What I've Learned On My Summer Vacation

I really don't know what I was thinking.

See, a few months ago, when there were still the remnants of all that winter snow in the mall parking lot, the kids were in raptures over one of those crappy little 'fairs' that were set up by the chain toy store. You know the sort: a small Ferris wheel, some sort of half-assed mini roller coaster, probably a tilt-a-whirl, a few win-a-.99-cent-prize by spending $5 and seeing if you can toss a ring around a bottle and some cotton candy and popcorn concessions.

Their pleas of "pleasepleaseplease" were answered with a 1-2 punch of "No!" and "We'll see about going to the big State Fair in the summer."

A trip to the fair in summer, being months away and warm and bright, seemed like just the ticket. Visions of tents pitched on the grass, breezes amidst the trees, parades of well-groomed cows and the like, accompanied by all sorts of fair food. What's not to like? Sort of a grown-up version of our small county fair that we went to a few years ago.

Oh, Stupid-o mio.

Concrete. Miles and miles of concrete overlayed with a cacophony of screaming. Unbelievably overpriced, with tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people scuffing along in the opposite direction of where ever it was we were trying to get to.

And to top it all off, I inflicted the whole thing on poor pal, Teri, who I've not seen in 2 years. "We're going to the fair! We'll be near you! Do you want to meet up with us and do the fair? We can get to spend some time together while the kids enjoy themselves."

Alas for her and her girls, meet us they did. The cranky, over-heated family who didn't bring enough cash for both riding and eating, or really even just riding. (Who the hell doesn't take credit cards these days, I ask you? That's not just unamerican, it's anti-commercial. Don't they watch TV? Life stops for those who taketh not the bits of plastic.) After a few hours of dragging around, we called it a day and packed it in, leaving poor Teri a little cotton candy colored puddle in front of the cursed Ferris wheel. (We'd gone back on purpose, right before leaving, so Colin could ride it, as promised, but he decided that he'd really rather not ride it after all and just.wanted.to.go.home.) As a topper, Sara succumbed about 1/10th of the way back to the car (conservatively a generous 1/2 mile (1 km) away, swimming like salmon up a stream of lemmings) and so Charles and I lugged her back, between us, Colin dragging behind.

Had we only stopped and indulged the lil' darlings all those months ago with the crappy parking lot fairlet, we'd have saved us all a bunch of woe, not to mention a chunk of change. Live and learn, cupcakes. Live and learn. Trade not the small pain of today for the large woe of tomorrow.

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A couple of weeks ago, though, I got to meet another of us, Teresa, out from Seattle to visit the relatives. We met up at the very large farmer's market around the Madison capital square and I got to sit and laugh with Teresa and her sister and daughter while her brother-in-law entertained her niece and nephew. It was, as it invariably is, an all-out gab fest as two people who've never met in person and yet know scads about each other's lives finally get to sit down and sip coffee and nibble baked goods. It's never long enough, is it? And what is Teresa like? Just like she looks: You have to hug her as soon as you see her. She absolutely sparkles. It should come as no surprise to know she teaches kindergarten. I don't know if only lovely people teach kindergarten or if teaching kindergarten makes people lovely. (I strongly suspect the former. 5-year-olds are sweet but I think were it me in a classroom of them I'd be heavily medicated or lobotomized and Teresa is neither.) I forgot my camera but she brought hers and posted one of us if you care to scoot over and wave "Hi" to her.
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And while we're on the topic of catching up over the past few weeks, what happened to The Pool? Well, it was replaced with a more modest and demure inflatable one that was used with reckless abandon by kids and dog, alike. When it was about to qualify for protected status under the umbrella of the endangered species act as a habitat for several newly emerging life forms, I emptied it, scrubbed it out and left it to desiccate a bit in the sun before filling it anew. Then one of those freak violent summer storms blew up out of nowhere. It ended up down at the bottom of the pasture impaled on something large and sharp, leaving it with a ragged rent in the side, rendering it no longer either "inflatable" or a "pool". Luckily, the pools are still on sale at an even more reduced price. I did toy with putting 5-6 of them in the cart. I think I will live to rue the day that I did not. I was wondering why Jocelyn was disparaging inflat-a-pools in her comment. Now I know.



I'm just a-learning lessons left and right, aren't I?

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Speaking of learning, I did finally take that agricultural medicine test last week. Not that anyone was really wondering, but take it I did. It was well and truly taken. Now I just need to wait for the results and then figure what the hell I'm going to do with all that newly gotten knowledge about tractor safety and the lot. Assuming I pass, of course. If not, then I guess I'll not need to decide. Win-win.

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Interlude:

Here's the two fawns who seem to be growing and learning without their mum. They keep eyeing my vegetable garden but have decided that the tomatoes that have taken over most of the space aren't what they'd really rather eat. Aren't they pretty? I tried to post a larger, cropped picture but flickr wouldn't have any of it for some reason. Trust me. They're adorable and still have their spots.

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Firmly entrenched in the heading of "When Will I Ever Learn" is finding that I have somehow agreed to serve my Network and can be found on the roster of the Physician Practice Committee. Gads. For almost 8 years I had successfully avoided such things but found myself thinking, "Hmm. This could be interesting and a way to make some positive changes in the good ol' firm. And breakfast will be served."

All this must have taken place right before lunch when my defenses and blood sugar were at a double ebb for I found myself responding that I'd be delighted to take a seat at that table. I now find that I've somehow become one of 2 physician leaders of the Patient Access sub-committee of the original committee. That's 2 committees. What were they thinking? What was I thinking? I'm the one who sits in the back and nods in agreement from time to time while eyeing the danishes and wondering if I can somehow snag another one while looking like I'm just stretching, sort of a variation on that old first-date-in-the-movie-theater move where his yawn ends with an arm around your shoulders. Now I'm to be at the head of the table at the horrible hour of 7 am, expected to contribute many things of worth AND I've not heard a word about food at these sub-committee meetings. I fear a large tumor has taken over the logic and reasoning bits of my frontal lobe. Here's hoping it rapidly eats away the rest of my higher functions and personality so I won't suffer too long. As an added bonus, we're to round up several other physicians to serve along with us. Ever try lining up docs to do such things? Forget herding cats. It's like herding birds. Birds who never return your calls. Can't say I blame them.

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And while we're on the subject, is there anyone else who would be horrified to find that the gown you were handed by the nurse for your daughter to change into at her kindergarten check-up/meet-her-new-doctor-now-that-your-insurance-has-changed appointment had 8 McDonald's characters spread across the front in various medical garb, all grinning horrifically?

I felt like putting posters of "Supersize Me" up all over the exam room. Good grief.

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So, that's my hiatus in brief. Well, not really brief, actually.

I'll leave you (and you, Teresa as I promised you one, and you, Jocelyn, as you appreciate the inappropriate conversationalist that is the manic gardener, and you, Teri, as you are a true friend as you're still speaking to me despite the horror that was the state fair) with the following of my lovely tree lily. It topped out at over 6 ft (2 m) high and smelled of sweet, sweet summer. Don't look too closely as each cup was full of gorged and stupefied earwigs. The good with the bad, as is life.

Hope the rest of you are well and you avoid state fairs and committee meetings.

(Oh, and if you happen to not look where you are vigorously weeding along your raised garden bed, and put your hand --gloved, thank god, but inadequately so-- in a hornet's nest, this will lead to a most painful stinging, causing a stream of fuckingshitfuckingshitsonofabitchFUC!KING!SHIT! to issue from your mouth as a reflex, and your small children will learn how to correctly pronounce, enunciate and vocally inflect those most taboo of words. They'll be the pride of the school playground in a few weeks.)

