Whiskey the Wonder Gymnast

Silver Bells

Finals are officially over for both Joel and I, hurrah! We both had an incredibly busy last few weeks of school, so the relief of being done makes us fairly euphoric right now. I think I've commented the last three nights in a row that I would normally be doing homework, but I'm NOT because I'm FINISHED!! (The capitalized words mark the fact that I shouted them).
So now we're doing what everyone else does this time of year, finishing up the last minute present shopping, wrapping all the presents (one of my favorite things to do), humming Christmas songs and planning out what we will make for the Christmas feast. And of course, decorating our Christmas tree. It now has presents underneath it, these pictures were taken a week ago.





The extremely cold weather we have had lately created a lot of freezing fog, which has frosted all the trees in town. They really do look beautiful, and at night everything sparkles. Even for someone who doesn't like the cold (i.e. me), I can't help but love the way Moscow looks right now.

Artsy-Crafty

Last night was our church's Ladies' Fellowship get-together. It was very fun and festive, along with eating lots of yummy food and chatting, we also did some crafty projects. The first little Christmas decoration I made was a cute green yarn pom-pom. I would show you a picture of it, but alas I gave it to my cat to play with for a minute, and the next thing I knew it was in shreds on the floor. She's very vicious when she puts her mind to it. So instead I have posted a picture of the carnage. I promise you, it was a cute pom-pom in its time.



Perhaps I will make a new one, now that I know how easy they are. They sure do look cute on top of a Christmas present. The other craft is a paper Christmas ornament, shown here. So far it has escaped the ruthless claws of Whiskey, and I plan on hanging it on our tree, as soon as we get one.





Speaking of our kitten, I find it fairly disconcerting when I'm reading a book on the couch and I look up to see Whiskey staring fixedly at me from across the room. I'm not sure why this bothers me so much, but I've never had a cat who takes so much interest in me. I just try not to think about what thoughts might be in her little head. Probably none, actually.

Merry Christmas! (Early)

I promised myself I wouldn't put out any Christmas decorations this early... but then we started singing Christmas songs at school.... and I couldn't help myself. But I did limit myself to only two items. The first one to make its appearance was this fleece Christmas throw.



As you can see, one member of our household took a liking to the fleecy warmth. She spends most of her sleeping hours on the throw, either when it's draped on the couch or on my lap. While awake she kneads it incessantly. I was planning on getting more use out of it than my cat, but I don't have the heart to scoot her off of it when she looks so cute.

The other Christmas decoration that has found its way into our living room (and onto our piano) is this adorable snowman figure. I found him while shopping in Lewiston with my mom at a store called Real Deals. It's an adorable shop with very reasonable prices (hence the name) and I just couldn't resist buying this little guy. It makes me smile every time I see it.



Anyway, nothing really new or exciting to report on. We're having our good friends Lucas and Nicola (and baby Audrey) come and stay with us for a few days, so I'm spending the day airing out the guest room, washing sheets, cleaning the bathroom, grocery shopping, etc. I love being able to offer hospitality to out-of-town folks, it's nice to get some use out of our guest room and bathroom! Joel spent the morning at the school doing homework and is now seated downstairs munching on sunflower seeds and grading papers. Whiskey is taking a four hour nap in the basement. It's a wonderful Saturday.

From our favorite news source: The Onion

On the Uselessness of the Liberal Arts

This is from a speech one of the professors at NSA, Dr. Peter Leithart, gave a few years ago:

"We must concede that the liberal arts are, at least by all normal standards, useless.

But we must go further than concession: we must be willing to celebrate this uselessness. Lewis points out that there is always some crisis, some alarm that demands our attention; there are always a million and one things more important than reading Homer. Yet we continue to read Homer because we are not creatures whose behavior is solely guided by a crabbed criterion of usefulness. We are creatures made in the image of a Creator who makes things that He does not need, things that are not of use to Him. As we imitate His excess, we play music and recite poetry and tell stories—and organize liberal arts colleges so others can do these things with us. The liberal arts are useless in the same way that the centerpiece on a dining room table is useless; useless in the way a silk tie is useless; useless in the way salt and pepper are useless; useless in the way that perfecting a golf swing is useless; useless in the same way that most of what makes life rich and beautiful is useless. We should not be ashamed of the uselessness of the liberal arts, for making what we do not need, and doing what we have no ordinary use for, is part of the glory of being made in the image of the infinitely creative God."

