Cheryl Beckham

Years ago I must have expressed out loud in front of someone, somewhere, something about the cuteness of a frog lawn ornament, that had caught my eye, for some reason. I didn’t even buy the frog, but some how that was to be the start of the many, many frogs that have now seemingly taken over my house and lawn. Word got out and frogs are a constant, but welcomed gesture from folks, as a gift, a token, a present, a tip (after all, I am a bar tender, and we receive quite a variety of tips now and then) from virtually everywhere from all types of people that I have/had a relationship with over the years. I must have a frog made out of any and every type of material that is known to man, in all kinds of sizes, and stances.

For Christmas I was given a frog aquarium kit, which requires a check to be sent in with the order for the frogs to come in the mail, or I could go down to one of the many pet stores that have popped up all over the place in the past few years. I’m sure at least one will have baby frogs for sale, it seems like the more humane way to receive new members of the family. But going to the pet stores, any of them like PetCo, Puppy Palace, and Petsmart always leaves me with me wallet emptied out and my heart broken from not being able to take home more of the critters that are all there, just waiting for a home, and knowing that their chances of being purchased and treated adequately highly reduces most of their survival rates.

One of the places that I try not to go in to are the A.S.P.C.A. and Animal Shelters, I have never left one yet with out crying like a baby and feeling like a piece of scum, and dirty. Not something that I enjoy or look forward to doing, ever.

There are many benefits to working the night time hours that I generally work. One is that I’ve always been a night owl to being able to sleep in until noon works well with me. Getting up at noon leaves me with 6 hours to get things done before heading into work. During the nice weather months I am able to enjoy the day, while most people are all ready behind their desks waiting for 5:00pm to arrive so that they can at least enjoy a few hours before the darkness comes.

My Dad and I made up a real nice section of the back yard with some real nice patio furniture (wrought iron chairs and tables) that was picked up for next to nothing at a yard sale, a fire pit, hanging and potted plants here and there along with several nice looking bird houses and feeders.It is a place for me to go and relax day or night. It can rain or snow, what ever Mother Nature throws at me I can stay out there and enjoy myself.

I just picked up an electronic bug zapper, now I need Dad to run some electric out there. I’ve wanted him to but didn’t want to bother him with it, but now I think he will do it without question when he sees the bug zapper that I found, dirt cheap at the flea market over the weekend. There are a few more things that I want to get, but not in a big hurry about it. I’d love to find some of those cool rain chains that I’ve been seeing here and there. My sister-in-law received a japanese rain chain for Mother’s Day and I finally got the website from my brother that he ordered it from and took a look at it today and boy oh boy I had no idea that there were so many garden rain chains to choose from. I could go crazy at this site – rainchainlink.com.

So far I have found local.com to be the best online local yellowpages for my wants and needs. I have tossed out (placed in the recycling bin) all (and I do mean all) of my paper telephone books, the white pages, the yellow pages, and all but one of the local and surrounding counties book. I can’t believe how many I rounded up when I set my mind to it. There were eleven of them in all, several were way out of date and should have been gotten rid of years ago and a couple were still in the wrappers for heaven’s sake! Now I have more room on my book shelve and a kitchen drawer now has room for more kitchen items instead of all of the phone books that have lived there for so very long.

Now a days if I want to find one of our local restaurants I head straight for my computer to find everything I need there in a nutshell. Not only can I find the typical name, phone and address information at local.com, but I can find the businesses hours, driving directions, ratings and reviews, menu samples, heck you can even make your dinner reservations right online as well. So anytime I need to do a local search for anything I start at local.com, so far they haven’t let me down yet and I’ve found some pretty interesting and useful information along the way, just by entering my zip code I become privy to a ton of opportunities for online consumers as myself. It’s all good folks!

I’m always for new, unusual, unique plants and flowers. It’s been great looking around online at all the hundreds of websites with pictures, descriptions, and prices of all the wonderful plants out there that I’d love to get my hands on and have planted all around my yards. I’ve been looking for some unusual vines to grow in a particular area in the back and I stumbled onto the “Chocolate Vine” that I tried to post a picture of it here ’cause it’s just too cool not to share. But for some reason my d#@&* computer isn’t allowing any of the picture to be downloaded here today. But if you want to see some flicks of them you can click here!

Darn computer, makes me wonder what is going on now, arggg…..

I have seen many fine looking lawns and gardens in the most beautiful yards in my day. I have always enjoyed driving around looking at houses and taking in the beauty of the fabulous landscaping that a lot of people are sporting these days. Once or twice a month my parents would gather up all of us kids in the station wagon and off we would go out for a nice long Sunday drive,gazing at all of the new houses that were being built along with the landscapers working their magic. So I got this interest and appreciation honestly. One of things that was a total turn off to us was seeing those bright blue tarps that are seen so often being used to cover what ever items they want to protect them from being seen as well as being kept from all the elements that Mother Nature throws at us through out the various seasons.

If I was to need a tarp for such purposes I think that I would purchase and use one that blended in with it’s surroundings so as not to bring attention to is as the bright blue ones do. I mean it is as if they are screaming “Look at me, look at me” when there is so much more that your eyes should be looking at and appreciating considering how much time and money a good landscaping job takes. There are many other tarps out there that can do the job nicely that don’t cost an arm and a leg. And I would never buy any tarp at the dollar store or at the local flea market that we frequent where there are dealers that have dozens of bins lined up filled with $1 items. That really irks me as well. When I go to the flea market I don’t want to see the same items that I can buy at the Dollar Store. Most of the $1 merchandise is crap and if I wanted to shop for crap I’d just go to one of the many stores around here that advertise their crap for only one dollar. And there is nothing worse that going into one of those stores and finding a good amount of their jump is more than one dollar.