When Mercury Goes Retrograde

This is the moon, not Mercury.

In the world of astrology, which I confess I do not particularly believe in, there is a phenomenon called "Mercury Retrograde." This apparently happens three times a year and lasts about three weeks at a time. It is a time when the planet appears to move backwards instead of forward in some kind of optical illusion.

Mercury, one might recall from high school classes on mythology, is the messenger of the gods. Thus the planet Mercury is considered the messenger planet. Hence anything to do with communication supposedly is affected by this retrograde business.

That means it affects computers, Internet, telephone, the mail - most electronic gizmos, in other words. When Mercury is retrograde, you should be cautious, take care of yourself and others, and not make hasty decisions.

Generally speaking, I do not pay much attention to this, even though, as a Gemini (double trouble, that's me), Mercury in retrograde is supposed to affect me almost always, as it is my ruling planet. Or something like that.

I frequently do not know when Mercury is retrograde, but it turned yesterday. I knew this because the astrologers were predicting it would affect the elections.

I don't know about that, but I do know this: about 10:30 yesterday morning, I lost my Internet connection.

Along with my telephone service.

It stayed out all day. This was not a good day to be out of touch as I was keen to see how the voting was going.

Last night was my first-ever professional job as an instructor, too. I had spent hours preparing a beautiful power point presentation. When I arrived, everything worked fine, but within minutes, the school computer died. And would not reboot no matter how many times I started it and shut it back down.

And this morning, my electricity went out for a good while.

So I don't know if I believe in Mercury retrograde, but certainly some gremlin is playing games with me right now.

Help! My boxwoods are dying

About five years ago, I noticed a dead branch on one of my boxwoods as we came out of winter.



I cut the dead branch, thinking perhaps the snow had weighed it down and broken it.



The dying continued. And so it continues to this day, a branch at a time.

These are current photos, taken Monday. The first boxwood has long since died and been removed.



I had five boxwoods and now I have four. The one on the end is half dead.

Grandma Firebaugh gave us these boxwoods 20 years ago. I planted them and they thrived. Then the branches began dying one by one.

She has passed away. She was the one person who might have known what was wrong with my plants. She was a great gardener.

The only thing I could come up with was mites. I have sprayed and sprayed and put down all sorts of pesticides for mites.

It hasn't helped.



I found some information that indicates it could something called English Boxwood Decline that affects boxwoods after they are 20 years old. It says there is no cure, though.

It also says it can be caused by drought, which actually is when this started appearing, after the drought earlier this century.

The death has spread to yet another boxwood and I am loathe to give up on my lovely shrubs. Does anyone have any ideas?

A little snow

Monday night we had a little snow.



The first thing I noticed when I looked outside at 6 a.m. this morning was footy prints. I'd had a visitor on my front porch.



I think those paw prints belong to a rabbit.

Most of the snow vanished today; however, there is a chance of a little more tonight. I am not expecting much.

We have been in a drought here for quite a while, and the moisture was welcome. Snow also adds nitrogen to the soil. We were glad to see it.

Sunday it was almost 65 degrees here. Yesterday it was warm too.

And the temperature dropped. And the snow fell.

Weird weather!

Weird Dreams

Lately I have been having eye-brow raising nights. A few nights ago I began thrashing in the bed and yelling. I woke up with my husband shaking me, going "Baby, wake up, wake up, you're dreaming." The whole following day was colored by that event even though I couldn't remember what I was dreaming.

Last night I dreamed I was in this huge house. Like the Biltmore but not.

A lot of it was in sad disrepair. An unknown man guided me through the house to show me the repairs. I think I was writing an article about it.

He was using snakes to repair the house. The snakes would slither across the walls and in so doing it would remove the mold and mildew or whatever and leave the tiles in pristine condition. It was innovative if not a little unnerving.

There were snakes everywhere, all supposedly trained not to bite and to move along in proper patterns for the required work.