The whole speech is great, you can find it here.

Yikes

Okay I know it's been a very long time since we've posted anything.... I really don't have a good excuse except that we're both very busy. I often think of things I would like to blog about, but then at night I remember how much homework I need to get done before tomorrow and then our blog gets abandoned, kicked unlovingly to the side where it slowly collects dust. But today I have my duster out. I came up with the brilliant idea of posting on Sunday afternoon when I don't do homework anyway! So here are our some pictures of our halloween festivities. A week before halloween we had a pumpkin carving party at our house, which is what these pictures are of. Then on Halloween the six of us watched a movie (the old version of the Haunting) over at mom and dad's house, drank spiced mead and took turns answering the door for trick-or-treaters. Very fun tradition.










Davey's pumpkin



Mom's Bat




My Ghost



Kate's Happy Vampire




Dad's Scary Pumpkin beside my ghost

In a nutshell

I was driving home from school a few hours ago and was imagining a conversation I might have with somebody who asked me my opinion on the banking system. As I was considering howto give my opinion in a nutshell, the term ponzi scheme came to mind. I was reading an article on the internet a few hours later and came across this paragraph:

The Collapse of a 300 Year Ponzi Scheme

All the king’s men cannot put the private banking system together again, for the simple reason that it is a Ponzi scheme that has reached its mathematical limits. A Ponzi scheme is a form of pyramid scheme in which new investors must continually be sucked in at the bottom to support the investors at the top. In this case, new borrowers must continually be sucked in to support the creditors at the top. The Wall Street Ponzi scheme is built on "fractional reserve" lending, which allows banks to create "credit" (or "debt") with accounting entries. Banks are now allowed to lend from 10 to 30 times their "reserves," essentially counterfeiting the money they lend. Over 97 percent of the U.S. money supply (M3) has been created by banks in this way. The problem is that banks create only the principal and not the interest necessary to pay back their loans. Since bank lending is essentially the only source of new money in the system, someone somewhere must continually be taking out new loans just to create enough "money" (or "credit") to service the old loans composing the money supply. This spiraling interest problem and the need to find new debtors has gone on for over 300 years — ever since the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 – until the whole world has now become mired in debt to the bankers’ private money monopoly. As British financial analyst Chris Cook observes:

"Exponential economic growth required by the mathematics of compound interest on a money supply based on money as debt must always run up eventually against the finite nature of Earth’s resources."

http://www.infowars.com/?p=5371

It's reassuring to know that I am not out of my mind.

Apple Picking and Cider Pressing!

Photos taken by Mike Church.

Two Sundays ago we went to Bishop's Orchard and picked apples and pressed them into cider. It was cold, but the cider was delicious. It tastes good cold or heated up (with cinnamon sticks and oranges, if you're fancy). I made an apple crisp a few days later with some of the ones I'd picked at the orchard. This is yet another aspect of fall that we love.



The orchard





Joel preparing to press the apples while Kate drops them in the top.


Davey cranking away while I press the mashed up apples into frothy goodness


Joel posing



On a more gruesome note, one of the few things we do not like about fall is when the spiders decide our house is more cozy than the cold outdoors. I am not a fan of spiders (to put it lightly) and am prone to fits of screaming and gagging when I see them. Thankfully I have a brave husband. Even Whiskey helps out; though she hasn't turned out to be a great mouser, she's a bold and daring spider-er. She likes to walk around with them as they try and wobble away to safety on their long, unstable legs. Then, whether because she's bored or just clumsy, she usually squishes them with one heavy paw. I've come downstairs several times to find flattened spider corpses on the floor. It's a satisfying sight.

Three More Things I Love about Fall

Kamiak

Today we took a hike up Kamiak Butte so that I could collect pine-cones to put in my outdoor planters. It was perfect weather, and the view from the top is incredible.

So that I might win a purse too!

I am linking to Bekah Merkle's blog, Amoretti, because that way I get doubly entered in her give-away contest. So here it is, you all should check out her stuff, it's very cute!

