before the first board came loose a policeman entered the room and told me I was going to get fingerprints all over everything.
Then I abruptly sat u,p hearing the sound of crunching.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to D.H. Lawrence, O. Henry, Mickey Hart, Paul 'Bear' Bryant, Harry Connick Jr., Kristy McNichol, Lola Falana, Brian DePalma,
Moby, Ludacris, Luscious Lopez, Princes Akishino, Bashar al-Assad and Leo Kottke

marius

My goodness, Baldur, what interesting dreams! Love the 'cat crackers' and yes ... cats make a lot of noise when they eat. I can imagine hearing a cat eating and being awakened by the sound of it. How funny!

marius had a funny dream during yesterday's nap: She and spouse lived in this house which I must say, is certainly the house of my dreams in the real world! Actually, I’ve wondered for years what my ideal house would look like and this dream showed it to me. And, wow! Adore that house, LOVE it, LOVE it ... now if only I could find it itrw, and ... afford it too.

Anyway, the house had a beautifully decorated sitting room lined with French doors on one side that looked out onto a spacious stone patio, complete with short stone walls, pots of flowers, etc. A bit beyond the porch, out into the garden, was the largest, most beautiful oak tree I've ever seen. The diameter of this tree was easily 12-15 feet. It was huge! The sun was shining on the bark and leaves, stunning beauty, and I kept thinking, “I have a magic tree in my own yard!”

Now, back to the house and the family room/sitting room. The décor was absolutely what I’d want but not sure how to describe it. There were yellows, flowers in vases, a fireplace, some antiques but all was designed to feel cozy and comfortable. So, I'm trying to write in that room but spouse has taken down the garden-side wall to make repairs. The entire wall with French doors is removable. It’s a pleasant day so I don’t mind that the wall is missing but then I notice some small animals have come in from the garden. They are very calm and just rumbling around the room.

I go to find spouse and say, “Well, since you took the wall down, we now have a stray calico cat, a baby bear and a small kangaroo in that room.” He thought that was funny but when we got back to the room all the animals were gone. THEN ... Puck, our part-Maine coon cat showed up and when he saw the wide open outdoors, no wall, I could almost hear him say, “Try to stop me now.”

He bounded out the door and first thing he saw was the kangaroo off in the distance. He’d already met the kangaroo (maybe it was a pet of ours? I don’t know) so what did Puck do? He got up on his back feet and started hopping towards the kangaroo ... pretending he was one I guess. That totally cracked me up because if any cat would make a good kangaroo it is this one!

I was so enjoying his antics and knew he was too ... then next thing I knew, the afternoon sun was shining on me and I was awake.
Yeah, that was a fun dream and finally, I know what the house of my dreams looks like. : )

Dragon

I'm always amused at how something in a dream can be so ridiculous but seem so normal while you're actually in the dream. How, while you're dreaming, it's like "Of course this Malibu beachhouse is my best friend's place" but in the morning you remember that they live in a two bedroom apartment in the not very nice part of town.

Love that marius dreamed of her dream house. Hope Baldur's dreams tonight are less of the grisly nature and more of the dream house/garden nature.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Yao Ming, Jennifer Hudson, Barry White, Rachel Ward, Ruben Studdard, Maria Muldaur, Jesse Owens, George Jones, Bizzy Bone, Jennifer Nettles, Ben Folds, Adrian Adonis, Alfred A. Knopf, Henry Hudson King Francis I of France, Lorenzo II de' Medici and Maurice Chevalier.