I am SORE - spent 2-1/2 hours bent over, yanking the dreaded oxalis pes-caprae (Bermuda Buttercup) weed out wherever I could reach. It's times like this I can't imagine having to take care of something bigger than our 1/6 of an acre. How do people do it? Maybe they hire help, I can't imagine being able to do it all by oneself (as I do). The weeds will come back, of course, so I'll need to do another round in a month or so. Yes, definitely time to bait again with Sluggo, too! The bearded iris have been blooming for over a month, and the white callas are finally starting to bloom too. They are one of my favorite pairings. And the freesias and ranunculus are putting up buds, all ready to bloom soon. I can hardly wait - I love those two bulbs. I never used to like ranunculus, but the new Bloomingdale hybrids totally won me over. And who can resist the sweet perfume of freesias? This was a bouquet from last spring - I meant to cut some callas and iris today, but was just too tired after all that work!

Our contingent offer went kaput (long story) which was fine with us because there was no sign that his property was going to move anytime soon (there's a lot of inventory in his town and his house is OK but nothing really special and did not seem aggressively priced) and that was just making things difficult for us. The week after that contingency tag went up we had two showings - one generated the offer from the bargain-hunting nutjob - the two weeks after that we had had one showing per week, and then last week we had NONE. Nada zip zero. The calls had dropped to nearly nothing too. I was beginning to get very frustrated and it really was impetus to tell the guy to take a long walk off a short dock when he began to get difficult. I think he thought he had us over a barrel and he didn't. We signed the offer release Friday morning, dropped it off at the realtor's office at noon and asked his assistant to put it right into the system so we knew it would get done! Within hours of the contingency tag being removed, there were multiple calls, and we had two showings within 24 hours . More showings today and I'll bet there will be more calls on Monday. We're hoping for a busy week and plenty of warm bodies through the place at the open house scheduled for next Saturday since we'll be at 60 days on the 23rd. :-p We've decided we're not accepting any more sales-contingency offers. Maybe if they have a binding contract on their property, passed inspections, the whole works - and even then it had better be a very good offer. We learned our lesson, lost weeks of prime selling season! Oh, and when we looked at a couple more houses in the last few days I asked the selling agents if they showed houses with contracts with kickouts to their clients. One said only if the client found it him/herself and asked to, the other said no, especially in this market where there are plenty of other houses to look at.

Wow ,Congratulations,you deserve it.I don't know how you did all those hours.I used to do factory work as well,and i'm sorry,i refused to do anything over 10 in any given day.I was a QC inspector for printed circuit board and after 10 hours my eyes felt like they were full of sand. Good for you for sticking it out.So now enjoy your retirement,you surely deserve it. I retired 9 years ago and have never been sorry. Kathi

one of our local news stations Wed had a story about one of those guys buying up needed things - and reselling them at a very high price. He called the guy (who had placed an ad online) and scheduled a buy of 2 bottles of sanitizer at 40.00 $ each. they sell at about 7$ at walgreens. He didn't know his 'buyer' was a news reporter (on scams and ripoff businesses). from what he said there are no laws against price gouging or taking advantage (financially) in a crisis. I hope leaders in this state take swift action to fix that. All of those people (at least here in AZ) aren't buying up those huge quantities for their own personal use. they've also been reporting on the huge increase in purchases of bidets. I went to my local W earlier and its canned good aisle, paper, detergent, cleaners, meat, cheese/butter /egg, and baking supply aisles were all totally wiped out. as were most of the frozen food cases and pet food aisles. I didn't get any paper items I need or dog food. my sister emailed me that her dh was going to Costco and asked what I needed. I sent her my list and I hope he can get at least a few things - especially the dog food. if anyone has a reddish color mutt appear at their door with a note on its collar asking to be fed, it might be my girl!