homealone

We had been planning to buy a new car to replace the gas guzzler BMW M3. I liked that car, but it was hard for me to drive because I am pretty short and it was hard for me to see the front and back (being a sports car, it has bucket seats). Also, it’s a guzzler and only takes premium gas. And it was getting too expensive just to keep it. It’s my husband’s car and he’s had it for a while, but he rarely uses it anymore because of the above reasons. While trying to sell the car, we’ve also been looking for hybrid cars. Being environmentally aware, we have decided that the next cars we’re going to get to replace our cars would have to be a hybrid car. So, whenever we had to rent a car for road trips, we made sure we rented a hybrid car. First we tried the Toyota Prius. I hated that car because of the looks but I started liking it when we rented it. Drove just like my honda. It fit me just fine. The husband, on the other hand, liked the technology so much that he actually decided that was the car we were gonna get. Until he drove car himself. It was way too small and uncomfortable for him. He is 6′4″. So Prius was out. The next time, we rented a Honda Civic hybrid. Since we have another civic, there was no problem for us size-wise. But it was a civic. We already have one. We needed a little more room. So, last christmas, we rented a Camry Hybrid. Camry’s don’t usually get rented out, and they were about to give us a Nissan Altima hybrid. We asked the rental person to look around to check maybe there’s one in the lot and we got so lucky because they found one that was just about to be delivered on the lot! We got a brand new Camry to drive with only 20 mi on it, with the stickers still on and everything! So, we drove the car and liked it very much. Last night, after two days of negotiations over the phone and via email, we got the best deal (a few hundred dollars below invoice!) for the car we wanted and so went and just bought it.

We have a small rose garden filled with different varieties of roses. My husband loves looking at the roses and I really think he’s more obsessed with them than I am! I do a lot of deadheading and fertilizing, etc but lately, I noticed some of the leaves have been eaten, some with just holes, some were completely eaten! I thought they were just snails but I did not find any slimy trails. I left it a few days and the roses were starting to really deteriorate. I looked more closely and noticed these light green little bugs under the leaves! I think they’re aphids! We found a ladybug and placed it on a bud infested with aphids and whoa! watch that lady [bug] kill/eat ‘em all! I think we’re gonna get more ladybugs…

The only thing that I do around the house lately aside from the occasional real work that I do, is tend to my garden. I transplanted a few bell pepper and tomato plants and they’re all doing fine. I also have  a basil plant that had been blooming flowers but the whole plant doesn’t look good. I wanted to keep the blooms because I often see bees around them and you know me and the bees, i want to preserve them as much as possible. Anyway, I did a little research on how to grow basil. Turned out that you should preven the basil from blooming for as long as possible, by harvesting or pinching off the top sets of leaves as soon as the plant reaches about 6″ in height. If the plant sets flowers, it is on its way to going to seed and will not be bushing out with leaves. Once a basil plant goes to seed, the existing leaves lessen in flavor.  Yikes! I cut off all the flowers. We’ll see if my basil recovers.