The Great Gardener

I am not a gardener by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't have a green thumb - I have a black thumb...

The "flower bed" around our house is mostly dirt with some sorry looking green things sporadically growing here and there. They're supposed to be rose bushes, but we don't see roses very often...

Trees and bushes in our yard look pretty pitiful most of the time...

I once killed a cactus because I didn't water it often enough!

Yeah...

I like flowers enough to keep blogging about them - EXAMPLE 1, EXAMPLE 2 - but I guess some people were meant to cultivate, and others were meant to just stand back and admire!

That said, Amber and I have an ongoing argument every Spring. She insists that whenever dandelions start coming up, that means it's time to cut the grass. I, on the other hand, feel like it's a shame to cut these beautiful blooms down in the prime of their lives!

Training the Cat

Did you know you can train a cat?

Me and my Buddy
He's a bit of a Daddy's boy :)

If you're like most people, you're probably thinking, "You don't train a cat - a cat trains you!" Well, in many cases, this may be true, but I want to share with you the story about how I trained my outside cat, Buddy, and what I learned about myself in the process.

Buddy is a yellow tabby, and we've had him since he was a kitten. He's pretty well-behaved, I'd say... at least most of the time...

Buddy has actually developed somewhat of a reputation in the neighborhood as a pretty adept hunter, even though we do feed him cat food every evening. One of my co-workers, Jacque, told her parents about our rabbit-hunting cat one day, and her parents decided to come out and see him for themselves. When they asked to see Buddy, I said OK, stepped outside, and hollered his name...