Lawnmower Man

O.K. So apparently I was kind of wrong. That kid with the corner market on mowing the neighborhood lawns still lives in my new neighborhood. He’s about my age now and has a cute little girl and a Pug named Bruno.

He also has a riding lawnmower and for $25 a mow, he’ll mow your lawn and every other mow, he’ll weedwhack — by the way, spellcheck doesn’t like the word “weedwhack. His little girl rides up on top of the lawnmower with him, which is probably one of the cutest selling points. I think if he could have fit Bruno up there too, he could have charged me more.

I talked to him about frequency since he’s familiar with my lawn and the neighborhood and the weather and climate. He said that my across the street neighbor gets more sun and she needs to have it mowed more often than I do — she also has a prettier lawn than I do. Still, for me that’s less mowing and less paying.

I did tell him that I need to do some work in the back yard this weekend; I still have some fallen branches from the last Nor’Easter that need to be hauled off. I also want to square off the garden in the front. I don’t know which previous home owner thought it would be neat to do the swirly non-edge edge garden in the front, but I imagine that it can’t be easy to keep weeds out of or mow next to. So, I want to straighten that out and put some edging down and mulch.

Of course, I still don’t know what’s in the current garden. I’m considering taking photos of each section and posting them here and asking people to tell me what’s what.

Unfortunately, were I’d like to plant sunflowers, there are some mysterious flowers and I don’t want to uproot them until I know what they are.

And I’m wondering if it’s too late to try to start a vegetable garden in the backyard and if not, what I should try to grow. I’d like some tomatoes and zucchini and cucumber, but what else?

Tags: grass, garden, lawnmower, yard work

What’s In The Garden Now?

When I moved into my new house, Fall had pretty much set in real good. The leaves were long gone from my crabapple trees in the front yard and my lilac trees along one side of the house. There were two bushes at each end of the front of the house, which I’m told are rhododendrons, and a bunch of really dead looking plants in the front garden.

I’ve been looking forward to Spring and the possibilities of a garden since January and then the snow finally hit Maine and just. would. not. go. away. It lingered like a relative who doesn’t know he’s outstayed his welcome, borrowed too much money, and eaten all of your stockpile of junk food. And then he had two really wild parties two weekends in a row before taking off until next year — you know, he’ll stay away just long enough that we’ll forget how frustrated we were by this year’s visit.

By the time the snow had gone, I’d given up on gardening. My dreams of a vegetable garden and sunny afternoons planting flowers in the yard had somehow drifted away through the long days of staring at a plain white yard. I’d come to believe that there was nothing but snow underneath all that snow…and even when the snow had begun to melt away and grass began to peak through, it was only a taunt because another Nor’Easter would just cover it up with another 10 or 12 inches of more snow.

But finally after that horrible Nor’Easter April 15th - 17th when first the snow pounded the North East and then the rain and wind came with such intensity and timing that water was pouring down the outside of my chimney and seeping up through the foundation of my basement floor, suddenly Spring arrived, not with a whimper, but with a bang — the beginning of mud season.
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Tags: garden, flower, bloom, Winter, Spring, Nor\'Easter, crocus, daylily, daffodil, photo blogging

Discombobulated Thoughts — January 16, 2007

• Wow, halfway through January already?
• I’m feeling slightly better, just some residual pain in my back and right side but not feeling like I’m splitting in half anymore.
• Pugly is acting very odd lately. I’ve been having to carry him to the car every morning to go to doggy daycare and sometimes I have to catch him to put the leash on him to go outside. Then there’s the weird matter of him not wanting to jump down from the car when we get home. Very strange little dog.
• I’ve been watching HBO’s Rome and I just love love love it. I love the two guys who always seem to be in the right or wrong place and inadvertently cause history to happen.
• I’m reluctantly switching from bottled water to Brita filtered water to save money at home. As long as it’s not tap water, right?
  

  It’s a jungle out there
  Poison in the very air we breathe
  Do you know what’s in the water that you drink?
  Well I do, and it’s amazing
  – “It’s a Jungle Out There”, Monk Theme Song lyrics

• I bought Seventh Generation dish soap, which I think is supposed to be biodegradable. At the very least it’s better for the environment that Joy, which is what I was using. I also bought an organic green tea hair conditioner. I couldn’t find the reusable grocery bags, but I’m thinking about making my own.
• I’ve been trying to find a sample Square Foot Veggie garden online for one adult that I could modify to my own liking. I just like seeing examples of what other people have done.
• I guess I’m going to have to create a gardening category.
• I knitted all day on Saturday on a dishcloth but I have nothing to show for it because I pulled it all out. No matter how careful I counted or what I did, by the time I got to the 12th row, I had an extra stitch and couldn’t figure out where it happened. So I pulled it all out. It’s one of those complicated patterns that is different on every row — you know, K5 P2 (K6 P2) repeat 4 times K5 P1 K2 and then the next row is something else and then like on row 12 you repeat rows 6 through 10. Oy. The scarf was all knit stitches and it took me how many months to do?
• I’m feeling uninspired to take a photo today.