Tee hee

This is what is happening a week and a half before I defend my senior thesis: I find lots of opportunities to not work on homework. The Onion news is one example.

Pictures from a wedding

The groom made a photo booth. Yes, made. Invented. Created. So all the guests got to take pictures which made for super fun memorabilia. I wonder if you can guess which one is Joel's favorite....

Ninja cat comes closer without moving!

This is a game we play with Whiskey too. Those of you who have seen El Orfanato might notice some similarities.....

George Herbert

I had to memorize a poem for this term for Traditio so I memorized Love (III) by George Herbert. It's arguably his greatest poem:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

House Painting

We decided it was time to rid ourselves of the aqua green trim around the house. So we replaced it with something much newer and cheerier, red! At first it was too bright and I really didn't like it, but it's darkened over the week and I think it looks great now. We're going to paint the door red as well, and put in red window-boxes on the bay window and side window that you see in the first picture. I think that will tie everything together nicely.

One of my favorite things about Moscow

Every year we look forward to the fair. It's kind of an introduction to Fall, our favorite season. We like to go at night, when all the flashing carnival lights stand out starkly against the crisp darkness. This year we didn't go on any rides since tickets were exorbitantly expensive; instead we wandered through the livestock booths and thought about animals. We've been thinking a good bit about animals lately, since we've considered buying land outside of town and building a house on some acreage. And we'd like to have some livestock, not anything in large quantities but something that makes us feel more... self-sustainable I suppose. Anyway, it's just an idea, but it was certainly fun to wander past all the different animals and dream. We like to dream about the future and make plans and try out different scenarios in our heads. As I suppose all couples do. :)

After wandering and scheming we bought an elephant ear and listened to an old cowboy strumming country songs on his guitar. It made me appreciate living in America; I tried picturing Europeans in this type of setting and it just didn't work. He sang songs about the old West and about Idaho potatoes (versatile spuds, he said) and swing-dancing. All in all it was a very enjoyable night, and it reminded me strongly of where I live. I felt rooted, and perfectly happy with those roots.

If we do build a house on acreage we're going to call it Cohen Manor. Or Cohenfield. Or some similar noble-sounding name. :) Probably not, but we'd like to pass it along to our children and their children and so on, so that if we plant saplings in the yard now we'll know our descendants are enjoying their shade 250 years from now. Perhaps we'll stick a plaque in the yard to remind them.

Two Strange Events

These two events are entirely unrelated, but both I found very interesting.

The first had to do with my surgery last week. I spent a lot of last weekend on the couch at home, in a good bit of pain which was numbed somewhat by the Vicodin. I did have the time to reflect back on how terrible getting my wisdom teeth out would have been two hundred years ago. Perhaps they would have never come out and rotted back there or gotten infected and killed me. Either way, it made me very grateful for our modern dental services. Unfortunately I couldn't just lounge around all weekend eating ice-cream and watching movies, I had a Traditio class on Monday and we were assigned to read Francis Bacon. I have to admit, being on Vicodin and reading Bacon was sort of what I must imagine being on Vicodin and drinking alcohol is like. I couldn't get more than two sentences into that blasted philosophy book without passing out. It was extremely frustrating, and I can't say I came to class with a very friendly attitude towards Bacon. But then Mr. McIntosh, during his lecture, mentioned that because of Bacon's novel approach to science, we have him to thank for our wonderful modern dentistry. I did repent of my hard feelings towards Bacon after that. Ironic, eh?

The other event is just weird. Today while Joel and I were getting dressed for the wedding our kitten sat perched on our bedroom windowsill and watched the birds playing in the tree right outside. Joel went over to pet her, and just then a bird flew right into the closed window. Thunk. It flew away, leaving a large amount of feathers stuck to our window. We thought that was strange, but continued getting dressed. A few minutes later Joel's downstairs ironing his shirt and I hear another giant thunk. A SECOND bird had flown into the window, in the same spot. Two times in one hour is highly unusual for our window's bird-attracting scale, but then before we left it happened one more time. Another witless bird smashed its little body against the glass. I have to say that was one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed. Who knows how many more kamikaze birds attempted the same feat after we left. All I can say is that by the time I came home there were a lot of feathers stuck to our window. The only reason that I can think of why that would happen is because they saw Whiskey and were perhaps trying to protect their young? Or maybe Whiskey was luring them in with those beguiling kitten eyes. Who knows.

