May grab video if I can. Thunderstorms have always fascinated me.

It was an absolutely beautiful day outside when I took that picture, so I took a few others around the house as well. We moved in here around mid-February, so our entire yard was dead and lifeless when we got here, not very pleasant. The last week or so in Milwaukee has been perfect early Spring weather though, so things are starting to come back to life. A few hard rains mixed in with mid-70s weather? That’s pretty ideal for April/May.

I love having a yard, so things growing again is extremely exciting to me. I grew up around my grandparents a lot, and my Grandpa was a role model of sorts for me, though I didn’t come to realize it until the last couple of years. His yard meant a lot to him, he was constantly out there tending to it, even when his health told him he shouldn’t have been. It drove him nuts if things weren’t being tended to, and when his health finally dropped enough to keep him bedridden, I found myself going out into the yard in his place and taking note of what needed to be fixed. None of those things ever happened because we had to sell the house when he died, but it was fairly eye opening. I loved having a yard that was, essentially, my own.

Now, I live in a duplex. The yard isn’t mine, not nearly, but it’s still cool to see it coming alive, and I was already taking notes of what I could clean up out there when it’s warm again.

There are a lot of pictures incoming, so for the sake of load times I’m going to put it all behind the link below. If you read my work over on WI, you know how this works. Just click the link and you’ll see the full post. If you’re already seeing the flower picture below, you probably followed a direct link to this post and you don’t need to worry about it. It only affects those reading this from the front page of the site.

I have no idea what kinds of flowers we have in the planters around the house. None at all. The landlord pointed out what he thought was a rose bush, but even he didn’t know what else was out there. Most of the plants out there are pure greenery right now, but there were a few little tulips (I think) mixed in with all of the green. These guys were totally surrounded by greenage, I had to push some stuff out of the way to make them at all visible for a good picture. They’re still pretty obscured. I’m pretty sure the other plants around going to choke them out, so I might end up asking the upstairs neighbors if any of this stuff belongs to them, or if they were here before they were. If they don’t care about these plants, I’m going to plant something else in there. Well, my mother will probably plant them. That’s sort of her thing.

I do not know what this is. It’s just a chaotic leafy mass, and there are more of these around the house. Will it grow something neat? It is a mystery! I don’t think they’re related to the tulips but they might be. Also in this picture, you can see the edging of the planters. The bricks have somehow sunk into the ground and they’re lower than the sidewalk. I do not think they can do their job crammed all the way down there. I should ask the landlord if I can do something about them. Bonus points if fixing the planters can get money taken off of the rent, but I have doubts about that. This guy seems like the sort of person that would rather keep our rent consistent and come out and do repairs himself. We’ll see. Eventually.

This here is just gross. Apparently nobody knew how to rake leaves last fall, so there’s just a huge filthy mass of half-decomposed leaves in front of the house. Again, there’s a bunch of chaotic bushes there that just look ugly, and they’re choking out another bunch of tulips, which is what I believe that yellow thing is. I’m just assuming they’re tulips by their shape, they might be something else. I’m not looking forward to cleaning this out. Maybe our neighbors will do it.

The grass is pretty nice, at least. The yard is sort of lumpy and uneven, but I suspect that’s just from getting a lot of traffic. That just ends up happening to yards that have children playing on them and all of that, so it’s not something I’m going to complain about. It’s green, it grows, and there are no glaring dead patches. I’m happy with it. I’m just hoping it isn’t Kentucky Blue, because my Grandpa had that at his house and it was a disaster. Kentucky Bluegrass, if you don’t know, is basically gross for lawns you want to show off. It’s very pretty grass, and it has high resistance to disease/bugs, and droughts don’t damage it as much. However, it’s meant for low traffic areas. My grandparents themselves had four kids (my mom, my aunt, and my uncles, duh) and they all had kids. After a family gathering (Fourth of July or whatever else) the lawn was totally hosed. Since our upstairs neighbors have a kid, our lawn will definitely have traffic. Please, please let our grass be somewhat resilient.

