Weeds, Wings, and Warbling

So it's just about "10:15 on a Saturday night," as the old Cure song goes, and I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to write about my day.

It was a beautiful day here in south-central Pennsylvania, and I took advantage of that, plus the fact that we actually had no specific plans this weekend (a rarity!), to do some work in my poor neglected flowerbeds. Last year I never even got around to planting any flowers in them, which disappointed me, so I'm determined to do better this year.

So far, I'm off to a pretty good start. This morning I went to Lowe's and bought 36 packs of pink and white vinca plants. I always plant vinca in my flowerbeds because I like the colors of the flowers, the leaves are a nice glossy dark green, and most importantly, they do well in sunny, hot, and dry conditions. So if we get a dry spell in the middle of the summer, like we often do, they hold up pretty well. Here's an example of some vinca plants in case you aren't familiar with what they look like. The ones I got this year are the lighter pink color, and also white.

I also got 36 packs of celosia. I had these two years ago, the last time I planted annuals, and they were also nice, although at that time I only got yellow ones, and this year I got a variety: yellow, pink, and red. Celosia grows taller than vinca, so it looks nice planted in a row behind the vinca. Here's an example of what celosia plants look like, which basically look just like the ones I got:
Unfortunately, I couldn't just start digging holes and planting the flowers right away; I had to do some cleanup work first. My flowerbeds still contained the (wilting) leaves of the daffodils and tulips from the spring, as well as a few weeds, of course. My original flowerbed wasn't really in very bad condition, but my newer - and larger - one had many more weeds, as well as lots of stray grass. And the one along the side of the house - ugh. I really need to just plant some small bushes or perennials on that side, because I don't have much there but weeds and grass sticking up through the mulch. So it really needs something, but I don't really like to be bothered with it, since it's on the side of the house and isn't as visible. But that probably won't be happening anytime in the very near future.

Anyhow, after working from 1:30 to 4:30 this afternoon, I had filled a large garbage bag with plant leaves, weeds, and grass, and all my flowerbeds were ready for me to plant some flowers. But by that time, I was ready to quit for the day - I just didn't feel like starting on the job of planting 72 packs of flowers. I did water them as they sat in their market packs, eagerly waiting to occupy their new location, but then I went inside to wash off all the dirt (and sunscreen - yes, I learned my lesson after last week's sunburn) and talk about our evening plans.

After I showered, Brian asked me, "For dinner tonight, would you like to go somewhere that serves good wings?" I said, "Sure!" So after I got ready, we drove to Mt. Holly Springs to a little bar/restaurant called Three Pines. It's kind of a biker bar, but Brian's friend had told him they have really good wings. And he was right! They have 25 different sauces for their wings. We got some with Honey BBQ and some with Teriyaki. We liked both flavors, but the Teriyaki ones did get to be a bit much after a while, so it was good we got a smaller quantity of them. I had a small salad along with my wings (I had to have at least some vegetables with my meal), and Brian got some "Beef Veggie" soup (as it was written on the chalkboard of daily specials) which he said was pretty good.

After dinner, even though we didn't need them, we went down the street and got ice cream sundaes. We were going to get CMP's (Chocolate, Marshmallow, and Peanuts, for those not familiar with them), but they only came in a "Super" size, and we really didn't want anything that big. So Brian got a regular sundae with chocolate and marshmallow sauce (no peanuts), and I also got a regular one, but with hot fudge and marshmallow sauce.

On the way home, Brian asked, "Would you like to do some karaoke once we get home?" I replied with a resounding "Yes!" For Brian's birthday, I got him the Xbox 360 video game called "Lips," which is basically a karaoke game. It comes with a pretty good variety of songs, and there are more available to download on Xbox Live, and more songs are added about every week.

We sang everything in "Co-Op mode," which meant we took turns singing part of the time (usually the verses) and sang together some of the time (usually the choruses). I have to say, we make an excellent singing duo! For three of the songs we sang, we scored so well that we ranked in the top 50 singers - worldwide! So of course we were pretty proud of ourselves.

And that brings us to the present time. I guess now I'd better go get ready for bed, since I have a lot of planting to do tomorrow - plus we do want to try to get in a bike ride before the weekend is over!