Wheee!!

You know how I feel right now?

Euphoric.

Joel says it's the pain-killers, personally I like to think it's just a newfound appreciation for the wonders of modern medicine. I was thoroughly expecting to be in extreme amounts of pain when I got out of surgery, but I was very happily numb.

This is how the surgery went. In I went to the operating room where the very young nurse (assistant?) informed me that he had already done one operation this morning. I suppose the alarmed look on my face was what prompted him to explain that he actually didn't do the operating. He just assisted. Believe me, that was a relief. So in came all the nurses, hooking tubes up to me and checking different things, most all of them thoroughly confused by the fact that my oxygen something-or-other levels were so low.... apparently you're supposed to be at 99, I was wavering between and 87 and a 93. Every time the machine read 87 all these alarms would start beeping which did not help me relax. Oh well. Apparently they decided my levels were high enough because the next thing I know a voice says "We're going to lower the chair back now." And then bam. I'm out. No countdown, nothing. The next thing I remember is hearing "Christine, are you okay?" and opening my eyes to see the assistant standing over me with a somewhat worried expression on his face. At least, I think he was worried. He kept splitting into two people and then merging back into one, so it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what face he was making.

I noticed that there were tears coursing down my cheeks. I thought this was very odd because I was in absolutely no pain and completely untraumatized. But, there I was, crying unstoppably much to my embarrassment. Since my mouth was entirely numb and speaking was not an option I gave him the thumbs up which I hoped communicated that I was just dandy besides the fact that I was crying like a baby. So out he wheeled me to the room where Joel picked me up, took me home, gave me the wonderful pain medications, and now I'm just happy as a clam here at my computer. I'm very slowly regaining the use of my mouth, which means that drinking has become a much less messy endeavor. And Joel's actually starting to understand what I'm saying! Always a plus.

So yes, just wanted to give anyone who was interested an update. I've been reading the Hobbit, watching some Seinfeld, and drinking protein drinks. I'm very grateful for all the prayers. Thank you all!

Oh, and although Joel begged me to let him take a picture of me to put on this blog, I'm convinced I look like a chipmunk. So no pictures until I feel prettier. Sorry. It's a vain woman thing, I know.

A quick update

Well, all that rushing around from my last post had to have its consequences... and both Joel and I came down with a cold. I hope that explains our long and neglectful silence on this blog. Joel was wise enough to take lots of zinc when he started to get sick, and so his cold only lasted three to four days. I, on the other hand, refused to believe I was coming down with anything, took no zinc, and thus have been stuck with a lingering cough and stuffy nose for a week now.

At first I was worried that my sickness would mean that I couldn't get my wisdom teeth out, but it looks like I'm still scheduled for a 9:30 surgery tomorrow. I'm trying not to be nervous... really... but it's not very comforting when everyone who hears I'm getting them out comes back with some terrible story about their surgery. "But I'm sure yours won't be like that," they say afterward, as if that's supposed to make me feel better. Ah well. At least if something does go horribly wrong I'll have an interesting story to tell you all about later (And they mistook 'wisdom teeth extraction' for 'total teeth extraction').

So tonight I'm going to savor my last solid-food meal for a while.

In other interesting news I had my first Latin class which was entertaining. Especially with a completely stuffed up nose. Trying saying "Nominative" with your nose plugged, it doesn't sound very good. But I think my students understood me well enough. I even played Latin pictionary with them at the end of class, so I hope that scored me good "new-teacher" brownie points. I'm really looking forward to teaching this year, it should be a great experience!

Since I have nothing new to say....

This last week was extremely busy.... rush to work, rush to school, back to work, rush home and make dinner, eat dinner, clean up dinner, do homework until we crawl into bed exhausted.... repeat. If we weren't eating dinner at my parent's house twice a week I don't know if we'd even be eating at all. I'm hoping things slow down a bit, but if they don't you won't be hearing from us much this term! In the meantime, here's a picture of our fabulous new lamp that my mother found for us at a garage sale. I show it off because every time I come downstairs and see it it makes me happy. I'll probably come up with a name for it here pretty soon. In our living room there is no overhead lighting and I'm hard-pressed to find lamps that will illuminate it sufficiently in the evening. But this lamp does the trick!

