No Complaints

Inspirational song: Nothin' But a Good Time (Poison)

I've caught myself dwelling on first world problems several times lately. I burned the kale and chard in my omelet this morning, and felt like a failure. I left the house late for a massage, and passed so many cops set up for speed traps (or having sprung them on other drivers), I couldn't drive fast. I growled to my steering wheel, "I hate being late to a massage," and then I felt like I really should slap myself for saying something like that out loud. It's one of those opportunities to step back and count my blessings, as the Rosemary Clooney song goes. My life seems hectic at times, what with nearly every single major stressor coming down on me at once, but I am safe, getting healthier, and I have a promising future. I'm good. I will stop complaining about burned greens and missing the first five minutes of a massage.

I had hoped to accomplish a little more outside than I did today, but I managed to put together a few more hanging baskets and containers. All of the baskets around the deck are freshened, with a couple volunteer plants left to grow until they can be identified. I think I have a couple snapdragons that re-seeded, and maybe some pansies or violas? We are still losing the battle of the sycamore pods, but another bucketload is now in the burn pit. More keep falling on the deck and around the yard to take their place. I will never own land with sycamores on it again, not after this place. I may have to fight cacti or goat heads, but I will be done with sycamores forever when we move.

I am going to take my leave here, and put up today's pictures. I need to go take a double dose of Benadryl and hope that it keeps me from scratching the poison ivy rash along my ribs and inner wrists all night long. Nothing to do now but wait it out. Good times.

Tired and Cranky

Inspirational song: The Road to Ensenada (Lyle Lovett)

I'm not a very good patient, in that I'm not very patient. I technically have about two more weeks before I'm supposed to be resuming my full normal activities. But yet I haven't been holding much back over the last few days. It was just too much fun to get dirty this weekend. And the weeds weren't interested in waiting until I am at full speed. I had too big a case of spring fever to sit inside and watch the man do all the yard work. It's so bad, we were wandering through Costco, going up and down every single aisle, because we signed up for our first membership there at the festival this weekend, and as we were filling the cart with large quantities of reasonably priced organic food, I rounded a corner and caught a whiff of an intoxicating scent. My head whipped around to see what smelled so delicious, and not kidding, it was a stack of bags of gardening soil. There is no escaping it now.

But regardless of how much fun it is to play in the dirt, I have to be honest with myself about when to stop, and I didn't do that yesterday. Even a relaxed day of shopping and errands meant that when I tried to pull a few weeds and pick up a few sycamore pods, I just had no energy for it. I've been sitting under two blankets for the last three hours, freezing because I have nothing left in reserves. I couldn't do anything but shiver. I'm too cold even to go up to bed, because I would have to crawl out from the blankets and warm cat bodies on top of me now. I guess I have to do it anyway. But that doesn't meant I have to like it.

The Lair of the Earth Worm

Inspirational song: The D'Ampton Worm (Emilio Machado and Stephen Powys)

It is amazing how much gets done when I am not the only human caring for the Park. For that matter, I'm not even doing the lion's share of the work, and I'm still wearing myself out this week, working outside on the garden beds and container plantings. I put in a solid six hours of work, broken by a quick dinner break, and I am wiped out. It's barely after nine pm as I start to write, and the man has just now joined me in post-hot-shower jammies and bathrobe. I've been similarly attired for two hours, while he couldn't leave well enough alone, and he stayed out until full dark to finish his last project. (He put together a complex puzzle: moving the poured concrete cobbles from the side yard to the back, increasing our "patio" and connecting it with the freshly expanded fire pit brick base. It looks fantastic in the dark, but I can't compete with that kind of energy and stamina, and I would have walked away from it long before it was done.)

Our primary focus today was weeding and mulching the beds on the side of the house. The previous two springs, I worked like a fiend to remove each and every weed from these beds, and last year I dumped cedar mulch on them in a vain attempt to slow down the regrowth. By the time spider season hit, I was overrun anyway. I'm trying again this year, but since I have someone to split chores with, maybe now I will be able to keep up on pulling out new growth. He has already promised to move all spiders down to the thicket and beyond. That one project might be all the difference in the world.

Ever since we built the privacy fence that cut off the neighbors' view of the big hydrangea bushes and ferns, we have tried to compensate by planting hanging baskets on the fence and keeping the bed on the outside of the fence full of beautiful perennials. We put in three little hydrangeas there a couple years ago, and they're starting to act like they are well established, finally. The two spireas with lime green leaves and frilly white flowers in the spring have flourished there, after years of languishing by the shady thicket. Ferns have volunteered to grow on that side of the fence, and I'm not certain, but I think the agapanthus I planted last year might have survived. I love those big purple firework-shaped flowers. I have learned not to expect the baskets on the fence to come back, no matter whether I plant annuals or perennials. Everything always dies before the end of the season, and this year, I made my life easier and went with the hardiest of basics. It's all dianthus and snapdragons. Honestly, it will probably be the best year for them of all. It's nearly impossible to kill those two flowers.

I tried to get pictures of Zoe bouncing around, chasing lizards with us on the side of the house. Of course every time I hit the shutter button for an animated picture, she stood perfectly still. I had to rely on still photos of the things she was chasing, of lizards and worms. (I was so glad I was wearing leather gloves today -- for all that I love getting into the dirt, I get a little grossed out by touching worms or earwigs or spiders. Not good for a dedicated gardener to be so squeamish.)

I foresee an early bed tonight, so I can get up and do it all over again. There is still so much to do. And for the first time in months, despite being sore and tired, I actually feel good enough to do it. Hooray!

Just One or Two More

Inspirational song: Mockingbird (Carly Simon and James Taylor)

We cannot be trusted. Not for a moment.