Tags: discombobulated, Seventh Generation, Joy, project365, knitting, gardening, wellness, the puppy, bottled water, Brita, HBO\\\\\\\'s Rome

I Hate When She’s Right

I’m annoyed at my mother.

Last night I was excitedly starting to tell her about this book I’m reading about gardening and what I was planning to do when Spring comes and she, being who she is, pooped on my party. She told me not to get too excited about it and not to go all out and invest too much in it and start too big. She told me I should start with a small garden and go from there because I didn’t want to overwhelm myself and take on more than I could physically handle.

*hrmph*

The sad part is that for once she’s actually not being critical or saying I’m an underachiever or something. I really think she was talking about my illness like she finally gets it. She didn’t want me to set myself up with grand ideas that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with on my own and then I’d beat myself up about.

I hate it when she’s right.

So I need to think this out at a small scale level.

Tags: gardening, mother

When All Food Was Organic

I found an interesting blurb in the Parade insert in Sunday’s paper this week about organic food. As we all know, organic foods have become one of the hot topics in the grocery stores lately. Rather than question whether it’s healthier to eat organic-labeled foods instead the regular produce in the grocery store, someone wrote in to basically ask when it was that all foods used to be organic before. In other words, at some point in the past, all food did used to be organic, before mankind started messing with it, and the person wanted to know how many years it’s been that such has not been true. “AskMarilyn” replied:

Millennia! Humans have been attempting to improve their crop yields for as long as they’ve been hungry. About 2800 B.C. Sumerians used sulfur to control pests. Around A.D. 900,Chinese farmers saw that arsenic worked better. In the 1700s, kerosene was added to the arsenal. And 50 years ago, DDT was the leading pesticide.

Tags: organic food, farming, gardening, pesticides

Thursday Thirteen Things I’d Like To Do In 2007 (#18)

So this is the time of year when everyone is doing New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer not to do “Resolutions” because they’re generally broken and joked about by the middle of January and forgotten by President’s Day. Then, next January, they’ll be resolved again.

So, instead, I usually try to use the time to reflect and think about the things I’d like to work on in my life, changes, improvements, and so on. I don’t make myself any impossible promises though. I know my limits and I know physics. There’s no way I can lose 60 lbs in 2 months, for example; nor is it likely that I’ll be getting up at 5am any time soon to exercise 3 times a week.

Anyway, here is my list of things I would like to do in 2007, no promises, but I’m working on it. More

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, bloghopping, meme, New Years Resolutions, gardening, knitting, debt, weight, health, writing, Green Living, housekeeping, dysfunctional family

Cannibal Sea & Garden Ruin

I always listen to NPR when I’m getting ready in the morning. I’d much rather be able to watch the news in there but there’s no cable in the bathroom and no t.v. So, since moving to Maine, I’ve formed a bond with NPR, which is probably much more intellectual than the one I’d formed with the two redneck hicks who hosted the Country station’s morning show in New Orleans.

Anyway, by the time I get around to getting dressed on Sunday In Tune by Ten Sunday Morning with Sara Willis is usually on. Most of the time, I kind of just tune it out like it’s mall music or something. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s rarely anyone I actually recognize so it’s just kind of there in the background to keep my spinning mind busy while I pretty myself up and fuss at the cats and such.

Every now and then there’s an artist on that really catches my attention. A few months ago they really got under my skin with Lizz Wright, who’s Dreaming Wide Awake I did end up buying and I love.

Yesterday, they caught my attention with two songs back to back and I only caught one word of the second title. Now, here’s my confession. I despise going to NPR’s website. I always feel stupid when I go. I feel like you have to have a special I.Q. to figure out the navigation or something. There’s a secret to finding what you want exactly and I haven’t unlocked the mystery. So, I was dreading trying to find out what these two songs were.

However, it turns out that Maine’s Public Broadcasting Network website is actually very easy to navigate and I was able to find what I was looking for in seconds. Yay for Maine!

It also turns out that both of the songs I liked are soooooo new they aren’t released yet. They were “The Pride” by Essex Green (Cannibal Sea) and “Bisbee Blue” by Calexico (Garden Ruin). I’m curious if anyone has any opinions of these musicians as I’ve not heard of them before but they do apparently have other albums.

I think the kitties will be buying these for me for my birthday this year.

Tags: NPR, Cannibal Sea, Garden Ruin, Lizz Wright