D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

I was about to begin this entry with the sentence... 'The sun is shining ....' and this verse popped into my head:

"The sun was shining on the sea,

Shining with all his might:

He did his very best to make

The billows smooth and bright--

And this was odd, because it was

The middle of the night."

Lewis Carroll

Not only that, but it came, unbidden with this tune attached to it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nql1_RKwQt0

The mind has such a curious set of filing systems when you think about it. It's like our memories are connected by these bits of string and they all get crammed into the gray matter between our ears like a big ball of twine. You can't get through any simple thought process without dragging up a whole host of irrelevant material.

(And it seems you can't write a blog post without doing the very same thing.)

I cannot deny it. So I won't try it.

The whole point of mentioning the sunny day is that because of same, I am on the cusp of some serious planting in the garden. Though the temperatures are very cool compared to years past, and I am taking my time. I have tomato plants that I grew from seed sitting outside today in the semi-shade. I'm doing something called 'hardening off' which just means getting them used to direct sun.

Hub Man repaired our little Mantis tiller this year and tilled the raised beds to a fare-thee-well. They await their instructions:

[album 65561 Raised Beds Ready.jpg]

Notice the fencing. I bought two x-pens and some other bits of this and that to keep the dogs out of the garden all together this year.It's a bit of a jig saw approach but so far it is working fine, and it's easy to pick up and mow when we need to.

And in the 'new to us' gardening department, we planted two artichoke plants that Hub Man found at Home Depot. I have no idea what to expect from them. I have never seen them grow. Right now they look like a couple of whimpy romaine lettuce plants. We shall see....

[album 65561 Little Miss Sunshine.JPG]

I don't think I LIKE arkichokes.

But I'm not sure...



During the last few months we have been fighting a battle with the dog next door who decided to start eating the fence. He wants to come pay with Sunny and Ben, and actually managed to get over here a few times and they had a nice romp. But I got pretty tired of it, and we had to put up some metal fencing on our side to nix the unsupervised play dates. To be fair, Snoopy and Ben [when Snoopy was still with us] were jumping on our side of the fence and killing my hydrangea in the process.

This was my solution:

[album 65561 New Green.jpg]

So far it's working pretty well. And I got some new ferns and a rosemary plant in the bargain. Hopefully I will also get some flowers from a Hollyhock that was being trampled to death.

I cannot believe that such a small back yard can generate so much backbreaking labor. But generate it does. It seems quite thankless at this stage of the game too. Ripe tomatoes are a long ways off...