Today was the day we bartered to toil in the fields for dinner and a hot soak. We promised to arrive to help plant Bonfire Gardens by noon, but we got distracted by weeding, sweeping the deck, and trying to clean the mildewed and stained deck chairs, and didn't even leave the house until an hour later than we were supposed to start working. We had barely arrived, when I mentioned a tomato frame I'd seen just this morning, where a gardener had built a six foot tall A-frame, and used twine to weave closely-spaced tomato plants along taut vertical strands. We volunteered to run to the store for poles and a fresh spool of twine, as well as stopping by the grocery store for sides for dinner. They should have known better than to let us run off to play at a garden center on a sunny afternoon. We couldn't find a sufficient number of good bamboo poles to make a taller frame, but the man selected some shorter stakes that will work for now. And then all the pretties distracted us. It started when a little raspberry pot literally called out my name. Then a pack of snow pea seeds snuck their way into the cart. I had found the red calibrachoa was still alive in my red-white-and-blue planting up front, so I needed some sort of blue replacement to use alongside white petunias I already have, thus a lithodora got added. The man couldn't walk away from a twelve-pack of dianthus for a good price, much as I couldn't miss a few marigolds, for just a buck and a half per pot. Eventually, the man recognized how far down the enabling rabbit hole we had fallen, and he started pushing me by the shoulders to the registers at the front, and we made a break for it. The bedding plants are nestled snugly in my hatchback still, away from the cool night air. Tomorrow will be a big workday for us.

Once we finally turned back up at Bonfire Gardens, we had missed out on the actual tomato planting. After our discussion, the Bonfire leader decided to plant her tomato couplets more closely spaced, ten plants straddling deeply buried plastic buckets in pairs. I am excited to see how well this works for her, between the new root-watering method and the A-frame supports. The man planted a row of about seven kinds of peppers, and a patch of onions, before he got distracted by another project that no one expected him to tackle. He disappeared, and came back to announce that he had cleared out the drainage ditch on the front half of the property, where heavy rains had allowed sediment and grass to clog it up. Remind me someday to explain how we all feel about this guy when he has access to a shovel. A late season cold front arrived tonight, and by the time we finished dinner, we had to hurry up and cover all the freshly planted vegetables, plus all the unplanted herb pots, with plastic. Hopefully that is enough to ward off a frost advisory. It's not a guaranteed hard freeze, but between four and nine tomorrow morning will be trying times for the tender bedding plants.

Tomorrow the challenge will be to see whether the man and I can egg each other on to get more planted and weeded (mostly him inspiring me, less is needed the other way around), as much as we feed off of each other when it comes to filling a cart at the garden center. We are excellent at buying. Placing and planting are much less fun.

Cloudy and Fair

Inspirational song: Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall (Ella Fitzgerald and the Inkspots)

When my mom and stepdad first married, he was very much still in the "booth at outdoor festivals" stage of his art career. I didn't have to spend too much time stuck under the tent where his art was displayed, but I was there often enough to get to know the meteorological laws that govern spring arts and crafts festivals. It is guaranteed that there will be rain, wind, and either unbearable scorching sun or freak cold snaps. It's never calm, partly cloudy, and 68 degrees for an entire event weekend. That might be part of the reason I developed a phobia about going to them (or for that matter to state or county fairs). For most of my life, I have been reluctant to go to any of these types of gatherings, even to the point of ignoring my children's pleas. So when I found myself excited about going to a street festival this morning, it was significantly out of character. Certainly I am in a different place physically these days, but was that enough to broaden some of my horizons in this way? I sort of hope so. Time will tell.

I wore a light jacket to the fair, but when we parked the car and started to walk up the hill to the site, a light breeze refused to leave alone the silk scarf I wore, so I turned back and threw both of them in the car. I decided it was plenty warm enough, and for the first forty-five minutes, it was. Then thicker clouds blew over, and then a few sprinkles of rain. Eventually two or three bands of moderate rain moved over, and passed quickly. We had walked the length of the main street, and had turned back to walk the secondary paths with some smaller vendors when fat drops of rain started hitting my face, even through the thick canopy of trees over the walking path. I ducked under a tent that spanned a bridge, and told the man I wanted to hide from the rain a minute and check the radar. He saw a tent that interested him and said he would be right back. Then the real festival rain arrived, and we were stuck thirty yards apart, for at least half an hour. A couple dozen people joined me under the bridge tent, but I found myself not feeling gregarious or social. I just stood there, bored, trying not to eavesdrop, but unable to do anything else. One lady was quite concerned about her kids being under a tent constructed with metal supports in a major thunderstorm, until her adult companions convinced her that we were not under the tallest structure around, and thus should be fine. This is not to say I didn't feel the crackle of ionized air a few times as lightning flashed overhead. But eventually the worst of the storm passed, and we all left our emergency shelter. By then my man and I were fairly tired and ready to leave, but I still managed to stop by two more vendors to spend money. Three, if you count the barbecue we grabbed at the last corner before we raced down the hill to our car, in yet another wave of rain. 

This festival coincides with the time of year when this small town is at its most insanely beautiful. This is the place the rich people from the peninsula used to have their summer homes, back in the days before air conditioning and chemical mosquito control.  It's covered in gorgeous homes that all look like they regularly grace the pages of Southern Living. Each and every one of them have gardens that make my stomach clench in envy. This week, all of the white dogwoods have bloomed, the wisteria is draping purple pendants all around, perfuming the air, the pink and red azaleas are nearly all open, and a few bright yellow pops of either forsythia or jasmine caught my eye from a distance. I want to get my hands dirty, but my body is still trying to slow me down. I did carry home two small packs of petunias that we bought from a high school agricultural program. Maybe tomorrow I can put together a few flowerpots to get me going for a while.