Monthly Archives: June 2011

Jun 30 2011

Coupon Recap For June

I know I haven’t been mentioning it much thanks to all my gardening posts, but yes, I am still religiously couponing!  Here’s a recap of how I did for June and where I am for the year.

Thanks to dieting I’m actually spending less in groceries all together.  And my coupon organizer is getting pretty thin because I haven’t bought a Sunday paper in months.  My boss has been bringing me her coupon inserts week to week, which is working out fine because I’m still finding savings on the items I do buy on a regular basis.

For June, I saved just $4.30 at Walgreens.

I saved $3.00 at Petco on DogFood thanks to a coupon I received in the mail.

I saved $15.61 at Target.  Remember my grocery trip to Target a few weeks ago?  I plan on doing that again really soon.

I saved $1.37 in gas thanks to those Shop N Save coupons for gas and if you buy a carwash at the pump at my local Shell you also save so much off per gallon.

And the big winner this month was Shop N Save again with $76.52 in coupon savings.  This includes two trips in on the $10 off $50 Thursday two weeks ago. And also includes a deal I did yesterday where if you bought $30 in certain P&G products, you got a $15 iTunes Gift Card. I had a ton of P&G coupons that were going to expire today so I saved even more there.

My total for the year in Coupon Savings is $517.96.  Since half the year is gone, I’m halfway to $1K.  That’s not quite my goal for the year of $1500.00 but who knows what will happen.  I’ll still be happy with reaching 1K again.

So, where are you saving money or how are you doing with your coupons this year?

Jun 29 2011

Get ready… The Big C: Season 2 is here!

Monday night was the Season 2 Premiere of HBO’s The Big C starring Laura Linney. I loved Season 1 so I couldn’t wait for the start of Season 2.  Monday’s show wasn’t quite as funny as Season 1 Episode’s tended to be, but it was still filled with laughs and even some tears from me in the end.

Spoilers About the Show:

So, Cathy is leaving Dr. Todd for a second opinion.  Since Paul found out that Dr. Todd kissed Cathy (Cathy confessed while she and Paul were smoking pot together – a remedy Todd suggested to relieve her headaches) Paul confronted Todd and popped him in the mouth.  However, Cathy was already trying to get an appointment to another doctor who’d been getting good results supposedly with Stage 4 cancer patients, after Dr. Todd looked at her scans and decided that the chemo wasn’t working.  Cathy isn’t taking no for an answer!

Meanwhile, Cathy is trying to get son Adam to go to counseling.  Adam just wants to hang out with his friends, and has also taken up “aggresive farting” which Paul and Cathy think means something.  Sean, Cathy’s brother, finally finds out that Cathy has cancer, thanks to his pregnant girlfriend blabbing it to him despite Cathy asking her not to because she wanted to be the one to tell him.  But Cathy was worried that Sean would blow up so she made him a sandwich laced with some meds to hopefully keep him calm.  But she dropped some pills and Thomas, Marlene’s dog that now lives with Cathy, swallowed a couple. While Cathy was panicking about Thomas, Rebecca the girlfriend came in and saw the pill bottles and began asking a bunch of questions so Cathy just told her.  Thomas was okay!

Paul later  mistakened Thomas to be dead again, and had to tell Cathy after she finally got an appointment with the new doctor after many a harrassing voice mail left and an awkward visit to the doctor’s office.  But after his confrontation with Paul, Dr. Todd had called and got Cathy the appointment.  Luckily, Thomas the dog wasn’t dead after all and Dr. Todd confessed to Cathy that she can’t be his patient anymore because he sees her as more than a patient.

Add to this that Cathy has been seeing Marlene, or Marlene’s ghost, and Marlene is hamming up death big time.  She even wanted to stick her foot in the garbage disposal and have Cathy turn it on just to see if she could feel anything.  Cathy’s been chasing her away, but Marlene won’t give.  The show even ended with a tearful scene of Cathy sitting on the floor hugging Thomas and Marlene is sitting on the steps behind her just grinning and shaking her head.

End Spoilers.