The "Dark Ages"

This is my (Christine's) first week back at NSA, and it's my last year! Joel doesn't start until next week, but he has to put up with me spending every night this week doing homework, since I already have a good deal to accomplish. But I thought I'd take a break and blog about something interesting that we discussed in Mr. Grieser's senior traditio class today.

One of the instigators of the Renaissance in the fourteenth century was a poet named Petrarch. As a poet, one who deals with words, his primary concern was preserving and improving language. Since Petrarch spoke Latin, he had to find a reliable source to learn from. And so who does he turn to to polish his Latin skills? The greatest orator of the Roman world, Cicero. Petrarch found himself constantly referring to the ancient Romans for examples of eloquent Latin with a rhetorical flare. Consequently he regarded the Latin language after the fall of Rome as barbaric and uncultured. This, of course, inspired his linguistic reform, and it also brought about an important three-part division of history in Petrarch's mind. The ancient Greeks and Romans lived in glorious Antiquity as free people (Rome was the great Republic and the Greeks had their city-states) who were able to pursue and cultivate the arts. But after Rome fell the arts witnessed a steady decline, and so Petrarch coined the time from Augustine up to the 14th century "The Dark Ages". Now Petrarch saw a third era of history dawning, a Renaissance, an Enlightenment.

Other people took hold of this name and ran with it. Protestants liked the term dark ages because this was the time of tyrannical Papal rule. They criticized the papacy and blamed it for the doctrinal errors that surfaced during the "Dark Ages." Voltaire and other Enlightenment thinkers liked to blame the Dark Ages on the Christians and their tyrannical and progress-stunting religion.

In reality, this is a very unfair title. There was in fact a 12th century Renaissance. Not to mention the educational edicts of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. Yet now "The Dark Ages" is a commonly used term.
It just goes to show what can happen when someone influential coins a catchy phrase.

She's only like this before a lunar eclipse

I started to wonder if kitten had gone crazy after coming into the room and finding her like this...

€

She tried to extricate herself from her position, only to discover that one claw would not come unhooked from the chair top



By the time were-kitten managed to free herself, she had reached the brink of insanity



After several rounds of tummy-rubbing from her patient master, Whiskey slowly started to remember who she was.... a cute, cuddly house-pet and not a vicious were-kitten



And so she relaxed back on the chair in a normal cat position.... her vacant, exhausted eyes were the only signs of the terrible battle that had waged within.




The End.

The Great Hornet Massacre

Joel got geared up and attacked the hornet's nest which was underneath our house. He was very brave, the hornets were very angry.

This was posted a while back on Right Mind, and we just had to put it up on our blog too.... :)

Apologies

I do feel bad that we haven't posted in a while.... it sounds lame to say that it's been a really busy week during the summer, but, well, it really has! So here are some highlights for you out of town relatives who might be interested.

I'm still plugging away at thesis work (on Tom Wolfe and the New Journalism of the 1960s). I had a meeting with Dr. Atwood who gave me very helpful tips and helped focus my paper more. A few nights ago I wrote a record ten pages in one night. It was an adrenaline rush, and definitely helped me on my way to finishing up. I'm defending it at the beginning of October. Scary!

Joel has been cleaning up our front yard, using his strong muscles to scoop ugly red rock out of our side yard and the front of the yard and all around the base of our house. The last owners really liked it I guess. We however do not, and plan on replacing some parts with grass and some with bark. I think it will look a lot nicer. We also are planning a trip to Lewiston to Home Depot to get new paint for the exterior trim and the door. No more pale aqua green, hurrah!

Joel is officially done with his summer class (woohoo!) and will no longer have to put up with some of the silly assignments he was required to do. For a fraud examination class there was surprising little fraud examination taught. So now he has a good three weeks before U of I starts to enjoy a homework-free summer.

