It's about time (a happy post)

My garden: small but mighty!

I keep having these old TV songs run through my head. Today it's "It's about time" I probably won't get this one exactly right either but it goes sort of like, "It's about time, it's about space, it's about three men in the strangest place. It's about three astronauts. It's about in space..." And so on sort of like that. Do you remember it? Probably not, unless you're around my age and blogging tends to attract a younger crowd. But at least there are some people my age and up, unlike at work. At work, everyone is much much younger than I am.

Anyway, since this is a happy post I won't be talking about the badness at work here except to say, gleefully--I HAVE MONDAY AND TUESDAY OFF! Tuesday is my birthday and I always try to get that off from work as my birthday present to myself. Tuesday was also the day that the Main Office Interloper was going to move into my old office (which now won't be until Wednesday, probably because I took Tuesday off.) Some birthday present, huh? But I won't be there, nor for the staff meeting on Tuesday morning, where I now have to take the meeting minutes. Yippee, yippee, yippee! Yes, that makes me very happy.

And tonight I'm driving down to see the kids and will stay there until Tuesday night. First before I leave I'm going to figure out bills and the mortgage payments. I can do it still, this month because we are getting three paychecks in August. So I'm hanging on here, which is good.

Son and roommate (she is still living with him but they aren't boy and girlfriend anymore, just friends) told me they are planning to hang out with me the entire time unlike last time when they both had to work and I barely saw them. When I asked if he needed anything from here, son said no, but I'll stop and get that particular fast food item that his roommate loves, Rodeo Burgers. They don't have those in their area.

I wish I could bring garden produce to them, but the garden is small and has about three tiny tomatoes per day and one cucumber. The peas, radishes and spinach are done and the broccoli is getting tough. Soon I may have carrots, beans, squash and corn though! Isn't it amazing what a small garden can produce? The poor garden will have to go without water while I'm gone but I was not watering it much anyway. There isn't a hose outside so I have to carry buckets of water. Water is heavy and it's hard on my back so I've been only carrying two buckets of water per day, unlike earlier when I was bucketing probably ten or more buckets per day.

I'm really looking forward to my visit with the kids. They are such excellent hosts and take very good care of me! It looks like it's going to be a wonderful, long weekend for me! Have a great rest of your weekend and "see" you when I get back late Tuesday night!

checking him out

Well, here it is Thursday already and my last post was on Monday. Not that things haven't been happening; things are always happening. This is both good and bad. So let's see, what's worth writing about? Or put in another way, maybe not worth writing about but I feel like writing about!

Monday I had breakfast with best friend SLA. She had called me up on Sunday night asking, "Can I bring someone along?" and I said, sure, Houseguest can come along too. I haven't seen her for awhile, since SLA's surprise birthday party, in fact. Those two were childhood best friends and hang around together. But it wasn't Houseguest but a man--a new boyfriend! (OK, I don't really like that term, BF, but it describes the relationship and I dislike the other ways of saying it even more: lover, special friend, etc and etc. bleee-uuug!)

So SLA is wanted me to research New Man online, since I do that sort of thing at work. And there wasn't much to be found. That's an improvement, you used to be able to uncover all sorts of things about other people online! Nowadays that sort of information is for sale, or only available by subscription to a special database or something. That's a good thing, but not good for finding out about this particular person. Then she wanted me to do a natal chart for him since I used to be a professional astrologer, but since I re-found my religion, I don't do that sort of thing anymore. So I guess SLA will just have to go by intuition. This situation is a bit more risky in that he's from out-of-town and normally there are friends and family around a new BF so you can get sort of an indication of character and such. Hope it all turns out well. I was no help in the matter!

OK, that was just one topic I wanted to write about today! Either this is going to get far too long or I'll have to break it up into a day or two.

