You may (or may not) have noticed that many times lately my daily posts to Blogography are showing up days late. I still write every day, but I've taken to holding off a while before I publish what I've written. Most of my posts now-a-days are blistering rants about current events and, after I've cooled down, I realize they don't really add anything to the conversation. So I delete them and dig into the drafts I've got written about cats, computers, and stuff, then put that up instead.

It's a tough thing to do, because these are NOT short posts. They are pages of material that can take some time to write...

But... maybe the therapy of writing them is enough for me. They don't really need to see print.

And so today's rant, which was not really something that should see print, has been tossed and I will instead be sharing photos of the flowers growing in my yard.

The flowers in my back yard were here when I bought the place. I can't take any credit for them at all. I pretty much just leave them alone and every year these beautiful flowers show up. There's these really pretty big fluffy flowers I like. No idea what they are called, but how cool are they?

Some are mostly pink...

Whereas others have a lot of yellow in their middles...

There are a bunch of roses... that I think are called "tea roses." They come in a variety of shapes...

The flowers from the previous owner in the front were all in pots that had to be hand-watered. Problem is that I travel too much to take proper care of them so I had to get rid of the plots and plant a bunch of new flowers that could be watered by the automated system. This year a neighbor picked out a bunch of different flowers for me and I was left with some extras. I bought a big wooden planter and just tossed them all inside. They've all done really, really well! Except at the time I planted them I didn't know what size they would end up. If I did, I would have put the taller ones in the middle instead of the outside. Oops...

Still pretty though.

Speaking of leftover flowers... I stuck one of them between the two giant purple things I bought previously. I thought for sure it would die from lack of sunlight, but it's actually been thriving! He seems happy there...

The rest of the flowers I planted are doing great too. I especially like the pansies...

And speaking of those big purple things, they are doing great. The bees absolutely love them...

Guess we'll see if tomorrow's post has to be deleted. It's Caturday, so I sure hope not.

The two days it took to build flower beds, fill pots, and plant flowers seems to be paying off. From what I can tell, only one plant died and all the rest of them are doing really well. I should probably weed everything again, but I'm in no hurry for that. All I know is that my yard doesn't look like a disaster area any more, and that's probably a good thing... even though I won't be having guests to appreciate them any time soon...

The irises on the side of my home are in peak bloomage, which is to say that they're all falling over because the flowers are too heavy for the stalks holding them up. I propped them up where I could and took photos so they can at least be appreciated before they all start dying...

I think I mentioned that I'm in the process of backing up all my DVDs before they rot to unplayability. But I'm also looking into the best way of backing up my 8mm cassette tapes. For quite a long time all my shows were recorded on 8mm because the quality was better than VHS and they were much smaller and easier to store. Over the years as the shows have become available to purchase digitally, I've been tossing the tapes out... but there's still quite a few shows which I can't purchase and will have to digitize. Including two of my favorite shows of all time... Cupid (1998, starring Jeremy Piven) and Oh Grow Up! (1999, starring the late Stephen Dunham). I cannot for the life of me understand why television studios don't just release their entire catalogs to scrape up some cash, as there are many shows I'd gladly buy if only I could.

Including some shows I never even knew existed.

Yesterday I became aware of a 2016 show from the UK called Hooten and the Lady when a friend let me stream it from his Sling DVR. Apparently The CW acquired the USA rights and broadcast it in 2017. He thought I might like it... and I absolutely do...

I liked the first three episodes so much that I went to buy it so I could see the five remaining episodes. Alas I can't buy them. It isn't available here in the USA in the iTunes Store, nor can I purchase it on DVD or Blu-Ray because it's region-encoded and won't play on my machine. Which is a pity, because it's really, really good. Kinda Indiana Jones meets Romancing the Stone. Or something like that. It's got action and has some funny moments to it. Guess I'll have to see when my friend will let me schedule some time with his Sling Box again so I can finish it up. Alas it never got a second season, which is inconceivable to me. It's such a great show.

Except it actually is totally conceivable to me because all the good shows seem to get premature deaths.

Flowers are out everywhere, which means my allergies are exploding, which means I'm drugged up on Flonase, Zyrtec, and Allegra all the time. This is better than the old days when I had to be drugged up on Benadryl all the time. Benadryl makes me so drowsy that I can barely stay awake to work. All I wanted to do was sleep.

If there's a bright spot to be found, it's taking pictures of it all with my iPhone. It's shocking how good the camera is on the X, and it kinda freaks me out that I get better photos from it than I do the last pocket camera I bought...

When I moved into my new home, the woman who owned it previously planted loads of pretty flowers in my back yard. Including the hydrangeas I butchered which have miraculously come back. Much to my surprise, it looks like I'm going to have flowers again. Don't ask me how. This thing was razed to the ground a month ago...

I had irises on the side of my house, which is nice, but they always fall over and last for only five minutes, so I don't understand the point. What I'd like to do is pull them out and replace them with more stuff like this...

Pretty.

Even though it's making my life an allergy-induced haze.

My favorite flowers are crocuses and California poppies. Perhaps this weekend I'll look into getting some of those. It would be nice if the front of my house looks as good as the boack does.