In Which She Inflicts Vacation Photos On All Of You

So I'm back, sort of. Back in the sense that the bags are unpacked and put away, the wash is done, the house is in its usual state of disarray and the kitty has forgiven us for abandoning her. Actually, she seemed fine with the whole thing and looked rather horrified when we walked in the door all loud and stinky. She wore that look of "Oh. God. I thought you were coming back tomorrow. I thought I had another day to finish that season of My Name Is Earl."



All told, we had 4 days in lovely Door County (that pointy bit of land at the NE end of Wisconsin that sticks in such a fragile way between Green Bay and Lake Michigan) and did little but eat, nap, hang out with each other and go fishin'. (Caught nothin' but a very small bullhead that looked really pissed off, but after all was said and done, was left with a belly full of worm and tales to tell of his abduction to the drowning atmosphere above the lake and the monsters that live there. I'm sure he'll get lots of use of that tale down at the fish pub where they'll buy him pints and await the tale of how he single-fin-edly beat up the 4 enormous aliens and then escaped back to the deeps with their sweet, wriggling food. Good for him.)



We also taught Colin and Sara how to play Monopoly and how he who 1) buys up all the railroads and utilities and 2) doesn't get bored and quit after the first couple of hours tends to win. It's good to pass on such knowledge from one's own childhood to one's offspring.



We did, indeed, go to a fish boil and ladled butter on fish, potatoes and onions. We ate many cherry-inspired products, like pie. And wine. And brought back lots of pancake and scone mixes. And jam and syrup and dried cherries. And wine. I also let Sara learn to take pictures with my camera, and so for the first time in 20 years,I have vacation photos with me in them because someone else was snapping the scenes as well.



And so we all had a short, lovely, restful time, except for poor Molly-dog, who just thought the whole thing was wrong and WHAT the hell were we doing in this little house that smelled funny and had red tartan carpet in the kitchen and hall and WHAT would the kitty do with no one to chase her and give her a good butt licking. She clearly felt that it was all so wrong and couldn't understand why we didn't take her hint of staring hard at the car whenever we passed it, and just get in and go back home where we belonged.

It's always good to mess with your dog.

And so we've been and gone and returned and had our vacation.

The second half of the ag-med conference was as good as the first. I can now talk of ROPS and help you figure out what sort of respirator you need if you are cleaning out a silo, working in a CAFO or spraying your fields. I can also be found hollering from inside my car when driving past the fields and barns in my locale, "Hey! You! What the hell are you doing driving that tricycle tractor with the front end loaded!" and "Hey! You! I see you plowing that field in your cabless tractor without adequate hearing protection, sun screen, wide brimmed hat, respirator mask or ROPS!" In short, I've become even more of an embarrassment to polite society.



Now I must get the contents of the 2" (5cm) syllabus and good-sized textbook into my squash, so I can pass the damn test and make my employer proud to have spent all that money (actually, in the scheme of things, it wasn't that much money as such things go) for me to have done this, which means that I'll still be blogging sporadically for weeks to come. That study time has to come from somewhere.

Charles is winding up his days as principal at his soon-to-be-old district. He drove to work today in the SUV to load up almost all his office-ly possessions and move them to the new digs. He starts next Tuesday, which means we have only one more day of driving in to work together. The end of an era.

And, so, I'll leave you with this year's before and after shots of the front flower beds. You'll notice that the 3 low-lying juniper bushes at the front of the bed have gone the way of Wanda and Muriel, last year's alien-abducted cinquefoil and have been replaced by about 20 pretty-pretty flowering lovelies. (Well, they will be flowering when it's their time to do so.) You'll also notice that I need to get busy and divide all the pretties that have cancer-like grown and taken over the garden, transforming it into something that looks like the Amazon jungle.

Can't Talk, Digging

Sometime during the past several days of aerobic gardening, something decided to siphon some of my blood, leaving a large, red, itchy welt right over my external jugular.

I sincerely hope he has a large case of indigestion.

Damn.

Newsy

After 4 years of living in this house, I've finally learned how to get the upper windows to swing over so I can clean them. With this knowledge, I then spent 30 minutes cleaning one window. I'm guessing 4 years between window cleanings is probably too long. Actually, it was probably longer than that as the previous owners were house cleaners on the same level as I am, so make that 8 years.

So, to celebrate, I've decided to admire the lone clean window and, as an added bonus to seeing how nice and, well, transparent it is, I've decided that to reallyreally get the full shiny effect, I should not clean it's brethren until after tomorrow morning, when the morning sun has really shone upon the glass.

So, that's one down, 19 to go, meaning another 9+1/2 hours, give or take.

So nice to have settled that.

It's finally spring, here and all the green things are green and all the bulb things are blooming and all the other things are doing what ever else they do.

And for final proof of spring, yesterday, I saw the year's first patient presenting for 'removal of retained tick parts'. Her husband had only been successful with decapitating the embedded tick in her shoulder and his attempts at blunt dissection with bathroom implements did not have the outcome they hoped for. But she's better and I got to excise and suture, so win-win, yes?

Of course that was preceded by the tick that dropped of my mother-in-law while she was reading on Tuesday and followed the tick I found under the computer desk yesterday. For an encore, I encountered one in my hair, getting ready to mine for red gold this afternoon, so I'm feeling a bit less sanguine, but I'll still take the spring.

It's been such a long damn winter this year. Record snowfalls and all that, and while I firmly avow that colds, flu and gastroenteridities are all caused by various viruses, I can't help but notice that Sara's missed more days the past few months of school than she's attended and yesterday was the first time in 2 weeks that I've been what I consider well. Not symptom free, but not ill, if you get my meaning.

So I feel a little symbolic (and actual) house cleaning is in order.

I also got those scary morning glories planted out by the front porch. Hopefully, they will scramble up and drape themselves picturesquely over the railing. Realistically, they will scamper up and strangle the lilies, monarda and butterfly bush and I won't be able to stop it as I'll be prostrate inside on a couch in the air conditioning wilted from the heat and humidity come July. Actually, I'm fine with summer, I'm just bone lazy, but it makes a better tale to say that I'm swooning like an Edith Wharton character.

What else, what else?

Oh! We should now take time to pat Marvelous Charles vigorously on the back. He's gone and landed himself a position as Superintendent of Schools. "Schools" as there are, indeed, two schools in the district, but we are very excited. It's tiny (the whole district has fewer students than his current school) and they have no textbooks. Well, that's not precisely true. Apparently they do have a social studies book written in the early '90s, and lord knows the world hasn't changed in the last 15 years. So we'll be adding Friday night sports events come the fall and he'll attend all sorts of school board meetings and have new tales to tell. That'll be the end of riding to and from work together, but it really is time for him to do this. It's also about 15 minutes closer than his current district and in the more stable state of Wisconsin.

He's also taking his comprehensive exams for his doctoral program tomorrow, so that's one more hurdle he'll have jumped. He's got, we think, 3 more classes to take and then he launches into all the ballyhoo surrounding the proposing, writing and defending of The Dissertation and so, with luck and a few bribes, he should be a newly minted 'doctah' in 2 years, give or take. Then we can mess with callers who ring asking for 'Dr Piffle'.

So, if you happen to have time on your hands Friday between the hours of 8:15 am and, say, 5:00 pm CDT, and you feel like sending a good thought his way as he hunkers in the basement of some cement walled ed. building on the U of W Madison campus, feel free to send them his way.

