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dragonlady7Ran out this morning at 8 to try and get everything into the ground that I could, since it is supposed to be warm for the next week, and also supposed to rain for the next week. I am terrible at having things I plant from seed straight in the garden actually come up, and a week of rain would really, really help that. But the beds, despite hours and hours and hours of work so far, were not done!!!
So I went and really pounded it out, working on the back fence, the garage bed, and the messy bit by the driveway in front of the house.
That bit had pachysandra as a ground cover, but somehow grass had gotten in, and was making a mess. So I ripped out about three feet inward of the pachysandra, to where the grass hadn't gotten yet, curved around the existing rubber edging to keep the pachysandra in check, tore out all the thick mat of roots that have been in there forever, and planted... two cherry tomatoes, two jalapenos, and some basil. Then I planted a few rows, curving around, alternating turnips, radishes, beets, and spinach. I should plant some basil from seed too, but maybe I'll get to that later. I am bone-weary.
Then I set to work on that fucking garage bed. I have busted so much sod, and spent so many hours in there, and it's still a mess. So I focused, and worked on making three big German mounds back by the wall. I planted trellises into them-- using the two sumac seedlings we chopped out of the bricked-over bit by the south fence, and one 8-foot pole I found in the garage during the Great Garage Cleaning. (I haven't even mentioned that, have I? Z has, a bit. It was mostly his project, while I gardened like a mofo to get it all ready.)
I made German mounds around them, set them deep, built up the soil with nice amendments, and put little paper-cup slices to hold seeds in place, since I always lose them. In the cup rings I planted: acorn squash, cucumbers, Hale's Best muskmelons, and zucchini.
Three mounds like that against the wall, and I haven't finished with the rest of the bed but I will plant the Burpee tomatoes in them when they arrive-- that gives me about two more weeks to work on the rest of it. (I piled all the cut sod at the edge of the bed, and I'll thrash out the dirt later and throw the rest into the composter. The composter, I should mention, is nearly full with this sort of thing-- thrashed-out sod, root systems, unwanted plants, etc. It's kind of insane.
I then planted the older of the two lasagna beds with pole beans (Kentucky Wonder, from saved seeds) and the same things as the mounds-- squash, cukes, melons, zukes. I mounded dirt over the seeds, since the bed is cooking down and I'm really worried I didn't put enough in, and the peas still aren't up though I can tell they're germinating. (I keep finding shoots if I root around to plant other things.) So they're in there... it may not be that successful. The first pea bed i planted, though, against the porch, is finally sprouting. Thank heavens! I was so worried I wasn't going to get anything coming up.
I was going to plant out a bunch more tomatoes and peppers. But I'm exhausted. See, gardening at this stage is kind of unrewarding-- doesn't it sound like not very much? It really sounds like I just puttered a bit, and did a few things, but I am sore and exhausted and was sweating like a pig the whole morning, straining all kinds of muscles and often working hard enough to be out of breath. I get a lot of exercise in my lifestyle, here, and this counted as pretty intense.
I worked from 8-12, and from 12:30 to almost 2.
At the end I was so tired, I just sat and repotted some tomatoes. I started them in little cells, and realized I wasn't going to get to planting them out today, so I transplanted them instead. It's supposed to be good for them, making them develop sturdier stems and stronger root systems, to transplant them once into a bigger pot and then once into the garden. So I figured, why not.
(This means I have about six extra cherry tomato plants. Hell, I probably have about eight extra, as the two I planted out today plus the one I planted last night is probably plenty!! Unless there's a frost, please don't let there be a frost. (I do have hotcaps made of gallon jugs.)
Meanwhile Z was finishing up with the garage, moving all the stuff from the driveway back in. It's supposed to start raining at 2 pm, so we were both sort of racing.
Z was sweeping the driveway, and I was finally, exhaustedly, sitting by the house transplanting the tomatoes, when we heard an awful, crow-like noise. It was my verbally-abusive neighbor, a woman in her 80s who has been driving the inhabitants of this house insane for generations. She makes my heart race, just seeing her-- she has something wrong with her, and has no notion of politeness. Even when she's being nice, she says horrible things. I've mentioned her here before, I'm sure.
She leans over the fence and starts tearing in. "Why do I have to look at all this garbage?" she shouts. "I am sick of your garbage! You got to get these jugs away from MY FENCE. It's MY FENCE. Why do you think you can put your things near MY FENCE?" (I have some gallon jugs, clearly marked, containing soil and seeds, which I was using to attempt to wintersow. They didn't work, and I would have removed them already from the year-round sunny spot beside the driveway where normally, I grow herbs, but last week she was shrieking things about MY FENCE so I have left them there and most likely will be leaving them there until I need the space for something else.)
