A long day, Saturday...

I woke up at 6:25 AM and put a pot of coffee on. Then I stripped the bed and put the bedding in the washer. I turned on "Saturday Morning, Over Easy" and got on with my day.

For breakfast, I had an onion bagel with cream cheese and, with my normal morning meds, I added a pain pill. Why? It's an old trick I leaned in physical therapy. I am taking one now to pre-medicate myself as I will be doing a lot of work today.

I left just after 9:00 AM, stopped and filled up the car with gas (groan) and headed to Jake and Carla's. Of course, like most driver's these days, it was less than five miles when I came upon a gas station that was selling it for 3 cents a gallon cheaper than I just paid! Aauugghh!

I picked up Carla (Jake couldn't come because he has to wait for the sprinkler guy) and we headed to Block's Nursery. I thought by getting there at 10:00 instead of when they open at 9:00 it would be less crowded. NOT! Took about 15 minutes to get in and find a parking space (well, I never did find a real parking space, I ended up just pulling up on the grass outside one of the entrances - hey, other people were doing it, too!)

We each grabbed a shopping cart (all the cool rolling wagons were gone, of course) and started to fill our lists. Carla's was a bit more involved than mine; she wanted several varieties of heirloom tomatoes and a wide assortment of hot peppers, for example. I went with four Roma tomatoes, two regular tomatoes (for BLT's) and just plain old green peppers, myself.

Only my brother Carl (who comes here) could understand what this place is like. Hundreds of gardeners, all stopping to look at something and holding up all the people behind them! But, at least, everyone is friendly and helpful (Did you see any thyme? Yeah it's back over here! Anybody know where the eggplant is? Yeah, it's in Greenhouse #3).

Carla actually found some sort of greenhouse directory, while I, on the other hand, just searched for workers in their distinctive green shirts and asked where things were.

At one point, I stopped in the main aisle to grab two trays of leeks for Carla and myself. I realized I'd held up the guy behind me and I said, "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm just taking a leek here!" He didn't laugh, but I did!

We finally filled our order of vegetables and herbs and made our way (albeit slowly) to the check out lines. At the last minute (reminded by a guy who walked by with an armful of them) I remembered Jake said he wanted tomato cages. So, I left my cart with Carla and went to get him some. Did you ever try and count a stack of tomato cages? The first three or four are easy, but then you don't know if you're counting the top rings of the next cage, or the second ring of ones you already counted. I actually took them apart and got twelve (I thought). But, when I got back to the checkout, the lady there counted them (several times, too) and said I had 15! I said I'd take them any way (I'll use the extra at my house).

We carefully loaded the car, keeping our orders separate and eventually succeeded in fitting in the tomato cages without scrunching something. It took another 10 minutes or so to find a break in the steady stream of cars and trucks coming in and going so I could back up the 15 feet I needed to pull out of the place. Then we were finally headed for home!

When we got there, Jake was done cutting the grass, and the sprinkler guy was just finishing up. Turns out there was a sprinkler head in the area Jake had had rototilled up for the garden, but, amazingly, it wasn't damaged, so the sprinkler guy moved it to the edge of the garden. Now there are two sprinklers that will water the main garden and two sprinklers that water the herb garden (I am sooo jealous!)

So, I changed into my shorts and t-shirt and put on my garden boots and we went outside. The guy Jake paid to rototill had left big clumps of grass everywhere (well, it was a lawn, of course) so we started by raking up the 18 foot by 22 foot garden, pulling out the grass clumps and throwing them onto the compost heap. Meanwhile, Carla's job was to take all the strawberries and herbs and, leaving them in their pots, lay out a pleasing design in that garden.

When she had them set up where she wanted them, I gave her my rake, filled a bucket with water, grabbed a trowel and planted her herb garden. She had followed my suggestion to keep the perennial strawberries and herbs at one end, and the annual herbs at the other and was trying for whimsy (and, you know I LOVE whimsy!) So, in the end, Carla's herb garden contains June-bearing strawberries, and two or three plants of parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, basil, tarragon, cilantro, oregano, and dill (plus a last minute addition we'll talk about later).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, they had gotten about 1/3 of the garden cleaned. So I started putting in stakes and string to mark rows. While they kept busting their butts (and, I am not kidding, getting those grass clumps out was a major job. But, as Jake said, they'd either have to deal with it now or deal with it later, when the grass started to grow back) I started sowing seeds. And, that's how we proceeded. They would get enough cleaned out so I could mark and plant another row, and then we'd repeat.

At Carla's insistence, we would stop and take a water break (German's don't like to stop and take breaks) and, at 1:00 PM, I went inside and took another pain pill I sorely needed (Get it? Sorely? Well, you did get the taking a leek one, right?). When they finally got done with the grass clumps, I was still planting peppers, Jake was breaking up clumps of leeks and planting them and Carla was planting peas. Then they both installed the tomato cages.

Turns out Carla had over-bought her beloved hot peppers, so six of them had to go into the very end of the herb garden: Two ancho chilies and four chili red peppers. While Carla and I cleaned up the tools, string, stakes, plant trays, etc., Jake raked between each row to loosen up the soil we had packed down while planting.

In the end, their vegetable garden contains: sweet corn, sunflowers and pole beans, zucchini, yellow summer squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, salad cucumbers, pickle cucumbers, five different types of tomatoes (three varieties of heirloom, roma, and cherry tomatoes), radishes, green onions, six different types of peppers (regular red peppers and the rest the hot varieties), leeks and a row of snap peas, which will be replaced with leaf lettuce after harvesting). It looks damn good, BTW!

Best of all, even though scattered showers were predicted for this morning, the rain held off, and there was a welcomed breeze that help slow the sweat factor (although I had to resort to a kitchen towel I'd brought to keep the sweat out of my eyes and off my glasses).

I didn't bother to change, because I had dirt everywhere, but just loaded up the car and left, just before 3:00 PM. About half way home, it started to sprinkle! I got home, unloaded the car; put my clothes in the washer and me in the shower. It seemed to take forever to get the dirt off my knees and from under my fingernails! I warmed up a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and ate that with regular saltine crackers.

I got the bedding out of the dryer, made the bed and tried to take a nap. I read in bed until I fell asleep just after 5:00 PM. I woke up just before 8:00, heard a low roar and looked out the kitchen window. It looked like I was in the Wizard of Oz or something! Trees were whipping back and forth and debris (sticks, maple helicopter seeds and branches) was flying everywhere. I couldn't see the patio chairs and figure it's gonna be quite the job to clean out the reflecting pool tomorrow morning.

But, by 8:15 PM, it looked like there was NO wind at all and I made the whole damn thing up! I wonder if it was a tornado passing overhead that didn't touch down or something.

I came into the office to write this post and finished it up to this point by 10:30 PM. I am heating up a Marie Callender's chicken pot pie in the microwave for a late supper and plan on watching the rest of the Friday Night fights, then go to bed. But, I belatedly remembered the vegetables and herbs, sitting in their trays in my garage, So, I left my food and TV, and went out and watered them at 11:00 PM.

I came back in and resumed my original plan. I ended up going to sleep at 12:30 AM.