I'm driving down to see son and girlfriend right after work on Friday. This time I'm loading up the washer and dryer into the jeep. They're apartment sized, but still, the washer is fairly heavy to lift up into the back of the vehicle. A guy from work volunteered to help me with it! So on Friday morning I'll try to load them up, and if I can't, he will accompany me from work to help! Pretty cool! My co-workers aren't all bad, just the women. Yeah, I know that sounds really sexist, especially coming from me, another woman, but it's true.

I'm a bit nervous about having to drive all the way down there without a cell phone. If something happened, it would be a long walk to an exit on the freeway! I don't have a personal cell and use my work cell phone only for emergencies but it was taken away for an upgrade--which was very bad timing.

I may bring them some chairs and other things, whatever else will fit into the jeep once I (or we) get the washer and dryer into it. Also, I'm going to make them some rhubarb cake tonight as well as water my garden really really well and do the laundry, pack, and all.

I've been eating cherry tomatoes from my garden for the past couple of days! When I was a kid my Mom would rave about garden tomatoes, but we kids would just humor her. We'd never had a "store" tomato and didn't know the difference. And there is SUCH a difference! So the garden is still limping along, not exactly lush and healthy but surviving. So how's your week been so far?

Friday the 13th

Yeah, I know that today is actually Sunday the 15th, but I forgot to say something during the Friday post. July 13th is my ex's birthday. My son's father was born on a Friday the 13th. Guess that should have told me something right there! But he always said that Friday the 13th was a lucky day for him: so we were married on a Friday the 13th, during my lunch hour! Pretty weird, huh?

Well, we thought it was sort of cool. My co-workers (at that time) did too. I called my best friend at work and told her that I was going to be a little late back from lunch-I was getting married! She got all excited and told everyone else. So when I finally returned from my lunch hour/wedding, they had a huge celebration with food and drink and even decorations for me at work! They must have worked fast on it, since I wasn't gone THAT long! I think...

This last Friday ended with the doctor appointment. Except it didn't end there: I have to go back for blood work, back for a mammogram and a colonoscopy. Happy happy joy joy. The good news is that my blood pressure is fine and everything else seemed OK; which is good to know.

Today was another Open House, so Saturday was spent Extreme Cleaning--when I wasn't with my Mom. I also weeded and hoed the garden and got more compliments on it from passerbys. The neighbor 80-year-old lady talked with me for quite a while. In fact I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to get done with the weeding/hoeing by the time I had to leave to get my Mom. Then the neighbor left for about 5 minutes, returned and started telling me some of the same stories. She's very sweet but it was lucky for me and and Mom that she was quicker the second time she stopped to talk!

Today I went to the first church and then the second one. Church #2 had a BBQ after, so that mercifully took up some of the time that I had to be away from my house (for the Open House). After that I drove around a bit, somewhat out of sorts but at least not hungry, and then went grocery shopping and went home.

I haven't heard a thing about the Open House. Wonder if anyone came? The real estate agent is a great guy but his company doesn't advertise well at all. Unless they just happened to be driving by, most people wouldn't even know about the Open House. My contract with them expires in two days. After that, I'm going with a larger real estate company that splashes its offerings across the newspapers. It's a shame but I do need to sell my house.

Hope your weekend has been a very fun one!

Blown away

It certainly was windy on Tuesday. We had winds clocked at 50 and 60 mph, gale force winds. They did a lot of damage. The saddest thing for me was to see a photo in the online local newspaper of traffic going around a large tree in the middle of a main road downtown.

That was one of my favorite trees. I used to walk by it all the time when I lived in East End and walked downtown to work. First I had thought it was a chestnut tree, and picked up some of the fallen "nuts" to bring to work. But a co-worker from the Buckeye State told me that it was a buckeye tree and that buckeyes are lucky to carry in your pocket, but poisonous to eat. Both chestnuts and buckeyes must be very rare around here, because I've never seen another tree like it.

I tried planting some of its seeds and even once got a sprout but the little plant died off and I never got a baby tree from it. My son was six years old when I "met" that tree and now he's twenty-six. So I had known and loved that tree for a long time, and am grieving about it now. Oh, and in the paper it's identified as a "horse chestnut" tree. Is that the same as a Buckeye?