I had an interview on Friday for a job at Montrose Academy as an Elementary Latin teacher. They're a very small private Christian school here in town who were in need of teachers for this upcoming year. It's an easy teaching job, I only have to lecture for one hour one day a week and then the students do independent homework for the rest of the week. I've already had one interview and things look promising. Now I just need to meet with the board and I should be a teacher in the fall. Salvete discipuli!

Mom and I picked out fabric for my quilt on Friday, which is a definite step in the right direction for quilt-making. I love the two fabrics and will post pictures as soon as I'm done!

That's about it for now. NSA starts in two weeks so I'm getting mentally prepared for one last year of school. Both Joel and I are excited to be done.

Guess who wanted to go to work today?

Garage Sale Hunting

This morning my mom and I went out at the crack of dawn (8am) to search for hidden treasure in garage sales around town. It was the first time we'd gone in Moscow, and I must say we collected a veritable wealth of treasures. Adorable baby gift bags for 25 cents each, a fabulous home-decor book for mom, red curtains for my bay window, and a much-needed jewelry box. I even found a nice brand new puzzle for Joel for 25 cents. But I have not mentioned our biggest find. Deep in the recesses of one garage my mother discovered the summum bonum of all garage sale finds: an old 800 series Bernina for 75 dollars. 75 dollars! Obviously these people didn't know what they had, and mom and I took great pains not to divulge this information. This is the second time my bargain-finding expert of a mother has made such a find. A few months ago she came across a fabulous old Elna, a quilter's dream, in Goodwill for 30 dollars. Having bequeathed this one to Kate, she was on the lookout for a good sewing machine for me next. It's amazing what you can find at garage sales. Now I REALLY have to get started on that quilt for our entryway.

I have to wax dramatic over such a fantastic find.

Hard Providence

We found out on Saturday that our cute kitten Whiskey has leukemia. She had been throwing up every day for a good long time, and so we knew something had to be wrong. The vets really have no time-frame for how long she'll live, it could be 2 years or 8. Right now there is a very small chance that she could develop an immunity to it. We've been praying in that direction.

It's strange to me how quickly you can become attached to an animal; we've only had Whiskey for 9-10 months, but I cried a good deal when I heard the news. Part of what makes me so sad is that she's not allowed to go outside anymore because she could infect other cats. She had gotten so used to being let outside all the time. So I've been praying that she wouldn't be constantly begging to go outside because it makes me so sad to have to say no. And God, as always, has been good and she really doesn't meow to go outside as much as she used to.

Having a cat also has made me think more about pets on the new earth. It seems strange to think that God would give us pets to love now, and then when he re-makes this earth those same pets wouldn't be there to entertain us. God gives out so many bountiful blessings, I imagine restoring our pets to us will be one of them. So when I'm sad that Whiskey can't go outside, I imagine being on this glorified earth in the next life, watching her pounce at imaginary shadows in the tall grass, and laughing as she wriggles around on her back in the shade.

God really blessed humans with pets. They keep us company, make us laugh, and are ever so huggable.

Some of my favorite pictures from our Santa Cruz Trip

More outside projects

After staring rapturously for a while at my beautiful wild rose bush I noticed that it leaned a little. By a little I actually mean that the shoots, which are my height, were bending so far over that they almost touched the ground. This was not aesthetically pleasing. So I bought a trellis and some tape, and ta-da! Now I can claim some credit for something that looks nice in our yard.



This morning I left the house to go grocery shopping and to farmer's market. Joel was having Keith Dimeler over to help him tackle our juniper bush problem. He hinted that they might be going to Moscow Building Supply for some tools. I didn't think much at the time, I probably just nodded. As I drove home a few hours later I passed Keith and Joel in Keith's truck. They looked extremely pleased about something, and I noticed a mass of destroyed juniper branches piled in the truck bed. When I got home I found this in our front yard.



I have to admit I was a little shocked to see two large holes in our yard, not to mention a piece of machinery slightly bigger than what I had envisioned when I heard the word 'tool'. But I was also immensely pleased. Keith and Joel in the space of a few hours had decimated our two gigantic and hideous juniper bushes, roots and all. I'm very thankful for their hard work. Yay for dead junipers! The world was made a prettier and safer place today.



Granted it will be even prettier once we fill those massive holes with grass.