Shagged out after a long yard
Apr. 8th, 2012 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceToday's useful and productive work has all been confined to the back yard, but hey. It's Easter Sunday, and even the stores are shut (we know: we went looking for a new alarm clock, to replace the one that Barry has chewed the power cord off. Le sigh. But even Target was shut, oh noes!). In the UK it's the law, this is the one day of the year that they're not allowed to open; K says that would be unconstitutional over here, but they're shut none the less.
So we had lunch downtown and came home again, and I have spent the afternoon out in the sun, doing good things and using all the tools. All of them. I have shovelled with a shovel and raked with a rake, trowelled with a trowel and snipped with a pair of snips. Also I have exercised my muscles. The vegetable garden is now protected against snails and slugs with copper stripping on all four sides; I have dug out the nasty ugly unknown plants that lined the back of the house, and planted California poppies there and elsewhere as this year's gesture to the notion of flowers. K likes flowers, but neither of us knows the first thing about 'em. I shall tap into my mother-in-law's wisdom, for next year.
Meanwhile, I have been planting seeds of edible things, just to see what comes up. There are beets and cucumbers and salad onions in the vegetable patch, alongside the doomed tomato and chilli plants and the thriving sage; there are two kinds of rocket (wasabi and regular arugula: I am learning to say arugula, just because I like the sound of regular arugula) in the herb patch, alongside the mint andcoriander cilantro and parsley and the well-established thymes and tarragon and oregano (I am not learning to say "orEgano", because that's silly; it's "oregAno", people) and chives.
This is such a surprise, to find myself a gardener. Even a foodie kind of gardener, growing edibles. I never used to was, but now I is. Ah, middle age: it is not always unkindly.
Now I must moisturise my hands, because, y'know. Tomorrow I get to knead oily dough, which will help more, but meantime a murrain on rough dry skin, say I.
So we had lunch downtown and came home again, and I have spent the afternoon out in the sun, doing good things and using all the tools. All of them. I have shovelled with a shovel and raked with a rake, trowelled with a trowel and snipped with a pair of snips. Also I have exercised my muscles. The vegetable garden is now protected against snails and slugs with copper stripping on all four sides; I have dug out the nasty ugly unknown plants that lined the back of the house, and planted California poppies there and elsewhere as this year's gesture to the notion of flowers. K likes flowers, but neither of us knows the first thing about 'em. I shall tap into my mother-in-law's wisdom, for next year.
Meanwhile, I have been planting seeds of edible things, just to see what comes up. There are beets and cucumbers and salad onions in the vegetable patch, alongside the doomed tomato and chilli plants and the thriving sage; there are two kinds of rocket (wasabi and regular arugula: I am learning to say arugula, just because I like the sound of regular arugula) in the herb patch, alongside the mint and
This is such a surprise, to find myself a gardener. Even a foodie kind of gardener, growing edibles. I never used to was, but now I is. Ah, middle age: it is not always unkindly.
Now I must moisturise my hands, because, y'know. Tomorrow I get to knead oily dough, which will help more, but meantime a murrain on rough dry skin, say I.