tsubasahome

Anybody ever have this happen before with own root roses?

We got a bunch of David Austin roses from Chamblee's(the ones they actually remembered to send). I understand that Chamblee's often puts multiple cuttings of the same rose in one pot, but something very weird is going on here! Among others, we got Tamora, Ambridge Rose, and Heritage. The first to bloom was Tamora, then Heritage. All was well. Then Tamora bloomed again, producing a flower that looked an awful lot like Ambridge Rose! On close inspection, the middle cutting looked like the foliage was slightly larger...

Then Ambridge Rose, which I planted at the front of a border because of its size, popped its first flower and it looked just like Heritage! I was pissed! Why do we need two Heritages? Heritage is not small! One side of the rose grew strangely tall and leggy. Then it popped another flower that looked like Ambridge Rose. All was well. Then it bloomed again today on the leggy side and looked like Heritage!

Tamora has also bloomed again, producing two Tamoras and one Ambridge Rose. LOL...

I wonder what is going to happen to these roses...Chamblee's has a policy that they'll only replace roses after 30 days, which is tough if they take longer than that to bloom. I hope they don't have a fight to the death or something...

Also, I think my Griff's Red is really Don Juan, because it is now taller than I am.

I spent the time before dinner digging a first class hole for Madame Hardy, potting up our bands of Felicite Parmentier, Rook, Duchesse de Montebello, and the bizarre stick that is Gallicandy, and now we just have to wait for the everbloomers to show up tomorrow.

I'm a little miffed that Felicite Parmentier was barely rooted, but Rook and Gallicandy were okay, and Duchesse de Montebello had a mighty root system when I removed it from its band pot. I can't get over how silly the Gallicandy band looks. It's like a two foot tall stick with a tiny tuft of leaves growing out of the top. I certainly hope RVR gave Lauren her money back on Gallicandy, as she paid for the gallon and got a band instead! She did give them permission to substitute, but she really ought to go over her invoice and credit card statements.

Polareis will likely be the only rugosa we get, as Topaz Jewel is the only other one we even remotely like and we have enough yellow flowers already. I found several of Polareis's thorns embedded in Madame Hardy when I was planting it. Scary...

I'm not freezing, but I'm getting pretty aggravated, having to do spring freeze protection every couple of days on my plants. -_-;;;; Everything's a month ahead of schedule, and I'm particularly concerned about my Chinese tree peonies. They got botrytis big time last year and I was afraid I'd have to cut them down to the ground and lose all the flowers until they recovered, but they're actually spotless this year. Blue Butterfly has 12 enormous flower buds, and Green on White Jade Tower(which just looks like Phoenix White to me) has 13. Flying Swallow in a Red Dress will likely not bloom. I have them all trussed up with garbage bags wrapped around their branches. ^^;;; I had a brief moment of panic when Blue Butterfly froze solid in spite of my protection, but it looked better after the stems thawed out. It's 6 years old and probably worth over $600 at this point, and I'd hate to see it suffer freeze damage, after it took so long to get to this size!

As far as my other peonies, I wonder if my 2nd year Bartzella will not bloom. =_= I'm pissed, I paid top dollar for it but I can't see any flower buds! On the other hand, I planted several peonies last year and a few have flower buds. Some are quite large. From what I can see, Buckeye Belle and Salmon Dream will likely give us flowers. First Arrival, Coral Sunset, and Lorelei might. As far as Minnie Shaylor goes...it hasn't come up yet. ^^;;;; I wonder what happened to it? I doubt it's dead!

I finished writing Chapter 18 of my story. Now on to the final chapter! Well...that and the epilogue... I also finished rerooting a rather fierce Ghoulia for my own collection. ^_^ In a few weeks, I will have a rerooted Dead Tired Cleo, Day at the Maul Frankie, and Dead Tired Draculaura for sale. Draculaura will have to have her lips repainted, just like the other one, due to factory damage. =_=;;; I'm doing Cleo's hair in Restoredoll Tempest Red, and Frankie's in Dollyhair Lagoon Blue. Not sure about Draculaura, as I don't have her hair yet, but probably Restoredoll Ruby Tuesday.

Perhaps my mistake is expecting for everything to go smoothly on the first try... =_=

My hands are still killing me, but I managed to put enough hair in Frankie's head to realize that the hair color is fab. ^___^ I'm glad, I had a hard time finding the perfect doll for it. It didn't look right on the Pure Neemo skin tone.

So...what I've gleaned from this. If your Monster High doll has a ton of glue in her head like my Frankie did(I was literally removing potato chip-sized hunks of glue from her head) and you want to reroot her, this is what you need:

1. A 1.55 mm steel crochet hook
2. A nail scissors
3. A jeweler's pliers
4. Access to a sink

Cut her hair off as short as possible. I mean SHORT. Monster High dolls don't have the hair sewn into the head with interlocking loops like normal fashion dolls. It looks like they just rooted the hair into the head, left the ends hanging, and discharged a hot glue gun in her head. The dolls seem to have varying amounts of glue--Skull Shores Ghoulia had barely any, Day at the Maul Frankie had a TON. I've also heard that Gloom Beach Draculaura is bad. You need the hair to be so short that you can barely see it. Otherwise, the glue will get stuck in it and not come out.

