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So, I haven't posted in a while except to write up movies. That's for a couple of reasons: one, I've been kind of busy with work. When I have any free time, I've been spending it sacked out in front of the TV. Which leaves me with a lot of movies to write up, and little time for other posting. And not much interesting material to write about besides the movies. But here are a few odds and ends.

Does anyone want a little pack of 10 crocus bulbs in assorted colors? They were a free bonus with some plants I ordered, but I have tons of chipmunks and my gardening books says not to bother, the chipmunks will dig up and eat every one. Please take them off my hands so I don't waste my time planting chipmunk food.

I saw one of the owls two days ago. It was sitting in a low branch in a tree overlooking the bird feeder, right near the door. I've never been so close to one before. There were tons of birds flying around it making all kinds of noise. (I wonder if the birds were trying to chase it away from their nests?) It was kind of a crazy scene, the owl with a cloud of smaller birds around it. Alas, just as I saw it, while I was opening the door, the owl flew up to a higher branch on a tree about a hundred feet away. It was huge. Awe inspiring. Its wingspan as it took off looked as big as my outstretched arms. It sat in the far tree and we watched each other for a few minutes, but I was running late and had to go. I went to open the gate and when I turned back around, it was gone.

This morning I dreamed about the owl. The dream started out just like what had happened: I opened the door, the owl took off, those huge wings opening up. But in the dream my camera was already turned on and in my hands, so I got a series of photos as it flew away. They looked like good photos too: the owl flew towards the sunlight and the light flared beautifully off its wings. In real life it was an overcast day and the owl was flying through dense trees and my camera was uselessly packed in my bag. But hey, I can be a brilliant photographer in my dreams, can't I?

In the dream I thought to myself how lucky that this new camera has a "rapid shoot" feature that lets you take a bunch of photos and holds them in a buffer before saving them to the memory card. I would never have gotten so many shots of the owl with my old camera, which had to pause for a couple of seconds while saving each photo. But as soon as I finished shooting, I realized that something was wrong: it wasn't making the noise that meant it was saving to the card. I looked at the window and realized that the memory card was full. Stupidly I had forgotten to download my photos from before. (This is true: I've got about 3 weeks worth of photos on the card. But's not full.) I thought that maybe I could put in my backup memory card, but I was afraid that opening the case to remove the full card would clear the buffer and I'd lose the owl photos. I was looking for the camera manual when I woke up.

It's kind of funny that a beautiful dream about the majesty of nature turns into a major geek-out about my camera. But that's me.

Finally did some more gardening this morning. I hadn't worked in the yard for a couple of weeks, because of being busy and also because last time I kind of hurt my back. I was clearing a bed around the place where we planted the blueberries. There are all these vines growing there, and I was pulling out their long and tenacious roots. I've done this before with no problems, but it was on a slope where I could stand at the bottom of the slope and basically lean forward to grab the vines. This was on flat ground, so I spent a couple of hours stooping over, hacking at the vines with my mattock and yanking out the roots. I felt a little sore that evening, but then back pain actually woke me up in the middle of the night. That was kind of scary. I felt fine after some Advil and a day of rest, but it's made me want to be more careful in future. I think I might get one of those kneeler things.

Anyway, today I started attacking the yucca that is springing up all over the bed down by the road. There are a couple of big yucca plants which seem to have taken the clearing of the bed around them as an invitation to send up as many new yucca as they possibly can. Did you know that yucca have humongous roots? It's really impressive. They're so big that right under the plant they aren't even like roots: more like a thick, white, starchy layer in the subsoil. When you order yucca in a restaurant is that what you get? It doesn't seem like any of the above-ground plant would be good to eat.

I'm tempted to admire the yucca and its prodigious roots, except that I'm trying to get rid of them so the roots are my enemy. Even worse, I didn't know what they were at first -- the young shoots are soft and un-yucca like, I thought it was some kind of fall bulb -- so I planted my irises all around them. Now I have to take up the irises, dig up the yucca, hack out the root masses, and replant the irises. What a pain.

On the bright side, the yucca roots are so deep that taking them out is creating big holes where I can plant clumps of daffodils.