Meanwhile, down in the basement there was a huge toy museum, with toys of all kinds. It was a noisy place but very eery because it wasn't open to the public yet and there was no one there. Just a lot of toys making toy noises. I remember a lot of monkeys playing the cymbals.

And then it grew dark, and I was trying to use the elevator but I couldn't because it was full of snakes.

I tried to find a light switch but something short-circuited and a fire started. The house was a huge dark maze full of snakes on the walls. I knew there were other people in the huge mansion but I didn't know where they were.

So I started yelling "Fire" as I raced through the halls trying to avoid the smoke and the snakes....

Whew.

One of my dream books says this about elements of my dream:

Snakes: This denotes sly enemies who will conspire against you and by whom you will suffer in your character and estate. (That isn't a good sign!)

House: To dream you are building a house foretells prosperity and success in trade. (I wasn't building it, though, so I guess someone else is going to proper).

Fire: A dream of fire denotes health, great happiness, kind relations and warm friends. But to dream you are burned with fire portends calamity. (Yikes! I wasn't burned but it was surely getting close!)

Darkness: Dreaming you are lost in darkness and stumble denotes a change for the worst - by imprudence you will dreadfully commit yourself. If you emerge and see the sun, you will ultimately be happy.

Sheesh. It looks like I am in for some bad days ahead, doesn't it, if dreams really do tell something... fortunately I have never found my dreams to be anything more than the sum of my worries. If I had to interpret this dream, I would say I am worried about having something I've written blow up in my face.

A Wild Night

Yesterday to celebrate my birthday, we went to the Big City.

James needed chewing tobacco and we had to return the shirts he bought me as a present to exchange them for the right size. Then he took me to dinner at O'Charlie's.

I normally eat only a salad, but James insisted on an onion ring appetizer and a meal. I ordered the Caribbean shrimp, which came with a salad and a side order of veggies.

By the time I had eaten a few of the onion rings and the salad, I was about done. The main meal hadn't even arrived yet.

During a lull the waiter came over and was very chatty. I told him we were there to celebrate my husband's birthday, which was last Monday.

James told him no, we were celebrating my birthday. When we finished our meal, the waiter brought us each enormous slices of some kind of caramel pie, on the house.

I could not eat all of mine.

We went to bed at our usual 10 p.m. Not long after, I woke with my ear bothering me. My ear is weird in that it is super-sensitive to low frequencies, like when a truck growls. It vibrates deep in my ear and makes it itch and hurt. It was something like this. I finally decided it was a helicopter flying over.

I guess I went back to sleep. Suddenly I sat up and called out James' name. He woke immediately. He usually does not wake up if I'm just asking him to roll over to stop his snoring. I must have startled him with the urgency in my voice.

I was half asleep myself, but I told him to go get a Benedryl because my tongue was swelling. I felt like I was choking on something.

He looked at my tongue. "It isn't swelling," he said. "It looks normal to me." But he gave me a Benedryl anyway. He probably figured it would put me to sleep, which it did. They make me drowsy.

This has never happened before, by the way. I don't make a habit of waking him in the night asking for Benedryl.

The Dream

Then I dreamed my mother and I were on some kind of holiday at the beach. It was flooding and we couldn't find a hotel. Finally we wound up at this dumpy place and we settled into a room. My mother was on the phone with ... somebody, not sure who, and I realized I hadn't brought any clothes with me. My mother said she did not have her clothes, either.

I wanted to go to Walmart to buy clothes, but I ended up wandering around the streets. I saw that just down the road there was a motel called the Priscilla Grande and it looked a lot nicer than were we were staying. I went back to the room to find that my mother had had her clothes shipped to her overnight; there was about 100 bags.

I told her we should check out of the dumpy hotel and go to the really nice one. So we did, but when we got to the Priscilla Grande, we discovered it cost $46,000 a night for a room!

I think I must've had too much caramel pie even though I didn't eat but half of it.