Like I said, I laughed out loud some and was even shedding a tear by the end.  This show did that to me many a time in the first season.  So, the new season is off to a great start so far.  The only thing that really stuck out to me is that Cathy mentioned quite a bit about Sean being sick in this episode.  That wasn’t something that was discussed much in the first season.  Sure, we all know by watching the show that he’s a bit crazy, but sickness was never mentioned.  It will be interesting to see if they are adding this little detail in order to approach the subject more later.

I’m so glad The Big C is back!  Check back next week for my thoughts on the next show!

Jun 28 2011

The Urban Gardener: Is that you, Rose?

J has been enjoying the rose bushes.  We have seen blooms on 3 of the 4 so far since we planted them just before his birthday. Here are a few photos from the yellow bush and the deeper orange bush.

Notice on the last photo the two shades of yellow.  We’re not sure how that happened or if the sun just bleached the fuller flower after it opened.

Jun 27 2011

The Urban Gardener: New Additions Part 2

While on vacation, we also added 2 new colors of Yarrow to the back flower bed.  There’s a really pretty soft pink and purple and then an orange and red one.  We already had a yellow one which we bought earlier in the season and is planted nearby.

During a trip to the Botanical Gardens while on vacation, we spotted huge bunches of yarrow that were as big as small bushes.  It will be interesting to see how big ours grow by this time next year.

They are supposed to attract butterflies according to their identification card, but I haven’t seen any enjoying them.  I did spot one butterfly on the cone flowers last week though and lucky for me, I had my camera in hand and was able to snap his photo.

Jun 26 2011

The Urban Gardener: New Additions

That’s right!  We’ve added more flowers, folks.  In fact, we added a bit more defined space for even more flowers in the future.  I’m talking about the space along our cobblestone pathway where we planted the two bushes several weeks ago. Last week, while on vacation, we bought two new colors of Tickseed, some Shasta Daisys, and we also bought some white and some orange Cone Flowers.

I love the Cone Flowers have been wanting some for years now, so I was very happy about this purchase.  We planted these 4 perennials in between the two bushes next to the pathway.  It’s a bit too symmetrical for me right now, but that will change as some of my fall online orders arrive and I also plan to split a few things that we have and transplant them into this area.

We also bought a few more of the large flat stones and broadened the beginning of the path, creating a large cure which we plan to fill with more flowers along the pathway.  This will look very nice come spring of next year.

Shasta Daisy

Tickseed

Cone Flowers

Jun 25 2011

The Urban Gardener: The Blackberry Lily

Well, summer has just barely started and most of the flowers in the garden are ca’put.  Lots of the lilies shed their blooms this week with the harsh rain from last weekend.  The hostas and roses are blooming.  The hanging baskets still look nice.  We still have tiger lilies and just a few Asiatic lilies in bloom.  But that’s about it.  Pretty soon, the garden will just be a sea of green as it gets hotter.

However, there was one newcomer that just got planted this year which actually bloomed this week.  It’s called a blackberry lily and is a perennial.  We found it a few months ago at Thies Farm and actually thought it was an iris that had been mislabeled.  Its tall broad leaves look just like a traditional iris.  We even planted it right behind one of the Roanoke’s Choice irises and if you didn’t know, you’d never be able to tell the difference.

But it is thriving well there.  Its grown a lot and it now has two long stalks reaching for the skies with buds on them.  And one of them bloomed this week!  The bloom only lasted a day, but I was so happy to capture a photo of it.  I really thought the farm would be wrong and that it’d just be another iris, but I was the one who was wrong instead.

Though it might look giant in the photo, that’s just because I had to take the photo up close to get the detail of the flower in.  This flower is actually only about 3 inches across so it was quite tiny compared to the size of the greenery itself.  I’m sure it would have greater impact in the garden if there were more blooms on it all at once.

The identification card says its a late summer/early autumn bloomer though so we may see more from it later.  It also thrives in full sun and can grow up to 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide.  It’s definitely holding its own next to the large bunches of Roanoke’s Choice.

Jun 24 2011

The Ridge by Michael Koryta

This is actually the first book by Michael Koryta that I have read, and it certainly will not be the last. I have already invested in a few of his other books, and can’t wait to read them. I know what you are thinking.  That’s all Shannon needs is more books to read!  The Ridge was a quick read for me though; I finished it in just a week and I’ve already started reading another of his books, The Cypress House.

