City Gardening for Amateurs

You can take a girl from the country, but you can't take the country from the girl. I wonder who wrote that little bit of pure genius? It's true, you know. Take the proof of the woman who has lived in the suburbs for almost seven years, but still nurtures in the back of her mind the distinct possibility of keeping two hens in the backyard for fresh eggs. Technically, the city only limits the number per species of animal that you own and if they are really obnoxiously loud. Since everyone else around us has obnoxiously loud dogs, my hillbilly wheels are turning...calculating... calculating...calculating.

But I'm pretty sure David would stage a husband revolt, which could lead to the wrong kind of chicken coup, so I'm gonna keep that one on the back burner, simmering on extra low for now.

Country girls thus have to look to other ways to get in touch with their roots. More socially acceptable than mattress springs on the roof to improve TV reception is gardening. By using raised beds instead of just tilling up my entire backyard (or front--don't dare me, please. I'm right on the edge here), David gets to use power tools and manly carpentry skills, thereby adding an element of danger to gardening and sweetening the pot so he'll buy in. Well, there is a scary-sounding circular saw and always the possibility of decimating your thumb with a hammer.

We decided on treated lumber which we could paint so that the beds will be nice to look at for years to come instead of falling apart. David drew up some plans, we negotiated, I requested a wide ledge on the top for sitting, we negotiated some more, and agreed on a final version. It took most of a Sunday to build the first one, and completed the second a day or two later. It took another couple of days to fill the suckers with dirt, and about 5 trips or so total for lumber, paint, soil, amendments, and finally the plants!

Side note: it is a point of pride to us to see just how much stuff we can get to fit in our Subaru WRX sport wagon. They usually look either confused, amused, or alarmed when we haul out a big cart of lumber and load 'er up. Lowe's is only a block away, but it still feels good to roll out of there with the Subie packed to the gills. A separate post will be "Haulin' With Subie" to highlight her willingness to put up with whatever we dish out.

Back to gardening: total costs for the structures, including nails, screws, paint, and liner was about $100. The dirt, organic compost, and organic fertilizer used totaled about $65. The layers of skin lost due to sunburn: 1 or 2.

Since my picture storage is pretty limited on Blogger ("Boooo..."), here's a link to a web album of the process and completed project. Enjoy! I know I will.

http://picasaweb.google.com/rjwhitlark/CityGardening

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Appreciate TJMaxx

Ok, so after running out of thread with 3 curtains left to sew, it is a good time to reflect and include some pictures which will probably highlight the good points of the finished product while artfully concealing with houseplants the many flaws. What uneven hemming? All I see is--Wow! what a beautiful fern! (This really is an obvious case of an imagination gone wild. I had a fern once. It looked good for approximately two days before going into a full molt and then losing its will to live entirely. Ferns in florist shops are hopped up on anti-depressants and steroids until they are about to climb out of their baskets to hit the treadmill, with pumped up leaves and Goldie Hawn-like posture. When they get to your house, they quickly become despondent and their leaves wait for the merest of nibbles from the resident felines to literally explode off their stems. Moral of the story? Ferns: Just Say No).

Where were we? Oh, yes, the cover-up for the seamy window-coverings. Anyone observed peering too closely at seams shall be immediately given an obscene amount of wine, from which perspective all my sewing appears to be a perfect study of Impressionism. "Thaa Juhdon, she'z such an inssspired artisst--I mean, look at thaa. If you squint chur eyez, iss almoss like there'z like, really nice curtainz on thoze windowz. Iss incredible."

Having returned to Hobby Lobby for thread and after much ironing and further discoveries of sewing inconsistencies (one of which just occurred to me this very moment), they are finally finished!

Without further ado, THE CURTAINS FROM HADES:

Stop looking at that seam immediately. Would you like some Merlot?

Note strategic use of houseplant:

Moby Dick: Standing the Test of Time

This book is one that has been on my list of important things to read for a very long time. I happened upon it recently at a second hand store and was compelled to shell out a dollar and see if I could wade my way through it. I've always had the impression that the book was near endless, and quite possibly as tedious as I found Oliver Twist to be so many years ago (I was a teenager when I tried to read Dickens, so I should probably give it another go before the final rap of the gavel). At any rate, I was prepared to be a literary martyr on the pyre of sesquipedalian verbosity, but would count it as a kind of medal of honor on my lapel if I could but finish it. So, you can understand my amazement when I laughed out loud with amusement and shook with suppressed chuckles throughout the first several chapters. What in the world! I would never have thought a man with the name Herman Melville could put on such a party as this.

But even Herman could not have anticipated his four-footed arch-nemesis who currently roams the halls of Whitlark Manor and who put an unceremonious end to the literary festivities. I was awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of heaving. Moby Dick may very well stand the test of time, but it unfortunately could not stand the test of cat vomit at point blank range. And I, dear reader, could not stand the test of discolored pages unless I had no knowledge of where the discoloration came from and could convince myself that it was a perfectly legitimate discoloration as a result of someone's green highlighter gone haywire. As it was, I knew perfectly well the tinge of partially-digested houseplants, and therefore laid this amazingly absorbent volume to rest.