Anyway, I also found out a major disadvantage of raised bed gardens--they were all pretty well blown flat in the strong wind! My neighbors, who have a large, regular garden had no problem. Of course their garden was not only ground-level but also sheltered from the wind by a raspberry hedge on one side and their large garage on the other side. My poor little garden was just out there defenceless in the wind. I did water it (hard to do with the wind) to help anchor soil and plants and keep them from being blown away. The plants took quite a beating, especially the staked-up tomatoes, but I think everything is still alive, sort of.

And of course more important things than gardens and trees were messed up. Large trees fell on people's houses, sheds and garages. Some of my co-workers still have their electrical power out a couple of days later, and they're worried about the food in their freezers. Also about taking showers and washing their hair. Last night we had a thunderstorm and torrential rain, which did not help the tree and building cleanup and power restoration.

Two truths and a lie--at church

When I went out to get my daily newspaper this morning, I was admiring my front flower/herb garden. It's a small raised bed and everytime I'm out working on it, I get lots of compliments from passerbys, like, "That's a beautiful little garden!" which totally gratify my heart. Of course when those people are walking right by me, they probably feel they have to say something. But I choose to think they really are admiring my little garden. I think it's pretty, too, if I may be permitted to brag! Even the sage is blooming, although I did lose my treasured rosemary plant. I had been bringing it in every winter and planting it again in the spring. Early this spring it was not doing well indoors but the temperature was too cold to put it outside yet. The herbs always do much better outside, when the weather has warmed up. I was saying to it "Hang on there, little plant. Spring is almost here!" But the poor thing didn't make it, nor my hot pepper plant which was about four years old. My cold house isn't a great environment for plants, indoors.

And the lawn needs mowing again. I noticed that my neighbors are paying some high school boys to mow their lawn (and their lawn isn't nearly as large as mine). Wish I could afford to do that, but it's quite expensive. The neighbors pay around $40 per time and my lawn would be even more than that. Oh well. It's good exercise at least and a heat stroke at most. The problem is figuring out how to get it mowed after work. I have another open house coming up and need the lawn all mowed and edged before then. Not to mention the garden weeded and house all cleaned up. Hard to get that stuff done when I am gone all day at work and not home much in the evening, either.

Last night I met with SLA right after work as she desperately wanted to talk with me. She's going on a date with a man she met at her work and wanted to run his "specs" by me to see what I thought. After we talked for about two hours, she went on her date and I went to the "woman's night out" at church.

I was about ten minutes late and they had already started as it was awkward coming in with my covered dish past everyone already there, lined up for food. Most the women already had their food by the time my dish got put out and I was afraid my Rhubarb Cake would go untouched. I'm always anxious about stuff like that, feel domestically challenged compared to most women. Also, there was no room to sit by the people I knew. First I thought, "Well good, I can meet new people!" and everyone was friendly and all but I still much rather would have sat with the couple of women I already know. It would have been lots more fun.

The night out was sort of odd to me in that we didn't pray or do anything churchy. Perhaps the others wanted to get away from all of that and just hang out with each other but I would have welcomed it. We played a pictionary type of game which I was not good at, too slow to guess, someone always beat me. But I did seem to be quite decent at drawing stuff so people could guess it right away. Then we played that old icebreaker, "Two truths and a lie" in which we had to write down two truths and a lie on a small card and the others in our team would try to guess which was the lie. I'm being too critical of a mere game, but I found that a rather odd game to play at church! Maybe it was just me, I always think about things too much.

And my cake got used up, pretty much. But not in the way I would have liked. They had a game in which blindfolded people had to put makeup on another woman, then they switched and the blindfolded one had to feed the other one. Guess what they used to feed the victims? Yes, my rhubarb cake. It made quite the mess and looked very gross. Two of the woman who were force-fed my cake did say that it was good. Oh well. The cake was the perfect consistency for that game and there was still about a fourth of it left before it got stuffed into people's mouths.

