Prickly Lettuce

Lately I've been trying to make the outside of our house look more...homey/less embarrassing. When we moved in (2 years ago this May) the front lawn looked nice (despite the dead tree in the middle of it) and there were two pretty flower beds. Since then we've planted a Red bud, taken out the dead tree, and planted a maple (that grew up in our untended flowerbed) However, our lawn now has a strict more weeds than grass policy, and our flowerbeds have turned into bare dirt and weeds with only a few hardy plants left that survived our negligence. After several days of weed-pulling and the addition of new mulch one of our flowerbeds now looks like this:

I'm pretty proud of it.

Now, I have to say, I'm pretty good at pulling weeds (and baby trees) and getting the taproot out and all...but one weed I can't seem to ever pull out is this one:

My roommate says she can pull them out no-problem, so I left them for her ;) I don't know how she does it though, as every time i try to, their prickly hollow stem breaks right off and all this nasty milky-white juice drips out. Of course, I had to know what on earth this weed was, so I finally googled it. I'm 99% sure now that it's a plant called "prickly lettuce" Identified not just by it's milky-hollow stem (apparently lots of plants have that) but by these spines on the underside of it's leaves (another reason these are a pain to try and pull.):

Now here's the interesting part. First of all the leaves are edible (I'm not gonna try them) and that milky stuff I always avoided because I assumed it would irritate my skin is actually good for sunburns. Oh ya, and it's a narcotic drug.
From this site: "The dreamy effects are a little bit similar to opium, but milder. Wild lettuce can help reduce the feeling of restlessness, excitability and insomnia."

Another site is filled with more fascinating stuff. "...it is still used for making a lotion for the skin useful in sunburn and roughness. The Ancients held the lettuce in high esteem for its cooling and refreshing properties. The Emperor Augustus attributed his recovery from a dangerous illness to it; built an altar to it, and erected a statue in its honour. "

Good to know. I still want it out of my flowerbed.

Under da Sea

I recently got my 30 gallon tank filled back up/re-cycled/re-stocked with fish...and I had forgotten how much fun it is to just sit and watch my aquarium. Its very... relaxing.

That dark thing under the fake tree root is a chunk of driftwood for my pleco. It used to sink, but I took it out for a little while, and now I'm just too lazy to get it to really sink again so its just wedged under the root to hold it in place. Said algae eater is to the far right, his name is Dr. Juan Itor. Here's a better pic:

Ohio

I just got back yesterday from visiting Ohio. The niece turned one on Thursday and that was really the whole point of the visit. I got her a giant blue ball...the kind that are in those 12 foot tall "baskets" in walmart. My dad built her an awesome toy box. Among her other gifts she also got this--which was a huge hit. She ate her first ever piece of cake with two fists.


Last time I saw her she had trouble sitting up on her own. Now she walks everywhere , has teeth, and eats things like cheese ravioli and black olives.

Illustration Monday

For Illustration Friday topic "Legendary"

Cold

This weekend was warm. Trees are blooming, flowers are popping up all over the place. I fricken took my dogs to the lake Sunday. I wore shorts.

This morning I had to scrape ice off my car and there's snow on rooftops. What the heck. Turn the heat back on please, God.

Old photoshopped stuff

Found some old stuff from college. These are from an assignment--Pick a band and make a "best of" compilation CD, and design the case and booklet. I chose Marcy Playground.

For the song "I'd Say Never"

For the song "Pigeon Farm"

And this one was just an illustration I did on my own. I remember being afraid to swim in any pool that looked green. For some reason I thought that meant there would be hippo's in there, and since I've always been such an animal nerd I had already read about how the hippopotamus killed more people than any other animal in Africa.

Basic Obedience

My eldest furchild has graduated from basic obedience school. I have taken her to a trainer before to work on her dog aggression. That trainer was great....however, he lived in Lawton (2.5 hrs away) and his only group class was Fridays at 5pm. Which meant that I would have had to leave work 3 hours early on Fridays to have time to go get number-one-mutt and drive her all the way to Lawton. (Pedro is number-two-mutt in case anyone was wondering.) The trainer was so great he even offered me a big discount and said I could just come whenever I could, and pay per class instead of asking me to pay up front. I was only able to make it once. Since that time Bella never really got any good experiences around dogs outside her "pack" and her aggression which had gotten a little better, started to get worse again. So I started searching for closer trainers that had experience with aggressive dogs. I found Full Circle Obedience School in OKC. She got 6 weeks of great exposure to other dogs. some of which were well behaved. heh. She graduated this past Saturday and my roomie came to the big event and took pictures. Bella placed second in the fastest come-when-called-and-sit race, and won a bumpy green football that squeaks. She placed fourth (I think) in the longest sit-stay competition. She got up when the weimaraner broke it's stay and came over to sniff her butt. AND GET THIS...she didn't try and kill the weimaraner! I was so proud. At another point in the graduation class I had her sitting butt-to-butt to a cattle dog who even hit her with his waggy tail...and she never even glanced at it. It was awesome.

Next I'm planning on getting her the Canine Good Citizen thing. Their CGC class at full circle is supposed to work even more with teaching dogs to deal with other dogs being around it. And I think she would be a good candidate for the kids reading to dogs program, cus she LOVES kids.