I'm craving creativity right now - I have an insane urge to muck with clay, and design some dangly wire earrings, sew a pair of pajamas and cast on 15 new knitted things, and of course play hooky from work to do it all - even though work is fun, I have no knitting time there. Instead I will schedule some knitting time into the weekend. The Cool Air is arriving this weekend, long overdue and greatly anticipated by all. So my weekend is planned - Saturday for hunting and gathering, plus indoor chores, then Vigil Mass, knitting and PPV movie, and then Sunday I get up early and tackle that damn backyard. Rome wasn't built in a day and that yard won't be done in one, or even in a month, but it's time to make a good start. Hacking through the jungle of baby golden raintrees, bagging trash, cutting back the lantana and bougainvilla and jasmine that crept out and took over in two years of neglect, the place looks like hell. The whole yard is going to get an Extreme Makeover. By spring I hope to have a patio (I'll be paying Amiable Rednecks to put that in for me, I do have my heavy lifting limits) a nice sodded lawn (ditto on the installation - St. Augustine sod is a bitch) but I'll do the labor on several rose bushes, lots more confederate jasmine (heavenly fragrance, though it does want to take over the world) and a small patch for some herbs and a tomato plant or two. I figure I will burn hundreds of calories in the backyard, who needs a gym right now?

I've found a potential taker for the pond, and the taker even comes with a son with a strong back, equally strong friends, and a truck, who will remove it for me. I'll decide that after this weekend - after I clean up the wreckage I may decide to install a new filtration system and keep it. I'd have to start over with new plants, probably new goldfish (I doubt there are survivors, between the great blue heron and the filter crash) I could do it. But damn, that sounds like a lot of work just typing it. I'm trying to simplify, abandon the things that belonged to my old life that just don't fit anymore.

I bought some fresh catnip and lavender - plus more rooibos tea, I'm addicted - from Glenbrook Farms - they knock me out with their fast shipping - I ordered yesterday morning and it was here tonight. Of course, we're both in Florida, but it's still amazing that they pack and ship the order the day it is placed. The cats went insane at the smell of fresh catnip, and I had to hastily stuff some felted mice (I have limp catnip mouse carcasses in a drawer, after the Great Catnip Mousathon of this summer) and throw them out in the garage. The boys are out there getting stoned. Natasha didn't care. Murphy was of course madly jealous, so I stuffed a mouse with some fluff and gave it to him - he went wild, racing through the house, celebrating a mouse of his own. I MUST make him a felted teddy bear for Christmas. He loves soft toys, but he's not allowed to have standard pet store stuffed toys because they always seem to have squeakers, and his terrier instincts drive him to immediately disembowel the toy to stop the squeaking. He has never tried to disembowel a toy that doesn't squeak, so it's the sound that makes him do it. It's quite weird to watch him - he obviously wants to cuddle a soft toy, he loves them madly, but at the first squeak it's prey and a goner. So far "his" stuffed mouse is being tossed around, cuddled and appreciated, but not beheaded. I think a bear will work.

The lavender will go into some felted sachets - I need to swatch the lovely heathery lavender yarn I bought at the retreat for a possible dresser set, and those swatches will become sachets. Glenbrook Farms' lavender smells so incredible, I could smell the box from feet away when it was sitting at my front door.