Anyway, here are my two truths and a lie:
1. I have driven to Central America.
2. I have worked for the police department.
3. I grew up on a strawberry farm.

Guess which is the lie? Wanna play--and list YOUR two truths and a lie, and see how well your blogger friends know you!?

I didn't do it

Yesterday I was weeding and hoeing my garden. The neighbor cats (there were at least two who visited my cat box--I mean, my garden!) seem to be leaving it alone after the excellent suggestion of putting coffee grounds around the perimeter of the garden. Like I have a shortage of coffee grounds, ha ha. I was putting them into the compost pile but now they go directly into the garden. And no new cat diggings and smelly little piles, yay! Thanks for the great, and effective suggestions.

Here's a neighborhood who takes their pet ordinance a bit too seriously:

Family’s cat beheaded, then another one goes missing
Minneapolis Star Tribune Published Sunday, July 08, 2007
Shortly after moving into their home in the town of Carver, Minn., last year, Tammy and Barry Erickson were given a friendly warning: Their new neighborhood wasn’t very cat-friendly.
The couple found out just how unfriendly last week when one of their five cats, Soon-Yi, was killed and its severed head tossed into the family’s front yard, where it was found by Tammy Erickson while she was watering her plants on June 28. The next day another pet cat, Louis, went missing and hasn’t been seen since. “We think the same person did the same thing to him,” Tammy Erickson said Friday, wiping tears from her cheeks as she looked at pictures of her dead and missing cats.

The decapitation is being investigated by the Carver County Sheriff’s Office, which reports no similar cases in and around the town. “It’s a terrible thing to do to a pet,” Chief Deputy Bob VanDerBroeke said Friday. “We’ve been canvassing the neighborhood but have not come up with anything yet. We’re taking it quite seriously.” The incident has become the talk of the town of about 1,850 residents. An e-mail was circulated to City Hall workers telling them about the situation.

Though the Ericksons say a resident warned them about the neighborhood’s bias against cats after the family moved in last September, they said that none of the neighbors have complained to them about the cats. The Ericksons said the decapitation, while shocking, was not a complete surprise in retrospect, considering some of the incidents that happened since the family moved into the home last September. Weeks after the neighbor’s warning, someone stuffed a copy of the city’s pet ordinance in their mailbox. The sections on cats were highlighted, but city officials say the family was not in violation.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Tammy Erickson said Friday. “There are other cats in the neighborhood.” Tammy Erickson said her children are taking the death and the disappearance very hard, especially Chloe Hetland, her 13-year-old daughter, who she said went into shock when she found out about Soon-Yi’s death. “She was the baby of the family,” the teen said of her pet. “I remember I was crying and in such deep pain.” Carver is just southwest of the western Minneapolis suburbs.

OK, this is a terrible thing to do to a beloved pet, or any animal. Not my idea of how to keep cats out of my garden. But are these people stupid, or what? Wouldn't YOU keep your cat safe inside your house after that very first warning? And I can't figure out what exactly the pet ordinance for that city would be, if the family wasn't in violation. Most leash laws mean exactly that--people are prohibited from letting their pets run loose in the neighborhood.

Anyway, no cats in my garden and I saw them both today, too, so nothing bad has happened to them. But the real news is that after the weeding and the hoeing I decided to thin out the radish rows. I had barely started doing this when I noticed that some of the radishes felt, rather, well--fat. I pulled up a chubby one and it was ready to eat already! So I thinned the radish rows by feeling around and pulling up the ones that were ready to eat, ten radishes in all. Then I took them in and washed up two of them and ate them. The first fruits of my garden, even if radishes aren't actually a fruit. It seemed like a miracle and I was positively glowing about it all the rest of the weekend. You'd think I'd never grown anything before, rather than having been raised on a farm as a child. It's a wonderful, spectacular miracle! And an edible one, best of all. And it has been two years since I had a garden. The one before this was at my little studio house in the country. Do you have a garden this year?