Normally, I just walk away when she talks or comes outside at all, and let the door slam behind me, but I was in the middle of this job, and I was too tired to stand up, and I am SICK and TIRED of being chased out of my own driveway.
So I said, "It's MY SIDE of YOUR FENCE, so it's none of your business. If you don't like looking at it, you can turn right around and take your nosey self back inside."
She went off into a tirade, using a bunch of four-lettered words, about how it's her property right up to the driveway and I don't have the right to have anything anywhere. She called me garbage and full of shit and worthless and the like.
I stood up and said, "I like your language, lady. Why don't you just go fuck right off?"
"OH LISTEN HOW SHE'S TALKING TO ME!" she cried. "OH! You are such trash!"
"No," I said. "You're garbage. You are nothing but garbage yourself. Your children never visit you. Your neighbors have hated you for years. I was warned about you before I even moved in here. Look out for that lady, they all said. There's something wrong with her, Laura said. She's really nuts, Jenny said. Oh my God, Krista said. Don't talk to her. Just run away. There's something wrong with you, lady, and it's really tragic that you've lived this long and never figured it out."
"Oh!" she said. "That's not true! Listen to you talk! You are such a piece of garbage!"
"Actually," Z said, leaning on his broom, "it is true. You drove Matilda insane." [Matilda was his great-aunt, who bought the house when she arrived from Latvia; Matilda had horror stories she would tell of this woman's insensitivity, first when her son died young and then when her husband died.] "And Krista, Marty, Jenny-- all of them dreaded seeing you."
She went off into a tirade, changing the subject back to what a mess we keep the place and how awful it looks and how disrespectful we are of HER FENCE, etc.
I shot back a few things here and there, finding it odd how much less upset I was now than all the times I'd walked away ignoring her. Weird! Maybe because I was saying all the things I'd been wanting to, instead of bottling them up and saying them to myself? I don't know.
Finally Z walked over and leaned on the fence, which seemed extremely challenging to me-- since the woman had been shrieking about us invading her space, since somehow the space on our side of the fence but on her side of the driveway(?) is her space, and we're invading it-- I don't know. But he leaned on the fence, and said nothing for a moment, then murmured something.
"I know it," Mrs. Bob said, much more quietly. "I know it." And she turned and went back into her yard, and spoke no more.
I asked him what he'd said, when we got inside.
"I went over intending to say, This isn't a productive discussion so why don't we end it," he said. "But then I noticed that there was a drop of blood on the tip of her nose, and it really threw me off. So I said, Your nose is bleeding. And she said, I know it, and walked away."
Weird.
Anyway, somehow I feel so much better than I did before? I don't know. I'll have to look into whose property the ground beside the driveway is, really-- it's less than a foot wide, at its widest, which was why I planted creeping thyme and oregano and parsley there. I had trained morning glories up the fence, my first year here-- that was when I stopped speaking to Mrs. Bob, when she tore them off, in mid-flower, and threw them into my driveway. It's HER FENCE, I CANNOT grow things that touch it, apparently. She grows raspberries on the other side of it, which come through to my side-- I don't complain, and I don't plant anything that would shade them out, since I do like them.
I had also planted a climbing sweet pea, which is perennial-- every year, she lets it get up the fence, twine through it, and burst into flower before throwing it into my driveway, but at least she doesn't uproot it first-- so I wait until she's gone and prop it back up and it's fine the rest of the season. It's a beautiful pink sweetpea. I don't want to move it because I don't think they transplant well. It went to seed, though, and I collected them and have planted a few elsewhere, in case she gets more vindictive this time.
She and her husband mow that strip alongside their house, and have trouble keeping the weeds out of the edge of the fence, so I've pulled out the grass just along the edge of that fence and along the house, and was going to begin planting creeping thyme as a groundcover. But I've held off, because I'm afraid if I actually try to plant anything nice there, she'll rip it out. It's kind of stressful, but I suppose I could have worse problems.
Anyway, I'm still not done with the bed out front, or, well, a lot of the garden. There's a lot left to do. But it's supposed to rain for a week. So I hope I have enough done now to sort of tide things over... I don't have enough beans planted, but I could run out and stick those in the ground during the rain, I suppose. I have a few spots readyish for them.
I'm so gross. I need to shower. But I have so much more to do today.
I should know Friday or Monday whether I have a job, by the way. We'll see.
