Ok, so maybe I'm just planting the wrong kind of plants! What I really want/need is a window farm... SO COOL. I heard about on CBC today (forget which program... Spark, maybe?). Anyway. It's basically d.i.y. hydroponics. With fish tank air pumps and recycled pop bottles and leafy stuff. Totally ditching the stupid daisies to become a HYDROPONIC WINDOW FARMER. Brilliant. 

Stupid bugger plantsSo my plants are conspiring to die. And if they do ultimately die, I will gladly and vehemently expel their pathetic remains from the studio. But, until then, through force-fed fertilization and positive plant-energy brainwaves (which I learned from the Mythbusters plant episode), I'm refusing to let them kick the bucket. 

(Plus I spent twenty bucks on these bugger plants and I'm too cheap to let that be a waste of money.)

And so if anybody out there knows anything about stupid-daisy-like plants and how I can express my extreme hatred of their green guts yet convince them to be leafy-and-nice again, please let me know. 

Caleb discovered the typewriter. The novelty lasted a whole five minutes.My brother Caleb came to visit the studio last week. Disaster imminent. 

Let me put this situation in context: Caleb is a big six-foot-two mega-athlete with more energy than is humanly healthy and blissfully unaware of physical space he consumes and the path of destruction he leaves in his wake.  My studio is small. With wet paintings everywhere. Oh goody.

We had the brainwave of making new artwork labels with an old typewriter I have at the studio. Caleb thought that was BRILLIANT and was entertained for a whole eight and a half minutes. A phone call from a Bell Aliant rep distracted him - he got to the phone before I did, answered with a highly professional 'Jooooones Gallery', and then decided to terrorize the rep by bellowing 'HELLLLLLOOOO!' repeatedly into the receiver. She hung up. 

Don't I look happy. This is me mid-threat. Caleb, no longer preoccupied with telemarketers or typewriters, dug some pennies out of my cash register and started shooting them across the studio. 'LOOKHOWFASTTHATWENT!' he tells me, as I envision pennies embedded in my newly finished paintings. I politely asked him to stop, underscored with a mild threat of disembowelment. 

Mom arrived just as Caleb was starting to experiment with my painting palette ('Can I paint something?!) and took him away to expend energy elsewhere. Moms are just awesome. 

Caleb's new typewritten cards

So, my life is a little busy. Studio business, 10-12 hours a day. Plus work at Enterprise Saint John.  And (naturally) stress builds (just a little bit) sometimes. And I get (a little bit) grumpy. 

Luckily I have a nutjob family to help me de-stress. 

Case-in-point no. 1: My old man has a tractor. And not just any tractor. This thing is ANCIENT. So ancient there is a crank in the front to start it up. Like a Model T. So old it belonged to my old man's GRANDPARENTS. It has been kicking around our garage for fifteen-odd years and hasn't been working since I was five. A spindly, putt-putting, three-mile-an-hour piece of red farm equipment. That is now located smack-dab in the middle of the city. And one night a few weeks ago, on our front lawn. The expression on the faces of our neighbours was a mixture of confused befuddlement and/or bemusement at my Dad's (latest) antics. 

I only stalled it once. Then he chased me off. I think I was a better driver when I was five. 

Case-in-point no. 2: My Dad told me today that he was discovered a groundhog living in the woodpile. Awww, I exclaimed - the idea of a lone, stranded groundhog conjuring up images of botched attempts of pet adoptions a-la-Charlotte's-Web from my youth. So, I ask my old man, what are you going to do with it? Can it just live there? - a question which my Dad considers for all of two seconds before deciding:

'I'm going to shoot it.'

Nice. While the idea of blowing up a groundhog is mildly entertaining, I doubt the neighbours will respond favourably to my old man hovering over the woodpile with a two-barrel shotgun.

Of course, our lack of gun being a major impediment to the old man's plan, I doubt that we'll be blowing up any rodents over the coming days. Maybe he'll happen to run over it with the tractor.