Take your doll head to the sink and run the hot tap into her head hole. ^^ You want the water so hot that it almost burns you. This is to soften the glue and the head.

Using the crochet hook to scrape the inside of the head and the pliers to pull out larger glue chunks, remove the glue and hair from the inside of the doll's head. Make sure you keep your fingers around her ears and don't touch her face too much. The hot water will make the head softer and more flexible. Start at the sides and work toward the middle. When the head cools off, give it the hot water treatment again.

I know the next time will be easier, as it didn't occur to me to heat the head right away. At least my hands have healed to the point where I can type!

Not only is there some kind of wild animal in our house that's been stealing Lucas's food and currently making a racket in our living room wall, but I somehow managed to hit myself in the face with a magazine and give myself a fat, bloody lip. Boo.

If it weren't for the iced lemon cookies waiting for me, I'd kill myself right now.

Nobody has crazier dreams than me.

You know how if you have something you need to do the next day, you'll dream about doing it?

( Cut for disgustingness featuring a classic movie actor who's been dead for at least 25 years )

I spent a good portion of today pulling out clumps of that annoying purple-on-purple columbine that reseeded itself all over my yard. I used to be obsessed with columbine but I feel like the yard needs a change and the only color that's left is the one I liked the least. Columbine is a short-lived perennial but that particular color reseeded itself like crazy! I also fertilized the tree peonies, and all the herbaceous peonies that already bloomed. And Lauren's purple iris, since it's done blooming and I heard that variety sometimes reblooms. This is fascinating stuff.

It's a shame that the garden is done blooming so early in the season. We're in kind of lull right now. The mock orange probably won't start blooming for another several weeks, and for some reason, the first Japanese iris I planted doesn't have flower spikes this year. Huh. Maybe it needs to be divided.

It looks like that chipmunk I saved last year has decided to repay the favor by summoning all its buddies to dig holes all over our yard, and eat all our sunflowers and cosmos. They're cute little buggers but they all can go to hell.

One of the pitfalls of the DVR is the fact that if the movie runs longer than its allotted time, the ending will be cut off and not recorded. And you won't know it until it's too late!

Lauren and I camped out in front of the TV for TWO HOURS and FIFTEEN MINUTES last night watching Daddy Longlegs, featuring old man Fred Astaire and his disturbing love affair with a woman 30 years younger than him. And right at the part where he meets Leslie Caron in the art gallery at the end, the movie stops! The TV popped up the message, "Do you wish to delete this movie now?" ARGGGGHHHHHHH! Well, the movie was okay, but not great.

I'm almost done with the first head of the commission I'm working on right now. I...um...am using a lot more hair than I anticipated. ^^;;;;; The problem is that the hair is packed by weight, and I guess this particular blend was heavy... I think I still have enough. I probably won't run out. I hate it when this happens, though! >_< I never know exactly how much hair I'm going to need, because it really depends on the hairstyle, so I like to have a bit extra.

Like any good severe weather phobic, I use the NWS homepage to get my weather information. Since they're funded by taxpayers' dollars and don't have to resort to deliberately scaring the hell out of people to get ratings/subscriptions, I can read their forecast discussions and get an honest, logical assessment of what's going on with the weather, why, and what factors figure into each severe weather event so I can decide whether or not I really should hit myself over the head and knock myself unconscious when severe weather threatens. The person(or people) who does the write-up for Upton, NY is pretty realistic and literate(some of the forecast discussions I've read for other areas are written entirely in shorthand and make no sense). Sometimes, what my area forecast discussion says and what the Storm Prediction Center says don't seem to jive. I know they have to communicate with each other, but I'm completely speechless about the events of the past two days. Today, in particular...I seriously had to contemplate shutting myself in my basement all day/consider what my house would look like without a roof, because the SPC was predicting a mega epic historic severe weather outbreak in CT with a moderate risk! And 45% wind! And 10% tornadoes(complete with a special hatched area right over CT to single us out for especially destructive tornadoes) And talk of a PDS tornado watch! And what happened?

NOTHING!

I got 3 minutes of gentle rain. In that entire mega-high risk might as well be a PDS tornado watch with the probabilities they gave us(90% risk of 5 or more EF-0 to EF-2, 50% risk of one or more mega-tornadoes), CT got 1 tornado warning, on a supercell that was tornadic for like 2 radar frames. I don't even think the funnel cloud touched down. I think there were like 3 warnings in that entire watch, and only one possible verification. As for the rare 45% wind? There were about 40 or so wind reports, none over 60 mph, none in the 45% area! They were all to the west of the moderate risk area!

To top things off, yesterday they put almost all of New England north of southern CT under tornado watch for no reason!

I really need a drink. I find knowing the facts about severe weather helps my phobia, but I hate having to scrounge weather reports off of message boards where people want a massive tornado to destroy their home state and will talk it up as much as possible. And don't get me started on The Weather Channel and Accuweather--they seem to derive sexual gratification from telling people that they're going to have their lives ruined by a mile-wide tornado.