Me? I'll be taking the day cleaning another window, musing on the nature of spring and wondering if there's a service you can call to come and vacuum your property to remove all those blood-sucking parasites that make living in the country not quite so nice as it would otherwise be.

High Rent

'High rent', as Jocelyn called my gardening efforts in the last post, but worth it, I've decided.







These are the grow lights a couple of days ago, 5 days after I stuck the little seeds in the little peat patties and placed them under the magically radiating light sources. (See, I can't be trusted to remember to schlep the little growing things out to the deck in the morning for their dose of light, and back into the house away from the nightly frosts. I also can't be trusted to keep them adequately watered. Plant infanticide is my invariable path: They either wither in the heat and drought or become little plantcicles. So very disappointing, and I'm tired of the guilt.)







As you can see, the morning glory are the first out of the gate. Shall I repeat that they are 5 days past planting?



Here they are 2 days later, yesterday, only 7 days in the peat. Note it's not just the morning glories that are a couple of inches high.


Is anyone else a little scared? No? Just me?


A good friend of mine had a nightmare that morning glories were growing through her bedroom window and strangling her in her sleep.



I think she has a valid basis for this nightmare. And yet, here I am, not only choosing to plant them in our front garden, where they may happily twine up the front porch railing but have easy access to the bedroom windows of our children.



Fortunately, hundreds of Colin's little soldiers are scattered all over the house, keeping guard. You can see the sentries on the pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room (plant nursery, as the number of times I can be bothered to have us eat in the dining room can be numbered on the fingers of a partially amputated hand).







See them?







Better? There are many dozen camouflaged in the dining room carpet, bayonets at the ready for bare feet and malcontent plants.



I feel better.



Plus, I won't need to keep nagging him to pick up his damn soldiers, already, at least until next fall's frost.

Theft and a Bit of Vandalism

"MOM!"

"Yes, Colin?"

"The worst thing EVER! You gotta come and see!!"

This, you see, was the prize tomato. Formally the size and shape of Kate Moss's buttocks, nearly red, Colin had been watching it with a mixture of awe and anticipation. See, he was going to get to eat the Butt Tomato.

Well, he was, until whatever-the-hell-it-was-with-teeth-and-a-not-overly-small-jaw took the first bites. Over a few days and many more bites later, the huge tomato dwindled to a mere rotting shadow of itself. Colin was beside himself, "Mom. I'm just going to go out there and kill all of the bugs. They ATE the tomato. They can't live. I'm going to kill them all."

Well first, I had to applaud his zeal in defending the vegetables. Finally, a partner in the War on Bugs. (At least on the bugs that mess with the garden: The Squash Bugs. Also the Cucumber Beetles. But mostly the Squash Bugs.) But then I had to clue him in that the evidence disputed that the chomps were from the mouths of bugs, as there were definite teeth marks (as far as I know, bugs are completely lacking in dentition) and the bites were larger than 3 of the biggest Squash Bugs put together, end to end. Bigger than a tomato Hornworm could manage at the end of the summer. About the size a dog or raccoon or elf would make. Maybe a pixie, if it were a very large pixie.

A couple of days later, looking out the bedroom window, I noticed that the ground squirrel who has his burrow opening just to the west of the garden wall, was playing with a red something. At first I thought it was a piece of red rubber dog toy, but then, after squinting in the binoculars, I realized that he was sitting up on his haunches, chowing down on a tomato the size of his head and torso combined. You can see him below, nearly finished with the booty. (Yes, the photo is crap but my telephoto lens hasn't much tele in its photo and I had to enlarge it oh, so many times. The varmint is sitting up with his back to the right, holding up the tomato fragment, facing to the left, busily eating.)

Bastard.

Cute bastard.

He supposedly eats bugs, too, so I'm not going to touch him, of course. Suddenly the 'accidental planting' of over 20 tomato plants for the 4 of us seems like not such an absurdly large number.

And that brings us to the abduction of 2 out of 4 foxgloves that I'd planted by a bench to be enjoyed while sitting and gazing out over the pastures.

A few weeks ago, I trotted down to smile at them, and discovered nothing but a perfect, gaping hole where they'd been lovingly planted two months before. It was not like it'd been dug out. There was no dirt spray, such as would be if Molly had taken it out. The hole corresponded exactly to what I'd dug with my little trowel; the plant completely missing. No signs of it having been drug off a little ways. I searched around in the brush and bush but found nothing. I must admit that evidence of digitalis poisoning (vomiting, yellow halos surrounding the objects in one's vision, death) as evidenced by a small furry thing collapsed by a tree (with a dent the size of a small furry head in its trunk), surrounded by its last meal, partially digested, would have done my heart good. But all I found was the second missing foxglove with identical evidence of removal. The two remaining ones just sat there, smiling at me. Maybe they got tired of the banal banter of the 'missing' two and hired the thug deer.

Finally, the week before last, someone seems to have come by and without any warning or by-your-leave, stolen our nice, paved road. Maybe they needed it over in the next county, but we do miss our road and hope they return it soon. Can't imagine what the snow plow will do to a gravel surface. It's already getting nicely rutted. Soon, it will be deeply grooved, what with all the tractors and cattle trailers that use it.



And the vandalism?

Seems the turkeys took a liking to the late season raspberries but not the kids' slide, taking a large dump all over the platfrom:



With 8 acres to choose a toilet from, why was this surface so attractive? It's even splintery.

The Week In Pictures

Hullo, ducklings! As per our wont in the Casa del Piffle around Labor Day weekend, we have been very, very energetic, here among the birds and the bees (get your mind out of the gutter). Thankfully, we have NOT been among the cicadas, though. I can't fathom being out among billions of large, screaming, flying insects. I think if I lived in Chicago or any other place where the 17 year hatching is going on, I'd have to hop the first plane to Baffin Island.

We do not do bugs on that magnitude. No, we most definitely do not. I don't care how good a fertilizer their little rotting corpses are. I'll take well-rotted steer poop any day.


Anyway, the following is one of those posts I periodically warn you about. As this blog is partly for me and my gardening whims, this is all about the yard and only about the yard. Feel free to pass it by. You won't hurt my feelings in the least and will be doing yourself a favor.

This year, we (and by 'we' I mean 'I') built an addition to the famous Raised Beds From Hell, constructed 2 years ago. We now have a strawberry pen/corral. We needed the extra room for the additional 3 breeds of strawberries we added to the herd this year:



Nothing prettier than a well mulched, weeded garden. Pity it won't last the week. Here's hoping they go forth and multiply. Also, schlepping just shy of 1000 lbs of cement blocks is harder going uphill from the stable than down hill to the stable. In addition, I'm not sure if there's anything more tenacious than prairie grass as far as digging it out of the soil.

I am happy to report that the 4 disease-resistant apple trees and 2 sweet cherry trees planted this year are not dead, yet. They have been sprayed by a 'biologic deer and rabbit deterrent' that Charles picked up at the garden store. The nice man on the label swore by it, and as he has an honest face, we are sure he can't be wrong. I figured it was likely either coyote piss or hot pepper oil. After spraying it on all the new plantings, I can attest that it is, indeed, coyote piss. I spent most of the time walking from tree to shrub to tree looking over my shoulder to make sure no coyote came dashing out of the underbrush to hump my leg. So far, my honor is still intact, but I've still a few more sprayings to do. Molly-dog thought I smelled very intriguing and alluring. Good thing she's too much of a lady to act on it.

