Days of Shades

Erik and I worked in my garden almost all of Sunday. He pulled up a bunch of sod for me -- doubling the size of the front flower bed and clearing out the last bit of sod/blackberries near the house, so I have one more full-sun vegitable spot. I still have to knock the extra soil off the removed sod and either pitch it into the blackberries or fill the yard waste container with it, but it would have taken my puny arms four days to do what he did in one.

While he was being all manly (and shirtless *g*), I divided the thyme and sage from the whiskey-barrel herb garden to give the rosemary more breathing room. I started some fertilizer tea steeping, which I'll feed it after I get home tonight.

The other big job was preparing a half-wine barrel for the flowering currant. I'd heeled it in over night, and Erik and I went to Bark'n'Garden for barrel and soil. I always forget how expensive dirt is. Damn. Currant better like that potting soil! At least I didn't have to buy gravel to let the bottom drain. There's a parking lot across the street -- I sneak over with a bucket and steal gravel from the side where the rocks haven't been soaking in oil.

Doozer stopped in for a bit so I could attempt some tune-ups on his bike, and he pedaled back and forth between to my folks' house to bring me spade bits for drilling drainage holes.

The flowering currant has a slight lean to it. This is probably due to being 'stored' in an odd mound of dirt at the nursery, but I prefer to blame it on being planted in a barrel that still smells gloriously of wine. My plant? Total boozer. Anyway, the snockered currant is supposed to be irresistable to hummingbirds, and I can't wait to get home and see if it's bloomed yet*. I really, really want my tree to grow hummingbirds.

notyourroommate and I positioned it carefully in view of the tiny kitchen window, by having one of us check the view from the kitchen while the other did an interpretive tree/hummingbird dance in various locations in the yard.

Michelle and I even attacked the blackberries for awhile. It's not effective, but it's satisfying, and it's really hard to stop once you've started. Blackberrie slashing is the scab-picking of the gardening world.

I really like playing in the dirt.


*Seriously. I am just shy of the stage of excitment where the kid digs up the seeds to see if they've sprouted.

I had a stove. It was an ancient and venerable relic of a stove, with many charming quirks and peculiar eccentricities (for extremely specific and non-normative definitions of the word "Charming", which may or may not include "causing poetically creative swearing" and "bringing one closer to the probably-nonexistent-deity through fear of death"). Most recently, when turned on, it lit on fire.

Mind you, this was an electric stove.

Yesterday, it was removed by the landlord, and replaced with a shiny new stove. Not a particularly special stove, but possessed of certain understated merits, to wit: it's astounding Non-House-Burninating Feature.

A certain amount of sedate rejoicing happened. Various third parties were brought in by myself and my room-mate to witness the new arrival. A new household holiday was discussed. It fell to my lovely gentleman friend to point out that which had, for obvious reasons, so far escaped my notice: The glory of properly functioning household appliances is that one doesn't have to spend time thinking about them. So stop it.

The thought-regime of the new stove may take some getting used to.