When I got home I had two M&Ms cookies with a cone of whipped cream on top, and then I went to work. You'd think after a full day at the day job I'd want to put my feet up, or maybe at least cook some dinner and watch a movie or something.
That would be far too sensible.
We had rain in the local forecast, and I remembered I had all these old seeds I hadn't gotten around to planting. Bags and bags of them. And I thought, I'll just scatter them around and the rain will soak them in and what comes up, comes up.
But of course it's never that simple.
First I planted some ancient marigold seeds out in the veggie garden, and then I checked out the area I had planned for my mass old seed dumping ground. It's about sixty feet long and ten to twenty feet wide, depending on the section. The kids had, as instructed, dug out the majority of the blackberry roots, so I figured I'd just toss the seeds on the bare ground and go inside and have dinner. I grabbed a rake (big mistake) and went to break the crust on the soil.
Hard as a rock. Seriously. I felt so betrayed! Normally the soil under blackberries is quite soft. They form their own sort of (evil) duff that keeps the soil moist and suppresses weeds. And a few of the areas were like that, but way too much of it felt like baked clay so hard that I understood why even the grass hadn't started to take root there (yet.) First I debated attacking the areas with a hoe. Couldn't find one. Then I considered a shovel. Mind you, this is after work, and I knew it would get dark soon, and breaking up rock hard dirt with a shovel is no light, quick task.
The impending darkness settled it for me. I would get the big rototiller.
One sweaty, sore, throat-sore-from-suppressed-cussing half-hour later I had the whole section tilled. I scattered the seeds, keeping particular kinds more or less together, raked the now (mostly) soft dirt to roughly cover at least some of the seeds in case they needed to be covered to sprout, and went home. I had just enough time to gather eggs from the coup and close the chickens in for the night before the dark swooped in. I had to turn on lights when I came in so that I could find my way around the house.
So now I'm thinking (I'm crazy that way) that I'd just put a whole lot of work into seeding an area that may or may not have viable seeds scattered on it. So sometime this week I'm going to do yet another ridiculous thing. I'm going to get a bunch of fresh seeds of something tall, bomb-proof and pretty, like cosmos or baby's breath or bachelor buttons (or maybe all of the above), and mix it with a big bag of potting soil and scatter that around the area as well.
That should fix it up real nice.
And then I'll be done.
Except for putting in the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other stuff.
Oh, and I have a few more discounted bulbs to put in.
But then I'll be done.
Really.
Mostly done, anyway.
Showing posts with label proud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label proud. Show all posts
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Proud to be a Mom
Wow. It's a whole new month!
Here, at last, are pics of the girl just before she went to the prom. The extra string by her neck is from her purse--I couldn't get her to hang out for pics very long because she was in quite a hurry to get out the door. I think I may have overdone it in the fussing department.
She had a wonderful time, and even danced with a boy.
I don't know who will look back on this night more fondly--the girl, or me.
The boy is visiting for Mother's Day. I sure miss having him home. I love having him here on Mom's day, and I feel totally pampered. He helped me a ton around the garden. The girl helped too, but not much. Rain and thunder drove her off and she never came back.
Peas are in, artichokes and cardoon (hardened off seedlings that are under a protective cover until things nice'n up) and the onion sets which couldn't wait any longer. I think the onion sets will be fine, since some onions that overwintered have plenty of green on them.
Cake, gardening, crystalline gifts, and a good talk with my mom this morning. Awesome day. It'll be hard to go back to work tomorrow after being spoiled rotten all day. I'm so proud of my kids, and spending time with them was a huge treat.
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! I hope you had a good one.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Crowing
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Friday, July 25, 2008
Shameless Plug and Public Humiliation
My DH's book is doing well, at least in reviews. He links to some others in his blog.
It's wonderful to see what people think about his work. I'm sure it would be a lot less wonderful if people gave low star reviews. I've often contemplated what it would be like to get panned or a snarky review in a major newspaper or high traffic blog. At least on Amazon you're a shade on the invisible side. Unless someone is looking for you or happens to do a search that will pull your book up (much more likely for non-fiction than fiction) and you turn up within the first few pages, you're not going to be on very many peoples' radar. If your book isn't very well received, this is a blessing. And books that aren't very well received are self-sorting. Unless the publisher does a huge amount of publicity, if you crash and burn it'll be into a very small, relatively private region of hell. But oh, what a special, ugly hell it still can be. So I'm glad folks enjoy the book and find the information valuable. And my advice is, if you want to be a writer, be prepared for the possibility that you may end up in the public eye in a big or small way that won't do anything good for your ego, not to mention it won't earn you much money.
There are no guarantees in publishing. It can be a lose lose. As long as you accept that possibility and, if you end up there, plan to learn from the experience and write even better (under a new name, of course) then your persistence and attitude will eventually, hopefully, pay off. You can make that experience work for you and hopefully you'll convince a publisher to take one more chance on you. Your writing career can live to tell the tale. This is easiest to do if you both believe in what you're trying to teach or express and if you allow for the possibility that you're wrong (or just a little off) or that you can't express yourself as well as you thought (or you couldn't reach through to a high enough percentage of the people who read your work.)
If, however, you expect success and giddy reviews and a fanfare, you may be setting yourself up for more than a disappointment. Know yourself, know the emotional risks. Walking with those unrealistic expectations in your eyes may prevent you from seeing the approaching cliff. Believe me, it's better to climb down than fall off. You may still end up in that special, little hell just for you, but it's easier to work your way out if you're not broken into lots of tiny little smoldering pieces.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Car is Tired and Happy Milestone O
I've been driving all over almost every day for as far back as I can think, which is not very far at the moment. I want a day at home. A whole day. No shopping of any kind, no classes (which btw O passed with A grades! Yay!) no meetings ...
And yet I thrive on meetings, enjoy shopping, and driving O to class turned out to be great discussion time. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I spent the last couple of weeks or so being dragged from one thing to another and that I hated every moment. I had a lot of fun. I'd do it all over again. But I do want to give myself a day off. Tomorrow sounds good.
Today is the boy's b-day. He's so tall and strong and smart. I'm immensely proud of him, especially now because he's coming into his own. After years of childhood luxury where failure held no terror and success didn't interest him, he's learned to succeed. He's learning he's powerful, and that with not very much effort he can achieve a great deal. He's learning that success isn't negative. That seems obvious but it really isn't. When failure has been working for you throughout your living memory, why in the world would success hold any interest? Why change and grow when things are good? People told him it would be better, but he had only our word (and the word of every adult) to vouch for success? He knew he'd need to succeed eventually, but putting it off was easy and didn't cost him anything that he could relate to.
The beauty part of where he's headed is that he decided to do this. I didn't even give him choices. We looked over his options together and this is what he decided to do instead of extending his high school education or the drawn-out failure he seemed willing to accept. He's been given opportunities like this before, but this is the first he's made his own.
My son is becoming a man. Now if I could only get him to stop teasing his sister ...
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