After last year's demise of the hardy blackberries, we are trying once again to introduce these berries to the upper Midwest, and are pleased to note that this year's blackberry-lings arrived much healthier and are actually thriving. Well, except for that odd incident last week, where I found one of the plants completely uprooted, roots cleaned off and left to die of exposure. I have NO idea. I replanted it and it's limping along. I fear it's a mob hit, left as an example as to what may happen to my jostaberries next, (done by either the thug deer or their stooges, the killer rabbits) but have yet to be told where to leave the 'protection money'. Theirs is not a very efficient organization.



I also spent large time planting large amounts of perennials in the perpetual perennial black hole that is the front beds. After another 4 dozen plants, it is slowly looking better, especially after the hollows left by the mysterious alien abduction (ahem) of Wanda and Muriel were filled in.



But wait! What's that? Why is our heroine giggling so heartily? Can you see it? The recent find that she just couldn't resist?



A closer look:


Why, yes! That would be a rhododendron. A rhododendron that's supposed to be hardy to -30 F. Why, yes! I've clearly taken leave of my senses! Why, yes! I actually spent more than a little money for this. Why, yes! I know full well that this EVERGREEN plant won't survive the winter in the freeze-dryer that is Wisconsin 5 months of the year. I know full well that plants of the genus Rhododendron love acid soil and that the pH of mine is practically 14.0. Charles is a more optimistic soul. He thinks it will live. I guess he figures that it will learn to develop a taste for -OH, like we did for brie my sophomore year of college.

Oh, how I've missed rhododendrons. It's my only plea. I really couldn't resist. Temporary insanity. And now I will watch it languish and die, a victim of my misplaced adoration. Some one should lock me up.

Finally, speaking of acidophilli flora, I bring you something that has left my gast completely flabbered:



Here is a blueberry. Blooming. It was one of 2. See, I know full well that blueberries only thrive in acid soil, but such is the level of my adoration of blueberries and the depths of my denial that over the past couple of years I bought and planted no less than 20 blueberries. Most didn't make it past the first summer where I planted them, in a cluster, near the vegetable bed. The ones I placed around the slab of concrete that sits bizarrely in the middle of the back yard, near the swing set (was the floor of a dog kennel for the previous owners) that the kids use as a chalk art surface and a place to crack rocks, are, um, not dead. Well, at this writing, 3 are not dead. Day before yesterday, 8 were not dead, then my husband, Gorbag, the half-orc, took the weed eater to the area and whacked everything he thought looked suspicious.

So, maybe the rhododendron will not succumb in the next year. Perhaps it will grip on to life, becoming a spindly thing with 2 flowers a year that I can not bear to euthanize.

I will deserve such an outcome to torment me for the rest of my days; at least until Gorbag and his Weed Whacker of Death come through.

Retribution

Well, that didn't take long, did it?



I knew I'd be pissing off some deity by callously offing the obviously beloved and popular Wanda and Muriel, but who knew that it would lead to such drastic consequences as the week-long hard freezing of all my beloved spring plants? And now, their little prone bodies will be covered in several inches of snow in the next 24 hours, if the weatherheads are to be believed.



Bah. Had I known, I'd have come up with another solution, like accidentally tripping and falling on each of them several times, with an axe or at least done the deed under cover of darkness. But no. I had to be all "It's my garden, I'll commit planticide where I wish" and "I don't care who knows."

Fortunately, I saved some before the massacre:


I think this will have to sustain me until, oh, July, when things may just melt.

So, I'd like to send out a large, shamefaced apology to all and sundry who have had to suffer the blast of winter in what should be a time of scampering among the hyacinth and dancing among the daffodils. It won't be happening again, or at least not without some sneaking and hiding and wiping of finger and foot prints.

Let this be a lesson to us all. Being caught at murder never pays.

This And That

Let's see.....

It's been over a week since I've done more than leave comments.....

Must blog about something.....

Hmmmmm......

Had a lovely weekend. Played with the kids, had a tornado-filled storm skive past us to the West, leaving us with lots of lovely lightening and thunder (the fun stuff) without the miserable cowering in the basement with the spiders and dead centipedes, no matter how many bottles of wine we have down there. Yes. I've a cork screw there, too, next to the bottles of wine and batteries and canned tuna. No way I'm being sucked up like Dorothy, sober, whenever it happens. Also committed double homicide and went to a fabulous cooking class featuring my love, Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Don't tell Charles. He'd be jealous. Or maybe I should be worried. That olive oil is a seductive thing for him, too.

It all started when my lovely friend, Ariella, who moved from Jersey to the Frozen Tundra just to be my friend last summer, called. (Well, OK, maybe she moved to be with her husband.)

"Hey!" she said. "There's these cooking classes at this cool shop in Madison. Interested?" Hmmm. Food. Cooking. Food. Food. Yup.

We went down the possibilities on the list and found that there were few that we could manage, what with my little darlings (I adore my children but don't think that they'd be adored in a cooking class as they looked on in horror at something being made with more than 1 ingredient. Their meals are completely deconstructed, as evidenced by their dinner tonight: A slice of ham, a pile of greens and tomatoes, 2 slices of wheat bread-and-butter, which adds up to make a ham sandwich, doesn't it?) and work schedules. My Charles and her Erik came along for the fun.

The Sunday Afternoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil class, it was.

The shop is rather lovely. Lots of cooking things. Not badly priced at all. Some I decided I couldn't live without. We were also given discount coupons that were perishable (expire in May).

We wandered around a bit and headed up to the cooking demonstration area, on the 2nd floor. There, we joined 6 other women and sat down, expectantly facing a kitchen that would fit in a 400 sq. ft. apartment. There were 4 nice-seeming women and 1 odd woman, who took her share and her invisible friend's share, as well as the obligatory person who Must Ask A Question Every 5 Minutes Or She Will Suffer From The Piles And The Grippe And The Dropsy. I found it interesting that someone who was a child in the 'woman's place is in the kitchen' era that seemed to be the 1940s-1950s hadn't, so she claimed, the vaguest idea what end of the spatula to hold. I'm not exaggerating. She was in raptures over how to hold a whisk. Ariella, am I just being mean and catty? No? Didn't think so. Why must some feel like they must ask the most stupid questions? They truly seemed to throw the lovely woman who was holding the class. I think they made her husband roll his eyes, but he was facing the back and all I could judge was his shaking shoulders. Charles, ever charitable, thought that maybe she was raised with servants and was just recently cut off from the family and was trying to not just make it on her own but make it with all the good things she had had on her plate. If that is true, I take back all my irritated thoughts. But ONLY if it is true.

And so it went, through the olive oil gelato and olive oil cookies and the olive oils that we were encouraged to taste as wines, in cups (but most of us chose to dip pieces of bread in) and the ohmygoditwassogood dish of baby scallops and garbanzo beans poached in olive oil spooned over grits (never had them, but if grits were all made with heavy cream, a cup of butter, a cup of Parmesan cheese and, I'm sure, a bottle of EVOO, well, the South would never have fallen, as the Yanks would have taken a bite and fallen into a Sleeping Beauty-like swoon and still be slumbering on the outskirts of Atlanta, which would never have burned, but whose suburbs would have spread north to Hudson's Bay.) There was also a lovely salad with spring greens, strawberries, these shockingly good almonds and radishes. And a dressing of olive oil.

whimper.

Of course, all that oil, even in rather small portions, made for some very full stomachs. We'd planned for dinner at this lovely-sounding restaurant, but decided that we'd better pass.

