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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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10:16 p.m. - 2005-04-28
A very productive day! Between the crappy health and the even crappier attitude, it’s been quite a while since I’ve had a day where I got so much accomplished and wasn’t a resentful harridan about it. I’d been saying it all winter, but worried it was just a stall and a self-delusion. However, all my hopes for getting busy again when it was gardening season came true today. One day does not a streak make, but I got so much done that I am certain there’s more to follow. I will work in the sun and off-load this winter blubber and make my yard a thing of beauty and a source of pride. To that final end I did mucho planting today. Of course before I could plant I had to clear the ground and churn it all up. Most satisfying. I love digging in the dirt. The planting beds are full of good dirt, loamy and rich and nary a rock to deal with. I was so excited to be putting all my little sproutlings in the ground I forgot to fertilize. Ooops. Well nothing that a good dousing with Miracle-Gro can’t fix. At first I wanted my approach to fertilizing to be in sync with my unshorn pits and legs, which is to say all natural, but I’ve found that Miracle-Gro works as advertised. I still don’t use pesticides or any kind of chemical weed killer. If for no other reason than we have a well. Don’t shit where you eat, you know? Deliberately adding poison to your water supply seems frightfully dumb to me. So I pull weeds by hand and share my garden with critters large and small. I know there are safe natural alternatives: beer, marigolds, human hair cuttings and the like. I’m still a rank novice gardener though and for right now I’ve taken on as much as I can handle. I’ll worry more about getting a higher yield and critter control when I get over my awe over keeping the plants alive at all. I’m still seriously blown away by getting anything out of my gardens. Every flower, every tomato is a button-bursting proud achievement. This is my first year working from seed. I guess if bulbs count then I started last fall. I’ll still be getting some bedding plants and most of the veggies will be nursery started, but today I planted packets of cutting garden mix, several different varieties of daisies, some kind of baby’s breath stuff, and 150 anemones. Don’t be all impressed with the last, it was dead easy. Anemone tubers (bulbs?) are lumpy things about the size of a wad of gum. Push them in 2” deep, 2” apart. Even a dope like me can handle that. Transplanted the dahlias and bachelor’s buttons from the cold frames. About time, the poor things were getting leggy and lopsided. Then I went goofy with weeding other parts of the yard. The road edge of our property is fronted by two retaining walls with a 5’ slope between them. The slope is covered with vinca and pachysandra with dozens of spring bulb flowers scattered around. The previous owners let that slope go all to hell and the junk plants went wild. Mike went in last year and winched out most of the really big stuff. Today I ripped out about 6 bushels of weeds, maple seedlings, poison ivy, and those consarn mimosa trees. And that was only about 10 feet of it. The whole thing runs for about 35 feet along the road from the neighbor’s yard to where our driveway cuts in. As you can see, I have my work cut out for me. Worth it though. Without all that trash clogging things up the groundcover will look sooooo pretty. Had a Whitman moment when I saw the lilacs in my dooryard were blooming. They’re not open yet, but they will be by week’s end. Of course I wasn’t mourning a dead president, but in another life there was one who would come back to me in the spring. I don’t think about that time much. Hurts. Today I let myself remember, not deliberately prodding up all the bad things for once and taking what sweetness I could from those memories which are so rarely allowed to come out. Yes, it still hurt and I had my cry. O liquid, and free, and tender! Enough. Dangerous, that. Today is today and today I planted toward a known future. This is my life. This is my place. This is my garden to tend. And tend it I will. With silver bells and cockle shells, ~Contrary Mary
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