My New Garden

I have to brag on my husband. This weekend he has built me the most beautiful garden. Injust one weekend this area at the end of the driveway went from a derelict no-man's land full of weeds and bits of brick... the detritus left over from my swamped vegetable garden from last year... to this beautiful blank slate, ready to be filled with good garden soil and planted. Poor guy is ready to drop, he's so tired. And the chemicals in the treated lumber are hell on his allergies, so he won't be able to breathe for 24 hours. But he stuck with it all weekend and it looks fantastic!

Grayson spent a good part of the afternoon with the ducklings, digging int he garden beds looking for things to feed them. We found out that the ducklings will eat earthworms if they are very small. Pong will eat a grub. They will not eat rollie pollies. But they will try to eat flies, though without success. This was all great fun for Grayson. It was a little disconcerting to see this normally very gentle child, who lovingly collects worms from the sidewalk after the rain to return them to the soil, gleefully dangling a live worm in front of the ducklings to see if they will snap at it. But it did keep him outside with us for a good part of the afternoon. And the ducklings need to get used to the idea of earning their keep!

When they are old enough to go outside to live, I will move all the junk that is piled up at the back corner of the garden and that will be the ducks' safe zone, with a house and little fenced coop and a wading pool.

Ducklings

Okay, so maybe I've lost my mind, but Grayson and I bought two ducklings while we were out yesterday afternoon.

I've wanted to get some ducks to live in my vegetable garden and eat bugs. I've read a couple of articles and web sites that say ducks are great at keeping your garden pest free. But lets face it, I bought them primarily because they're ADORABLE. Oh my god, they're the cutest things on the planet!

Grayson had named them before we were out of the store with them: Ping and Pong. (The lighter colored one is Ping, in case you're curious).

So we left Atwoods with two ducklings in a cardboard box, a warming lamp, 40 pounds of duck chow, and a small bale of pine shavings for their cage.

They peep and peep, and eat from Grayson's hand, and they are already getting much tamer and don't freak out when you reach in to the box or pick one of them up. Grayson adores them. He's had them out on the floor in the Red Room, playing with them and feeding them.

Gray thinks I'm nuts, of course. Probably I am. I will have to build a fence around the front of the garden, and an enclosure for them inside the garden where the neighborhood cats can't get at them. But they can't move outside for another 5 or 6 weeks, so there's time to get their little home all ready for them. In June they can move outside and start earning their keep as bug snappers.

For now, though, they are just the world's most adorable pets.

We Attend the Fetish Ball

Last Saturday Gray and I went to the Fetish Ball for the Biting the Apple exhibition downtown. It's an annual "erotic" (semi) art show put on by the Independent Artists of Oklahoma gallery. It's just a two-day show, but always accompanied by much burlesque merriment. My friend Jin goes almost every year and Gray and I have always meant to go, but never seem to learn about it until it's over or it's too late to get a babysitter.

Anyway, we went on Saturday. And while the event was fun, I think getting dressed for it was more fun, at least for me, as you can see from this photo. It took two padded bras and a pair of "chicken cutlets" to get my boobs pushed up that high. The shoes came from the stripper store on 10th street. Jin told me to go there so I could get some "shoes that come with a pole."

The shoes there were fantastic. Thigh high vinyl boots with 7-inch heels, lucite platform stillettos with a slot labeled "Tips" in the platform. The ones you see here were among the more tame of the choices. And to make it even better, a pair of real strippers were there shopping while I was there, so I got the full experience.

Grayson did not approve of my hairdo. He never likes me to get too far out of the box with the way I look. He told me I looked "weird. And not in a good way." After I got the false eyelashes, the full make up and the jewels all on, then he felt better about it because it looked more like a costume, like a circus performer. The stripper shoes, visible brassiere, corset and fishnet stockings didn't phase him a bit. It was the hair.