There must be something in EVOO similar to Tequila (Yes, Teri?), as I felt the utter necessity after all of it for leaving there an extra $90 dollars poorer for the acquisition of silicone oven mitts, lemon-infused extra virgin olive oil, a baguette pan, a citrus grater that won't extract bits of knuckle as well as peel, a very comfortable vegetable peeler and a red silicone spatula. Charles also got a large bar of lovely dark chocolate that was mysteriously gone a mere 6 hours later. He did, I'm proud to say, resist the mustards, possibly because the 23 jars of other mustards already in our refrigerator seemed a bit excessive. Or not. You'll have to ask him why the sudden mustard resistance. Good thing there was the discount, yes?

So, we went back home. A bit squidgy from all the consumed spendy lubricant, but happy.

What?

The double murder?

Oh.

Well.

See, there were these cinquefoil bushes planted by the previous owners of our house.

shudder

Cinquefoil.

There are few plants I hate: Martha Washington geraniums. Marigolds planted all in a row. Hostas ringing trees and foundations. Cinquefoil. Leggy, shaggy cinquefoil. Soooooo...I happened to go out with a pair of loppers and a spade, Saturday, before the storms and, well, made the remaining 2 of them......disappear.

You won't tell, will you? I don't think there will be any witnesses. Just the crocuses and daffodils and they will be long gone by the time the perennials that are poking up are cognizant. Right now, the rest of the garden is just small leaves, barely able to recognize the difference from sun and not-sun. By the time they have any coherent thoughts ("Hey! Where are Muriel and Wanda? They should be THERE and THERE.") the bulbs should be yellow and doddery. And by then, lovely new things should be planted there. The fact that there are 2 new bodies in the fire pit in the back should raise no suspicion, especially as I've taken great pains to make sure that there's no communication between the front and the back, aside from the one peony and the two lilacs.

And we all know how unreliable peonies and lilacs are.

You won't tell the thug deer, will you?

And So It Begins, Again

Sunday, it was winter.

Monday, it was less winter.

The temperature jumped 30 degrees, there were geese flying north in the sky. More than 1 or 2 obviously sick and delirious ones. Flocklets. Several flocklets. (Or is it 'gaggles'? Gaggles of geese? Gagglets?)

Driving home after work, I saw actual brown ground rather than brown snow along the side of the road. Pulling into the drive, there was a pool of melted snow in the driveway from the 4' piles along the side. I sat there with my mouth open, hand mid-reach for the garage door remote.

Damn! I'll even do Winston Churchill one better. It is the beginning of the end.

So what did I do?

I ordered these:

4 highly disease and cold resistant apple trees that should need absolutely no spraying.

2 cold resistant sweet cherry trees. (Finally! Sweet cherries! All I've been able to find so far for USDA Zone 4 is pie cherries.)

2 Wisconsin weeping willows. (We need willows. We neeeeed to hear the wind blowing through the willows.)

3 Jostaberries. (Never heard of them, but what's a garden without surprises? And they have fall color! And even if they aren't tasty--though they sound like they are--I'm sure the birds are going to love them. I just hope they can do alkaline soil, unlike those weenie blueberries. (Sob! I've finally reached the conclusion that one can't grow blueberries in soil with a pH of 13.99. Ok. I exaggerate. pH of 13.89. Or thereabouts. It's the mile of limestone under the inch of topsoil. No fighting it.))

A variety of cold loving early, mid and late season strawberries (I've got a nice patch going but need more! And More! AND MORE! I'm competing with the small-handed ones and the dog in this.)

Shallots.

I think that's it, so far. Plus, those cold hardy blackberries that I re-ordered after the ones from last year went tits-up after being abandoned without telling me by whoever brought them in from the delivery guy last year, are coming.

Then, in another month or so (Too early! NO! Too early, Diana! slap, slap) I'll start driving by nurseries that aren't on my way home.

It's supposed to rain this weekend and be in the 50s? Can this be true? (and perhaps get the first of the thunderstorms), so I'm anticipating some real snow melt. (Gee, now I get to worry about flooding in the basement. Never, never happy.)

All this means is that in a few days, I will be wandering about the land with my schnozz an inch from the soil, in a raincoat, not a parka, peeping under mats of decomposed leaves and such looking for the noses of bulbs. It's too early, by a few weeks, but I won't be able to stop myself.

So, stomping I will go, with dog and girl. (The boy will have no part in it for there are no aliens to shoot in this slow bent-over shuffling along the paths.) Then I will come inside, glowering and glowing, for it is soon to be my time of year, just not quite yet. The time of muck and manure. We should be able to plant trees and bushes in about 6-8 weeks and garden things in about 12 weeks, so I need to start seeds (eep!) in about a month. Or less.

So much to do, so much to do.

I pity you all as I will take it all out on you, telling you of it in absolutely excruciating detail.

In Which She Natters On and On About Her Plants

We've been overrun out here in rural Wisconsin.

*cue the theme music from Hitchcock's The Birds*

We call them The 'Flies.

There are hoards of them. Hundreds and hundreds of little yellow butterflies, the size of your thumb,all around the front path, where the fall flowers are starting to bloom. They fly up in a storm of soft yellow when ever you try to walk to or from the front door. They seem to like the white asters best, not so much the purple ones, which I think are much prettier and would think would taste more 'fruity'. But then I would choose grape pop over lemon-lime any day.



They also love the sedum, which is the only reason I've not ripped them out of the garden. I'm not a sedum person. I know. Sacrilege.



Everyone is supposed to love sedum 'autumn joy'.



I am also not a hosta person. Well, I'm not a hosta person when they are used in the way that has been set down by law here in the Midwest, ringing the base of each large shade tree and marching along the border of your house's foundation. Bleh. Same with daylilies. Triple sacrilege. It's not that I hate them, I just hate the way they are used in garden after garden. Mixed in with other plants, I like them fine.

I think the garden police would be coming for me for having these views, except I've not changed the previous owner's plantings of the hostas and overused yellow stella d'oro daylilies marching around the base of our house. I'm thinking about it, though. My mum's coming out and she wields a mean spade. I just need to figure where to put them once they've been evicted. And it's going into winter, so maybe they're safe until next spring, when I'll probably be too busy with all the new plants I will have acquired in next spring's plant lust to mess with transplanting them.

But some year.

Some year, I will break the law and either move them or intersperse them with a riot of other plantings.

Better put aside some bail funds.

Pushed to the Brink

I am seriously beginning to question my sanity.

You all know the garden, right? The one I plant each year? The vegetable one enclosed in the stone walls, somewhat reminiscent of a fortress? Yeah. That one.

Moving to the Upper Midwest from the gentle Northwest has opened my eyes to all the local bug pests. The first couple of years, when still in Northern Illinois, I was granted immunity. No pests, at least the non-human chomping kinds. Pleanty of mosquitos lurking under the cool leaves of the zucchini and hordes of those horrible stinging mini-sweatbees that like to get you behind the knees, where the sweat pools. (Man! Those hurt like hell, making me yelp in a most undignified manner. Then, 48 hours later, they itch worse than any bite I've ever encountered. Bastards.)

About the 3rd or 4th summer, I noticed these guys on my zucchini. I thought they bore watching, but didn't dive in with the bug destruction measures. My credo is 'Live and Let Live', because it is the easiest credo. Doesn't require you to do anything but let things be. That's why I didn't harvest any zucchini past July. Given that you don't expect to get your first zucchini until mid July, well, let's just say that I haven't forgotten the evil squash bugs.

The next year found us in Wisconsin. I kept my eyes open for undue pests, but I only planted a few things that year, as we were settling in and not sure where we wanted things. The second year (last year), found me flabbergasted by the stunning infestation that was the cucumber beetles, both striped and spotted. No cukes were harvested past early August, and when the ghost town that was the cucumber trellis was completely barren, they headed over to the squash, both summer and winter.