Again, the planter (which you can see on the right) isn’ t exactly holding the plants in because the edging isn’t high enough. Whatever, not a big deal. Again, no idea whatsoever what’s growing there. Also, yes, those are AC units. What up, central air. No, that dish there isn’t ours. I don’t think it’s our neighbors either, they use Time Warner just like we do. It’s probably a relic of the folk that lived here before we did.

And that’s my yard. I look forward to the weather being nice enough for me to actually tend to it.

On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to say thank you to someone while I remember. Michael (who seems to be a lover of frogs) left a comment on my post asking for Cooking Resources with a link to The Worldwide Gourmet. It’s not as comprehensive as I would like for a catch-all resource, but it really is an excellent jumping off point. It’s not a one stop shop by any means, but the information it has helps me figure out what I’m looking for to begin with. So thanks, Michael! The link has been a huge help.

If any of you want to see the full size versions of any of these pictures, they’re over in my gallery sub-site. Be warned, the full contents of that gallery are very not safe for work/sanity. That page is also a temporary thing, I’m going to try to incorporate galleries more seamlessly into my blog. For now, they’re there. Just… heed my warning. NSFW.

No, really. It was in the low 60s today in Milwaukee, which is absolutely beautiful compared to the winter we just had. The last few days have been full of freezing rain (hooray ice-coated sidewalks) and in the upper 20s, so the warmth today was completely unexpected. I bundled up to walk to the store and pick up some soda (Dr. Pepper, if you must know). I was wearing a winter coat and hat, and borrowed my girlfriend’s scarf because breathing cold air triggers my asthma in a bad way. I didn’t really notice the temperature until I was about halfway there and it was too late to just toss my coat and all back into the house. I’m pretty sure I died of a heat stroke at least three times on the way there and back.

Of course, this pleasant weather isn’t going to stick around. It’s only March, and this is Wisconsin. It’s supposed to storm tonight, and my fancy iGoogle homepage says that it’s going to be back down in the 20s for the next couple of days. That sounds about right for the Northern Midwest around this time of year. We’ll have another day in the 60s next week, then it’ll drop down again. The pattern will continue until June, when it shoots up to the 80s with a constant 95-100% humidity until October, when it will immediately plummet into the 40s.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve been considering picking up a Kindle. Well, a Kindle 2, which they released at the end of February. I like the concept of being able to have this futuristic datapad around that I can pick up in the morning and read the newspaper on, or my favorite blogs, or some books, or whatever I want. Instead of going outside to pick up a paper, the thing is already sitting on my coffee table. That’s pretty sweet.

What isn’t sweet is the fact that a Kindle will run me nearly $400. There is very little that is worth $400 to me. A Kindle is not one of those things, not by a long shot. It doesn’t help that their ebooks aren’t much cheaper than actual books. Essentially, the $400 you’re paying is the price of covenience. Is not needing to go to Borders once in awhile worth $400 to me, considering I can have the newspaper sent to my front door every morning anyway if I wanted? Absolutely not. Especially since Borders is where I indulge in my addiction to Chai Tea/Lattes.

Another thing that counts against the Kindle is the fact that I don’t yet have an iPhone. Not only does the iPhone have a Kindle app, but it’s also far more useful an a whole lot of other ways. The only issue with getting an iPhone is I need to cut my contract with US Cellular short. US Cellular is terrible. Terrible. My phone didn’t even come with any games, or the ability to download games. What kind of phone doesn’t come with games, or let you add games? Useless ones.

It’d cost me $150 to break off my US Cellular contract, which I will most certainly do… eventually. Not right now because I need to cough up roughly $3,500 in taxes in the next couple of months, but sooner or later I’m going to take the dive and get an iPhone. It’ll be really fantastic for work-related things, too. Not being able to check my e-mail or check up on the site when I’m out of the house drives me crazy. It really has reached the point where if I’m not plugged in constantly, I get the jitters. Purely work-related, too. I don’t worry about my leisure activities at all if I’m at the store or whatever, but work? Oh hell yes. I hate not knowing what’s going on at every waking moment. An iPhone will help me dramatically. My laptop really didn’t cut it, though it is nice having a computer in two rooms! Yeah, I’m hopeless. When do I get to put a computer directly into my brain? Or maybe I could have a pair of glasses with a computer in them that I manipulate with my eyeballs. That would be sweet and solve a lot of my problems.