Thursday July 2 2009

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Like a flock of red
birds in gusty breeze fly
scarlet poppy petals

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Haiku by Lynn Thomas

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Sparky by the Poppy Bed.

He loves to pose for his picture every time he sees

the camera and holds still until I say OK!! Good Boy!!

Our Other Blogger Friends Have Been

Showing Us Their Poppies

I was going to put these pictures in a couple

of days ago, but had others subjects to use.

So here are mine. When the wind came up

this afternoon, it blew most of the petals away.

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Cranes in Field

Muddy Ridge During the Rain

Rainy Day at the Ranch
Muddy Canyon Socked In

Ranch in Summer

Joe went to town today. He had loaded the garbage barrels in the bed of his pickup with the tractor bucket, so went to the dump. He also got a haircut, and his protime at the clinic and ate lunch in town. I moved the furniture in the living room, got that room cleaned up and finally used the hardwood floor finish in there. Also cleaned the kitchen and did laundry. Guess I must be feeling some better, but still have that pain in my neck and another one in my stomach, plus dealing with the arthritis. Guess the storms are keeping that riled up. This afternoon I worked on all the financial stuff, going over the credit card receipts and all the bills and paperwork that has piled up. Also made more than half a dozen phone calls for various reasons pertaining to medical or financial things. Getting through all those menus is such a time consuming and frustrating thing.

Joe is on the VA drug plan, and its a good thing, but like other government institutions they tend to get it all mixed up and of course its nobody's fault there. We've been having a time with them, and with keeping all his prescriptions coming on time like they should. There is a "coumadin clinic" the have and some young sounding bimbo seems to be in charge of that. The deal is that if they provide Joe a coumadin prescription, he must be in their coumadin clinic. Otherwise they won't provide him with coumadin. He can get his protime test at the clinic here and they fax the results to the VA. The VA then monitors the results and is supposed to adjust his dosage when it needs to be changed. But here is the problem. Heidi has NEVER EVER called to adjust his does. Only to call once in a while to ask me if Joe wants to be in the coumadin clinic. I always say yes, but tell her they never call. Every time before we hang up she sounds like she's about to climb the walls, and I'm not in such a good mood either. That happened again today so I called their patient advocate there and told him what was going on. I don't know if the call will help anything, but I hope she gets talked to about being more helpful, and hope that the phone call she and I had is recorded and they listen to it. Also another issue is that we try to follow their instructions for renewing his other prescriptions, which they usually manage to get goofed up. Last month he was out of something and they were saying he couldn't get it again until October. Its so annoying. Rant, Rant.

Sherese called yesterday and they are expecting about 25 of Kevin's family up to the ranch over the 4th. They should all have a very enjoyable time. Sherese might come and get some more flower plants from our yard.

It's probably time to let my flower beds fill in with just grass, as the extensive weeding they need 3 or 4 times a summer is too much to do now. The yard will still look neat that way and if I get some bedding flowers going that will give some color. The back yard where I had the biggest flower beds is nearly all filled in with lawn now and looks pretty nice. The Oriental poppies have sure bloomed their hearts out with all this rain we've been having, but they are about finished now. Maybe I can get some seeds pods from them this year and scatter those in my "wildflower patch" at the Arrowhead House. I'll take some of the perennial plants from here over there too and get a few things started. Hopefully it can be more xeriscaping there than I've had here.

We had quite a steady rain storm this afternoon again. Only today it really put down a lot of water in a short time. Very quickly the whole yard was standing in water. Guess you could call it a heavy downpour. It's after 8 now and still showering more or less. There was a lot of lightning, and rumbling thunder. Nothing cracking all that close this time though. The power went out about four times, plus brown outs a number of times. I unplugged all the computer stuff just in case.