Well. Enough of this laissez faire gardening. Time for drastic measures.

This year, I'd bought a giant economy sized bag of diatomaceous earth and liberally sprinkled it all around, dusting it over the small plants, every mother-loving one of them. (Looked like hell, must say, with all that white powder all over. Gah. My sensibilities were shaken, but I had no choice.) The next morning, I went out to see how everyone had spent the night, and was completely horrified to see several spotted cucumber beetles on each cucumber AND all the zucchini and winter squash. The little bastards weren't even going after the cucumbers first!

Time for Operation Scortched Earth.

First, I bought one of those environmentally 'safe' namby-pamby plant sprays. (I was still trying.) Yeah. Like that was effective. So then, I pulled off the shelf, where it had moved with us, after I realized too late that squash bugs were satan's own spawn, and had tried to deal with them via toxic chemicals, the spray bottle of bug-death-from-the-sky. You know, the stuff that you can't spray on your plants less than a week before you consume them? The stuff that you can't use more than a few times a season? That stuff.

{Aside: No, I haven't forgotten the water source is our well. I'm doing this once. It's also not rained in the week since I applied it, and we can't expect to harvest the first of the fruits of my labor for about 6 more weeks. I've tried to keep my inner General Sherman in check. Somewhat.}

So. I sprayed a week ago, with anguished trigger finger. And, by gum, it worked. Sorta. There are still a few cucumber beetles, but they seem to be staggered, at this point, by the natural, non-toxic spray. The squash bugs, however, seem to have made their way to my little garden this year. But! I now know what to look for! And have unearthed a side of myself that frankly concerns me.

I can be found, on at least a daily basis, in the garden, bent at the waist, muttering, peering at every single plant of the cucumber/squash extraction, and under every leaf, for the damned squash bugs. And when I find them? Well. Let's just say: Picture a horror movie, early on. Two lovebirds are going at it under the covers. The moment of ecstasy has commenced. Aaaaannnd a large pair of bipass pruners reaches down from the rafters and bisects first the one and then the other, mid-coitus.

Sort of a buzz-kill, eh?

You do remember that I'm bug phobic, right? Let's just say that this is a measure of how close to the edge my sanity has been driven.

By my word, though, I WILL harvest in August. And September.

Amen.

So, tell me honestly, should I be concerned?

The Best Weekend

Guess
















What
















I
















Did
















This

















Weekend?
















Aaaaaaaahhhhhh.




















And for those who have never seen a picture of me, I submit the following, after barbecued cheeseburger with everything on it, more potato chips than anyone should eat in a sitting, potato salad, watermelon and the best cookies on the face of the planet:

















Oh, and the light deceives. The legs, they are shorter than the average bear's, not longer. Sorry. Lord, every weekend should be Memorial Day.



Synopsis: 27 new plant babies. Chief among them are the 3 new hardy Midwest roses (You can take the girl out of the Rose City, but you can't take the Rose City out of the girl.), 4 Pulmonaria, a couple of Monkshood (wolfsbane) some more delphinium and columbine, because you can never have enough of either. Charles spent hours mowing and trimming.

Damn, but the yard looks good! Neither of us wanted to leave for work today, we just wanted to sit around outside and look at it.

Of course, it is supposed to storm for the next few days, which is good for the flowers but makes the grass and weeds grow, too. It'll all be ratty again by Thursday.

The Price We Pay

Looking at the extended forecast, I determined that the last of the frosty nights should be this past Saturday, at least as much as such things can be foreseen. Coupled with the knowledge that over the past 100 or so years, the average last day of frost is the 8th of May, I fixed upon Sunday (yesterday!) as The Day to get the garden in.

Wednesday found me toting home in the back of el minivan: 15 bags of compost-manure (pronounced ma-NRRRRR) and 15 bags of pine bark mulch. I have yet to get the poor van vacuumed out. It smells vaguely. Of steer. And bark.

Thursday, I spread all 600 lbs of compost-manure (it sounds more impressive that way) all over the previously spaded and de-weeded soil in the raised bed from hell.

Friday, I champed at the bit.

Saturday, I braved the plant store with Sara, causing much near-havoc as I careened with the large green wagon (not one of those sissy little red ones that they also had as an option) around the rows of plant-babies, tossing mostly veggie plants and herbs in, while Sara tallied the number of little pots and urged me to add more, so she could keep counting. Good kid, that.

Sunday dawned sunny and I proclaimed that all systems were 'go'. I got Charles to act in his official role of 'starter of small gas engines' (I have never been able to get that damned tiller going. It hates me, I swear.) And I tilled while he went for a run and the kids stared slack-jawed at Sunday morning cartoons. In a frenzy, I beat the soil into a frothy creamy consistency, to a depth of 8 inches. Or so. I lost 2 fillings and took about 3.5 years off the life of each and every joint in my upper body, but tilled the land was. As Charles was not yet back at the end of all this, I started cramming plants in as fast as possible and got the tomatoes and peppers all in by the time he came home and we all rushed off to achieve the completion of our errands. (Yes, these are usually done Saturday, but the stars, Colin's soccer and Colin's friend's birthday party, along with the sacred time that is Sara's nap, conspired against this.)

Back home, in a flurry of working out, making dinner, and making the dog feel guilty, I got the rest of what I had gathered on Saturday into the ground (cukes, zukes, and a few variety of winter squash). It was then I found the seeds I had planned to start a month ago. Heh. I may throw some in the ground and see what happens (bush beans and yellow fleshed watermelon) but will have to get at least some melons from plantings from another garden store. I don't trust the seeds will have enough time to achieve maturity if started now. I've always found it funny how garden stores out here seem to split up things: One will have 52 varieties of tomatoes but nothing in the melon family. Another has 47 varieties of melon, but no zucchini. Bah. (And please don't tell me how fucking easy zucchini are to grow from seed, like that snotty guy at that one place. Maybe for you, buddy, but me and seeds, not much luck. Don't know why. That's one of the things I need to look into in all my spare time.

After dinner, I dashed back out and put into action the Master Plan to prevent the taking over of the garden by the evil weedy intruders (as opposed to the evil bug intruders). Thanks to an idea from Karen, I put down sheets of newspaper along the 'aisles' of the garden and then covered them with mulch. Sort of a biodegradable weed block. It can just be tilled in with everything at the end of the season. Here's hoping.

So today, Monday: Every big and little muscle aaaachesss. Yes. The tiny muscles in my hands hurt. The miniscule muscles in my fingers whine. For some unfathomable reason, the weeny muscles in my toes (yes! my toes!) are grousing. All but the intrinsic muscles of my face are joined together in one huge gripe fest. Ingrates.

So, that was my weekend. And believe me when I say I actually feel good.

Dandelion Fields Forever

Looking East-ish.

"Mom, isn't grass supposed to be green?"

"Yes, baby. It is."

In case you're wondering: Yes. If I spun in a circle and took a 360 degree picture, it would be just as yellow in all directions.

Next few days, if Charles doesn't get them with the mower, it will be a sea of white. Not that it clearly matters, because, with this many, there's really no point, is there?

(Your next question to me is: Why, oh why did I spend a few hours weeding the beds, yesterday? And why, oh why, do I plan to go back and try to finish the job, today?)

Obviously, there is no good answer. I feel like the orchestra on the deck of the Titanic, playing as the ship went down...

Mental, I am. Clearly mental.

Blither

I have absolutely no idea what to write about but feel the yen. Nothing monumental has happened in the last 24-48 hours, so that's rather refreshing.