So I went and really pounded it out, working on the back fence, the garage bed, and the messy bit by the driveway in front of the house.
That bit had pachysandra as a ground cover, but somehow grass had gotten in, and was making a mess. So I ripped out about three feet inward of the pachysandra, to where the grass hadn't gotten yet, curved around the existing rubber edging to keep the pachysandra in check, tore out all the thick mat of roots that have been in there forever, and planted... two cherry tomatoes, two jalapenos, and some basil. Then I planted a few rows, curving around, alternating turnips, radishes, beets, and spinach. I should plant some basil from seed too, but maybe I'll get to that later. I am bone-weary.
Then I set to work on that fucking garage bed. I have busted so much sod, and spent so many hours in there, and it's still a mess. So I focused, and worked on making three big German mounds back by the wall. I planted trellises into them-- using the two sumac seedlings we chopped out of the bricked-over bit by the south fence, and one 8-foot pole I found in the garage during the Great Garage Cleaning. (I haven't even mentioned that, have I? Z has, a bit. It was mostly his project, while I gardened like a mofo to get it all ready.)
I made German mounds around them, set them deep, built up the soil with nice amendments, and put little paper-cup slices to hold seeds in place, since I always lose them. In the cup rings I planted: acorn squash, cucumbers, Hale's Best muskmelons, and zucchini.
Three mounds like that against the wall, and I haven't finished with the rest of the bed but I will plant the Burpee tomatoes in them when they arrive-- that gives me about two more weeks to work on the rest of it. (I piled all the cut sod at the edge of the bed, and I'll thrash out the dirt later and throw the rest into the composter. The composter, I should mention, is nearly full with this sort of thing-- thrashed-out sod, root systems, unwanted plants, etc. It's kind of insane.
I then planted the older of the two lasagna beds with pole beans (Kentucky Wonder, from saved seeds) and the same things as the mounds-- squash, cukes, melons, zukes. I mounded dirt over the seeds, since the bed is cooking down and I'm really worried I didn't put enough in, and the peas still aren't up though I can tell they're germinating. (I keep finding shoots if I root around to plant other things.) So they're in there... it may not be that successful. The first pea bed i planted, though, against the porch, is finally sprouting. Thank heavens! I was so worried I wasn't going to get anything coming up.
I was going to plant out a bunch more tomatoes and peppers. But I'm exhausted. See, gardening at this stage is kind of unrewarding-- doesn't it sound like not very much? It really sounds like I just puttered a bit, and did a few things, but I am sore and exhausted and was sweating like a pig the whole morning, straining all kinds of muscles and often working hard enough to be out of breath. I get a lot of exercise in my lifestyle, here, and this counted as pretty intense.
I worked from 8-12, and from 12:30 to almost 2.
At the end I was so tired, I just sat and repotted some tomatoes. I started them in little cells, and realized I wasn't going to get to planting them out today, so I transplanted them instead. It's supposed to be good for them, making them develop sturdier stems and stronger root systems, to transplant them once into a bigger pot and then once into the garden. So I figured, why not.
(This means I have about six extra cherry tomato plants. Hell, I probably have about eight extra, as the two I planted out today plus the one I planted last night is probably plenty!! Unless there's a frost, please don't let there be a frost. (I do have hotcaps made of gallon jugs.)
Meanwhile Z was finishing up with the garage, moving all the stuff from the driveway back in. It's supposed to start raining at 2 pm, so we were both sort of racing.
Z was sweeping the driveway, and I was finally, exhaustedly, sitting by the house transplanting the tomatoes, when we heard an awful, crow-like noise. It was my verbally-abusive neighbor, a woman in her 80s who has been driving the inhabitants of this house insane for generations. She makes my heart race, just seeing her-- she has something wrong with her, and has no notion of politeness. Even when she's being nice, she says horrible things. I've mentioned her here before, I'm sure.
She leans over the fence and starts tearing in. "Why do I have to look at all this garbage?" she shouts. "I am sick of your garbage! You got to get these jugs away from MY FENCE. It's MY FENCE. Why do you think you can put your things near MY FENCE?" (I have some gallon jugs, clearly marked, containing soil and seeds, which I was using to attempt to wintersow. They didn't work, and I would have removed them already from the year-round sunny spot beside the driveway where normally, I grow herbs, but last week she was shrieking things about MY FENCE so I have left them there and most likely will be leaving them there until I need the space for something else.)
Normally, I just walk away when she talks or comes outside at all, and let the door slam behind me, but I was in the middle of this job, and I was too tired to stand up, and I am SICK and TIRED of being chased out of my own driveway.