The Ridge is a good solid supernatural mystery, but I would have liked a bit more of the supernatural. Since Koryta’s earlier work fell more into the mystery/investigation drama, I’m assuming that’s definitely where he gets his strong points from.

We begin with a small town in Kentucky where a large cat refuge has just set up camp on Blade Ridge, next door to the town drunk who built a bizarre lighthouse on his property and has been investigating odd deaths/murders that have taken place on the ridge. A series of accidents and events, including one escaped rare black cougar, quickly set up the plot for the characters and the reader.

We are led by Kimble, chief deputy, in love with a female inmate who shot him and who also suffered from an accident at the ridge. When some of the cat refuge workers also fall victim to strange events, and the lighthouse owner takes his life, the investigation turns to a strange blue ghost light and the dark history surrounding a trestle that overlooks the ridge. Throw in an aging reporter whose newspaper has just shut down and you’ve got quite a cast of interesting characters.

Like I said, the whole supernatural element is neat, but I just wanted a bit more of that after having read authors like King and Koontz. The setting of the ridge and cat refuge was unique and definitely kept the pages turning as Koryta slowly unveiled the mystery of it all. I didn’t shiver when reading it but I wanted to! It was more of the mystery elements and the “who-dun-it” plotlines that really solidified Koryta as being an author I will definitely read again.

Jun 23 2011

The Urban Gardener: What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

Front Yard

Welcome to Summer!  Well, the calendar says its the first day of summer but its felt like it for weeks now.  Summer always means tiger lilies in the garden for us, and they too have been in bloom for weeks.

We have orange tiger lilies in the front yard, and some red ones in the back. The orange ones were given to us by a co-worker/gardening friend several years ago and the red ones in the back came from an end-of-season clearance rack last year at one of the nurseries.

Back Yard

Front Yard

Jun 22 2011

The Urban Gardener: A rose is a rose is a rose is a ro….

J wanted rose for his birthday.  So, we added a rose garden this year and started with 4 bushes.  Two are climbers and two are not.  I got a steal on trellises for the climbers at Big Lots on Memorial Day Weekend.

The climbers are a yellow rose called Sky’s the Limit.  The Peach rose is called Polka.

J added two non-climbers in between – a red and an orange.

The climbers bloomed within days of being planted, and as of June 12th the orange non-climber had one single bloom.  More pics to follow if they bloom more!

  They look great on the right side of our yard in front of the fence that is covered in honeysuckle.  As you can see in the pics, the fence is about a foot of the ground on top of a retaining wall.  So, our neighbor on the other side is higher and actually looks down on our yard.  It really gives the yard some character and we love the honeysuckle and grapevine there for privacy.  And there’s a lot of shade there during the day so it was the perfect spot for a rose garden.

We added two Sheppard’s hooks, one on each end, with one of the hanging baskets to complete the look this season.

Jun 21 2011

Good-bye Nurse Jackie!

Well, HBO’s Nurse Jackie wrapped up its season last night.  I hate those short Spring seasons of 30 minute shows, but I’m also happy to see them go because it means True Blood and The Big C are about to start.  In fact, both start next Sunday and Monday.

It’s hard to determine where the show is going as far as Jackie is concerned.  We know her job isn’t in trouble, but her marriage is.  So!  What else is new?  As Nurse Jackie stands there quiet and conservative, contemplating what’s going on, so too is the audience left in silence and wondering what happens next.  We never see Jackie changing or wanting to change; it’s everything else around her that is in a constant whirlwind.  I think that’s what makes the show so intriguing.

And while I will continue to watch as long as the show is on, I don’t see it lasting much longer.  It’s Jackie that never changes, but isn’t the show named after her?  The writers are going to have to give us something more drastic if they want to hold our attention.

Its the comedic edge of all of Jackie’s coworkers that really give the show its breath.  The pill popping, affair having, disturbed children, ignoring each other marital problem story lines between Jackie and Kevin that’s grown almost as boring as their marriage itself.

See you next year, Jackie!  We hope!!