Easter weekend was rather lovely. Charles, bless the heart of his small town, conservative school district, has both Good Friday and Easter Monday off. Coming from the a-religious Northwest, I still chuckle over this. The weather was drop dead gorgeous until Sunday, when it pissed all over us like a drunk on a beer bender. I don't think it's ever been acceptable outside egg-hunting weather since we moved out here in 2000. We don't even bother anymore, blocking off the basement as the official Easter Bunny drop zone, to keep the dog out. At least this year it didn't snow.

The kids scored pounds of candy and spent a happy hour coloring eggs, as the previous post's photo attested. My favorite was when Colin, drizzling orange dye over a mostly green egg exclaimed, "Mom! Lungs! I made lungs!" Yup. Orange lungs on a green egg. I'm so proud of my little anatomist. (I took a picture but it's all fuzzy. Sorry. You will just have to use your imagination: Left and right lungs complete with bronchi and trachea in the middle.)

Breakfast was the annual making of the Cinnabons. Also homemade bagels, fresh pineapple, and dyed eggs, with or with out anatomic detailing. Dinner was ham, asparagus, these potatoes, which are to literally die for, and a nice, green salad to try to balance things out a bit. I did show restraint and didn't make rolls to boot. I though 3 batches of baked goods through the bread machine was a bit much in 24 hours.

So; lovely, sunny weather but too early to plant more than trees. What to do??? Ah. The veggie patch. Last year, I reclaimed an extra 100-150 square feet of meadow as garden, tilled the daylights out of it, planted it, and mulched deeply. Sadly, the roots of the prairie grasses run deep. Or at least deeper than the tines of the tiller. By early July, all sorts of prairie was competing with the cantaloupe and cucumbers, like Jaws, rising from the depths.

This year, I've instigated Phase II, meaning that I am hand spading up the whole damn plot and painstakingly sifting through it all to get the grass roots and dandelions and all. Ow, ow, ow. And Ow. If this doesn't cut down on the weeds by at least 50%, I'm throwing in the towel and raising organic dandelion greens for the restaurant market. I've still got about 1/3 of the area to go. I've also become personally acquainted with each and every earthworm in the garden. If soil health can be gauged by the number of worms per square foot, mine is in the pink.

I also got my first 'farmers sunburn'. I'd call it a 'tan', except I don't tan, so I guess that means I don't have to worry too much about the ridiculous coloring resulting from gardening in short sleeves and garden gloves, and short-alls with ankle socks.

So, over the next 3 weeks until 'last frost', I need to finish the spading, then till in lots of compost, mulch it, and rebuild the walls that fell with the heaving of the soil and we're in business.

Let the battle begin!

We've added another handful of trees, thanks to Home Depot and their sapling sale. 3 more red maples and a redbud at $10 a piece and, finally, a lovely weeping cherry (Charles's choice) at the start of the path, near the road. In about 20 years, it'll be just lovely around here.

Oh! and we are starting to mull over having grapes! On a whim, I bought 2 concord grape vines to plant along the fence that borders part of what was the side horse pasture. I have this thought of planting various grapes all along the fence (which runs about 200 meters) that people can just walk out and pick as they stroll around the yard. Sort of an outdoor buffet.

Molly-dog has been a constant companion through all this and has tried to help with the digging (Bad dog! Nooooo! Baaaaad Dog!) and disposal of various plant stuffs that I eject from the garden. Her favorite being long, muddy dandelion roots, which she views as nature's candy. Bleh.

So that's the sum total of the weekend.

3 hour 'leadership' meeting tonight after work. Oh joy.

Happy Tuesday.

Brought To You By Cagey and The Number 13

Alternately titled, "Cagey Asked For It, So Blame This Post On Her". I try to duck responsibility for things whenever possible.

So. When last we left our Hero (Charles) and the cause for 13 saplings on the front porch (me), it was Friday, lunchtime, and we were contemplating the actual work at hand. That being the planting of the 13.

"After lunch" was the unanimous consensus by Those Who Matter (the grown-ups). We'll feed the kids and ourselves and then everybody outside, including the dog. Not including the cat.

Food bolted, shovels grabbed (Sara with a red plastic sandbox shovel), I stand with hands on hips, eyes narrowed in classic 'survey the yard for proper plant placement'. Nope. Too much. Let's start small. The forsythia. That one I want in the corner of the front yard, by the road, visible from the study. I trot over and dig the hole, plant the bush, all done in about 10 minutes. Presto! Down to 12.

Hmmmmm. Marvelous Charles makes his willing presence known, having dealt with dog and children, shovel in hand. After more squinting on my part and eyebrow waggling, it is decided that the magnolia should go closer to the front of the house in a 'showoff' place. He starts to dig. I start a second hole for the maple, closer to the road. Ultimate hole placement being decided by where the closest patch of thistles are, figuring that a hole could serve more than one purpose, right? Efficiency, baby. Efficiency.

We had blocked one thing. See, in addition to the thistles, the damned plot of land that is our yard has an over abundance of rock. Basically, it's a large rock garden covered with 4-6" of soil. Trees can't grow in rock. To plant a tree, you must remove the rocks. A few hours later of solid digging and swearing, we had 4 more trees planted between the 2 of us. We'd dug several more holes, which had to be abandoned because under the hand sized rocks, there were boulders. Ain't going to be digging up no boulders. Nosiree.

Feeling dispirited and sore and having run out of swear words, we retreated indoors, occasionally glaring out the window.

Sunday morning, we decided to change our strategy as it became clear that a tree-strewn front yard was only going to happen with a backhoe and multiple dumptrucks full of topsoil. I'm not ruling it out, mind you, it's just not going to happen this year. Or next. We eyed the side pasture area, down by the path Charles keeps cut through the prairie grass around the perimeter. It's cloudy and a bit drizzly but not supposed to really rain for about 3-4 hours. The weather report said so. Lying bastards that they are.

The good news? We found non-rock infested places to plant. The bad news? It began to absolutely pour as soon as we had begun our respective holes. We got 3 planted before conceding defeat to the fractious gods of spring and dragging our sorry, muddy, drenched-to-the-skin-despite-3-layers-and-a-raincoat selves inside. Something about fools not having sense to come in out of the rain. We again spend the day glaring out the window, this time at the heavens rather than the ground. Still and all, though, there are 8 more trees in the yard than there were, and only 5 are left on the porch.

I've had 2 days to wonder what the next assault will bring. Locusts, I'm betting. Or maybe a freak blizzard. Toads from the sky? Nah. Toads wouldn't stop us. We could just nudge them out of the way with the shovels. Oh! Fire! Fire from an out of control field burn. That would do it, plus it would negate the previous days' work AND the financial outlay, turning the really good deal into a bust.

So. Fire it is.

Should I try to buy some used firefighter gear in the meantime? Do they make it kid-sized? It's no fun if your offspring isn't taking part in the joy of gardening with you. The whining in stereo of "I'm bored. Can I go iiiiiiiinnnnn? I'm cold and tiiiiiired. It's all daaaaaaark and I can't see where the holes are so I just fell in one and now my arm bends funny," lends a rhythm that makes the digging go faster.

Stirrings

How the hell did it get to be Friday already?

Um, so yeah. It's been a week since I made an appearance. Sorry. Alive. Just seemed to come down with that bug; you know, the one with all the snot. The snot that seems to have replaced all grey matter, making me dulldulldull and want to sleepsleepsleep. (I love the frequent comment of *cough!hack!sneeze!* "Hey, doc, so how do you keep from getting sick?"....Answer: "Um. We don't. Please put your mask back on. Thank you so much."