So I said, "It's MY SIDE of YOUR FENCE, so it's none of your business. If you don't like looking at it, you can turn right around and take your nosey self back inside."
She went off into a tirade, using a bunch of four-lettered words, about how it's her property right up to the driveway and I don't have the right to have anything anywhere. She called me garbage and full of shit and worthless and the like.
I stood up and said, "I like your language, lady. Why don't you just go fuck right off?"
"OH LISTEN HOW SHE'S TALKING TO ME!" she cried. "OH! You are such trash!"
"No," I said. "You're garbage. You are nothing but garbage yourself. Your children never visit you. Your neighbors have hated you for years. I was warned about you before I even moved in here. Look out for that lady, they all said. There's something wrong with her, Laura said. She's really nuts, Jenny said. Oh my God, Krista said. Don't talk to her. Just run away. There's something wrong with you, lady, and it's really tragic that you've lived this long and never figured it out."
"Oh!" she said. "That's not true! Listen to you talk! You are such a piece of garbage!"
"Actually," Z said, leaning on his broom, "it is true. You drove Matilda insane." [Matilda was his great-aunt, who bought the house when she arrived from Latvia; Matilda had horror stories she would tell of this woman's insensitivity, first when her son died young and then when her husband died.] "And Krista, Marty, Jenny-- all of them dreaded seeing you."
She went off into a tirade, changing the subject back to what a mess we keep the place and how awful it looks and how disrespectful we are of HER FENCE, etc.
I shot back a few things here and there, finding it odd how much less upset I was now than all the times I'd walked away ignoring her. Weird! Maybe because I was saying all the things I'd been wanting to, instead of bottling them up and saying them to myself? I don't know.
Finally Z walked over and leaned on the fence, which seemed extremely challenging to me-- since the woman had been shrieking about us invading her space, since somehow the space on our side of the fence but on her side of the driveway(?) is her space, and we're invading it-- I don't know. But he leaned on the fence, and said nothing for a moment, then murmured something.
"I know it," Mrs. Bob said, much more quietly. "I know it." And she turned and went back into her yard, and spoke no more.
I asked him what he'd said, when we got inside.
"I went over intending to say, This isn't a productive discussion so why don't we end it," he said. "But then I noticed that there was a drop of blood on the tip of her nose, and it really threw me off. So I said, Your nose is bleeding. And she said, I know it, and walked away."
Weird.
Anyway, somehow I feel so much better than I did before? I don't know. I'll have to look into whose property the ground beside the driveway is, really-- it's less than a foot wide, at its widest, which was why I planted creeping thyme and oregano and parsley there. I had trained morning glories up the fence, my first year here-- that was when I stopped speaking to Mrs. Bob, when she tore them off, in mid-flower, and threw them into my driveway. It's HER FENCE, I CANNOT grow things that touch it, apparently. She grows raspberries on the other side of it, which come through to my side-- I don't complain, and I don't plant anything that would shade them out, since I do like them.
I had also planted a climbing sweet pea, which is perennial-- every year, she lets it get up the fence, twine through it, and burst into flower before throwing it into my driveway, but at least she doesn't uproot it first-- so I wait until she's gone and prop it back up and it's fine the rest of the season. It's a beautiful pink sweetpea. I don't want to move it because I don't think they transplant well. It went to seed, though, and I collected them and have planted a few elsewhere, in case she gets more vindictive this time.
She and her husband mow that strip alongside their house, and have trouble keeping the weeds out of the edge of the fence, so I've pulled out the grass just along the edge of that fence and along the house, and was going to begin planting creeping thyme as a groundcover. But I've held off, because I'm afraid if I actually try to plant anything nice there, she'll rip it out. It's kind of stressful, but I suppose I could have worse problems.
Anyway, I'm still not done with the bed out front, or, well, a lot of the garden. There's a lot left to do. But it's supposed to rain for a week. So I hope I have enough done now to sort of tide things over... I don't have enough beans planted, but I could run out and stick those in the ground during the rain, I suppose. I have a few spots readyish for them.
I'm so gross. I need to shower. But I have so much more to do today.
I should know Friday or Monday whether I have a job, by the way. We'll see.
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Date: 2009-04-30 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 06:33 pm (UTC)Hey, even if they don't pay much, I get a 70% discount on everything-- including digital photo prints.
And they have a pretty good scanner, so I can probably chug through a bunch of my old family photos and digitize those, too.
So at least it'll be entertaining and worthwhile. I don't need to make a whole lot of money... I just need something. Maybe I'll find another job and then keep this one part-time. Who knows?