Gardening, etc…

For a while I refused to post anything, because after the wonderful week in IL, I had the pleasure of going through a couple of heckish weeks and did not want to just spend time complaining. So I refused to post anything.

Well I neglected to post on the one highlight of the next three weeks:

OUR GARDEN

Miranda has been super obsessed about starting a garden this year. After disagreeing about where to put the garden (I thought the middle of the yard seemed kinda weird, but what do I know), I finally said, “Of course you’re right dear, what can I do to make this wish come true?” and the garden was started.

Miranda felt strongly that we would be better people and more accomplished if we started our garden from seeds. Being that our success with gardens in the past has been limited to the growth of one onion, I had my doubts. I felt that our current mode of gardening was working quite well. (We’d skip the planting, growing, and harvesting parts in favor of the picking the veggies up at the store form of gardening.) My next thought was to by actual plants and plant them and try not to kill them before they started producing fruit. (We have been successful at not killing the plants in our yard so I had some hope with this plan.)

Miranda was unmoved. She got little peat planting containers and planted seeds and my wife stopped talking to me… Okay, that’s not quite the truth. She just spent a lot more time talking to our plants. Obsession is the word that she used to describe her behaviors (e.g. talking to them first thing in the morning and right when she got home, worrying about them most of the time she was not near them, fearing that thinning them out would actually convince the non-thinned plants that she was a plant serial killer and thus causing them to wilt in terror, and even calling the house and singing to them on the answering machine when we left for vacation—ok so the last thing didn’t happen, but the others, ALL TRUE!)

Anyhow, we’ve had some success with peas, beans, some herbs, and cucumber. But some of the other things we went back to my plan of buying actual plants and trying not to kill them. The garden is not quite in the middle of the yard, but conveniently located in a place that will require deconstruction and replacing grass when we hope to sell the house. (Unless someone else has a very stalwart spouse who is convinced that the money/time to build the garden, plant the seeds, cultivate, harvest, etc. is better than buying produce…then maybe we will rejoice.)

(In case you wondered, I am not actually against the garden, it’s been kinda fun.)

(This pic is so you can look at the old lattice work.)

My most recent outside project was the lattice work on one of our fences. It was not overly difficult on the technical level but doing all by myself and without a ladder added to the fun. I think it looks better (although I learned after I purchased and cut the lattice that I could have ordered in grey and it would have matched our fence better…but nothing to hang myself over) and it was also quite fun to do.