So. Better now; just snoring at night. Poor, poor Charles. What the man puts up with.

Speaking of putting up with, I just have to share what we did today. (Actually, he said I had to. I think he's trying to make a point, but I don't see it.) See, Charles took off yesterday and today, it being Spring Break and all at his school. (No, administrators don't get things like Spring Break off, they get to use vacation days for such nonsense.) Anyway, yesterday, we chugged up to the Mecca of Madison and that destination of spring, Home Depot. We got this and that, and some topsoil. We were planning to hit one of the nurseries on our way out of town, when I leafed through the thingie of newsprint ads they put in the plastic bag with our baggable purchases and saw that they had TREES. FOR SALE. PRETTY, FLOWERING TREES. BACK THERE. AT THE HOME DEPOT! TREES! ON SALE!!!

Well. You can just guess where we were at 8:23 AM today, in the minivan, with the seats all put down, well, except for Sara's, as it would have probably looked, um....bad, to tie her to the roof. Even for just a little way.

I didn't get my hopes up. No, no, no. I grabbed just one flat-bed cart. But, you see, there were just so many different ones. So we loaded up a second flat-bed cart. One for Charles, one for me. Pity Sara wasn't bigger. She could have manned her own, instead of 'helping' me.

Did I mention that there was a steady 40 mph wind blowing? Adds to the ambiance.

So. $250.62 later, we trundled across the parking lot with our 12 trees (1 maple, 2 crabapple, 2 plum, 2 tart cherry, 2 dogwood, 2 ornamental cherry, one other that I don't recall, but it is really pretty, you better believe it) and a forsythia. Charles nixed the redbud as it was 'too tall'. Sheesh.

Not bad, I say, all-in-all, and these are lovely, healthy-looking trees.

Well, that is until we get to the minivan, which seems to have unaccountably shrunk in the interim.

"They won't fit," states Charles.

"Sure they will," I assert.

"Nope. No way."

Secretly, I agree. But, I am unwilling to give up without a fight. Plus, these are trees. Nice trees at an extremely good price. Nope. They will fit.

My eyes become steely.

Knowing he is at this juncture defeated, Charles gamely starts to load the 13 multiple-gallon buckets, each with a 5-8' sapling.

It's not working.

"We need a tarp," he says, hoping to wear me down.

"OK. We need a tarp," I chirp, and am sent back through the gale-beset parking lot and back into the home supply store to find a painter's tarp.

I dance across the parking lot with another $5.74 worth of goods.

He sees that I am not deterred, poor sot.

"We need plastic bags to put around the buckets. If we don't, when we place them on their sides, the dirt will spill out all over. I'll go get some," he says, and flails back across the lot and into the amazingly handy home supply store.

Meantime, I decide to start putting in the shorter, bendy-er trees, and find that I can actually get all but 5 or 6 in! Yippee! I am even more determined. Sara sits dejectedly in her carseat, picking at her wet pants. Did I mention that it was raining, too? Not hard; just enough to give the day extra character.

Charles returns with another $11.37 in hefty plastic drawstringed garbage bags and a double roll of duct tape. We start bagging and securing the remaining trees, load them in on their sides, some reaching nearly to the front windshield. Good thing Colin was in school so we could put his seat back. (Again, the whole frowned upon thing of tying your child to the roof rack, even for a relatively short distance.)

Yes. They all fit. Every-fucking-single-one. HAH!

The only thing that trumps realism in this family, is me.

Although, he was right about the redbuds. We'd have had to either knock out the windshield or angled them to protrude out the front door window. Which would have been totally reasonable, in my opinion, at least more reasonable than leaving them behind for somebody else to buy.

And so, without further adieu, I present the newest editions, currently residing on the front porch, until I can dig many large holes, say tomorrow and/or Sunday. Or so.


















And Charles? Well, we made a visit to Best Buy, and now all is well.

One last thing, for those whose yen for gardening is still not sated, there are pictures on the sidebar taken today, demonstrating that spring, indeed, is here, even in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin.

It's even early! The crocuses are blooming and it won't be April until tomorrow.

Giddy

Last post, I warned you. I told you that Spring Fever was a-coming. Well, it has hit. Specifically, Friday morning, at about 8:37 CST, as I gazed out the window, finishing my last cup of fortifying tea, realizing that the day was actually going to be sunny and near 50 degrees.

I started to vibrate. My hands itched. My plans hatched. Not elaborate plans, of course. Basically, I decided that Sara would be happily occupied with the large puddle that was the driveway, and the accompanying mud. Molly with same.

And damn the consequences.

So, I crammed Sara into her snow pants and boots (I wasn't that crazed to send her out without some easily washable, non-stainable covering) and we all piled out to the front yard. I hooked up Ole Bessie, the (new last year) blue wheelbarrow, grabbed pruning devices and gardening (not snow!) gloves, and attacked the front beds with reckless abandon:


Here, we see the two beds in the front yard, flanking the front walk. Sara is taking a muddy breather.

And here, we have the after photos, for anyone who is so beyond being besotted with gardening things that you even desire to see a bare bed. What you can't see are all sorts of bulb noses poking up. That bare viburnum under the window will need to be moved this year. I don't relish the though as it is 1) large and, 2) nice and will be, 3) a pain in the arse and, 4) may well die but, 5) can't stay as it is getting too bloody big and will block the window.

Colin, having had an early release day from school, burst through the door with his own Great Idea:

"Mom! We need to make ice cream! We haven't made ice cream in 100 Billion Years! We need to make chocolate! And white!"

And so, yesterday, we did. And it was marvelous, both the chocolate and the vanilla.

I leave you with this last, which is how a Wisconsin lass plays in the sandbox, complete with snowpants and snow boots, in shirt sleeves, surrounded by melting snow.

I'm outta here. Ole Bessie is calling.

End Of Days 2

I know, I know. It's getting warmer. Global warming. Lalala. El Nino. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

I listen. I care. I do my best to leave a light footprint and all that. It's in my nature, having been raised in the Jimmy Carter era.

They say that it only becomes real when it hits home, when it affects YOU.

For the last 3 weeks or so, it has been above freezing, here in the once-frozen tundra. I wear mud boots rather than snow boots when we go for our daily tromps. The snow is long gone. There is warmth to the sun when it shines. It has rained AT NIGHT.

Dreading the worst and knowing that, despite the weather, we are in January, not late March, and therefore should expect a few more months of hard, cold weather, I got down and looked at the plants in the garden. Yup. The shrubs, like the above viburnum, have ruddy, swellings of new leaves. Here, we have the base of a columbine with not just green hints, but an actual leaf. Finally, here, we have bulbs coming up. Under the lilacs, which are budding, too. Can't blame them. It was in the 50s and sunny, yesterday. I was out in a T-shirt.

Supposed to be in the mid-upper 30s for the next week, at least.

This is not what has me getting my affairs in order, though. Nope. This is just some sort of climate swing, whether it is due to the misdeeds of man or just Ma Nature having a good laugh at us, I couldn't say for sure. One year, or one decade, in the grand scheme of things is too short a time in the whole cosmic scheme to tell.

{Break to sing Monty Python's "The Galaxy Song"}

Nope. What really has me getting my affairs in order and tossing a loaf of bread to a leper is what happened yesterday.

Colin came home from school and, after finishing his homework, asked if he could play on the computer a bit.

"Sure", I said. Why not. There's about an hour before dinner. He's done great. He then goes to his room to get something and comes back and says, "Mom. My room's a mess. I should clean it up before I play." And he proceeded to do so.

I fainted dead away.

The world is coming to an end. Consider yourselves warned.