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Okay, I may have mentioned a time or two how these tomatoes of mine are bruising my soul. Well, I decided rather than continuing to harbor resentment toward these innocent little seedlings (that freaking refuse to grow) to just plant them. Just put them all out there and see what happens. Eggplants too. And while I'm at it, peppers. And all these herbs. Just let nature have her way with my little orphans. So I did. Mostly. The thing is, I may have planted a few too many tomato seeds. Which is to say, there are probably tomato farmers out there right now who have less tomato seedlings than I do. I shoved tomato seedlings into every conceivable remaining patch of my dirt garden and still have two flats left. Then I squeezed in peppers and eggplants too close to the tomatoes with the assumption some of them will surely die. Basically, I have set up a Darwinian fight to the death battle. You know, between my vegetables. Now I don’t know what to do with what I have left. I was going to give my MIL tomato plants, but when I had that idea there was an image in my mind of what said seedlings would look like and it currently does not match reality at all. Let me just lay it out there: my seedlings are embarrassing. There is just no way around it. They are these little purple things with two puny leaves which are kind of shriveled on the ends. I mean, they don’t even have the decency to be green. If they survive out there it will be a miracle. And I might have to open a tomato business. Gardening lesson learned: If everyone you speak to with any kind of gardening experience whatsoever tells you to ‘skip the seeds on that one and just buy the plants’... LISTEN TO THEM.  I have nothing against bandwagons. I hitch a ride on several, regularly. For example, I am under no delusion that my new found obsession with gardening came from my enlightened brain without influence. Hardly. I remember telling my mother a few years ago that gardening was for old ladies, so I'd take it up when I met that description. Then I read Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and immediately started ordering heritage seeds. If I have my way, I’ll be raising chickens before I am through.
I read the book, I follow the advice. That is the pattern. Not my pattern, our pattern. We Americans do this regularly. It is perhaps one of our defining characteristics; our culture’s malleability. Some book or article or video footage hits the scene and before you know it we are all talking about it and obsessed and there is a full fledged trend. My only experience with ever being ahead of a movement was low carb. And I don't mean that in the same way people do when they brag about liking a band's music before anyone else. Rather, I was regarded as nuts until everyone else caught the bug and it was rather uncomfortable. I read Protein Power, by Michael and Mary Dan Eades and was convinced I found the magic weight loss bullet. I tried to convince anyone who would listen how much sense it made. By the way, if you are one of the firm renouncers who thinks low carb is total insanity, I challenge you to read one of their books and see if your mind isn’t changed just a smidge. That said I bake bread at least twice a week. I eat pasta and potatoes too. Just because I believe it, doesn’t necessarily mean I do it. And that rub brings me to the trend that got me thinking about trends today: Simplify. Elaine St. James’ Simplify Your Life kick-started that one for me and I tend to regularly get fired up about the subject. Anyone who has read about or has in any way caught whiff of the simplify/organize movement knows the first cardinal rule: Declutter. Now this is a particular problem for me, right up there with not being able to walk away from chocolate chip cookies. I tend to cling to things. Not in a sentimental or hoarding way, I can throw things out with the best of them, more in a ‘bags of stuff’ kind of way. When I was in Kindergarten my teacher had to speak to my mother about all the bags I was dragging around. I have yet to outgrow this. I keep the little compartments of my life in individual bags and because I don’t know which ones I might need in any given situation I tend to carry them all with me, especially on overnight trips. I have a knitting bag, sewing bag, reading bag, journaling/calendar/to do bag, work bag, toy bag and of course, diaper bag. I don’t yet have a camera bag and it is making me crazy. I generally throw it in with the diapers. I thought at first the reason I keep all these important things in bags is because there is no other place to put them. That’s it, I thought, I need storage solutions. But wait, didn’t my husband create just that in all of our closets when he put in extra shelves for me? Yes, he did. I’ve filled them, cleared them out and refilled them again several times over. Unfortunately, I declutter, but allow myself to reclutter regularly, hence the bags. Trends are exciting and new when you first hear about them then they slowly fizzle as people like me realize actual work is involved in making life changes. My husband and I so highly value Michael Pollan’s recommendation to “eat real food” that we have had to completely revamp the way we acquire food. We now have a new pattern to our shopping. Instead of going to the grocery store, we go to the market twice a week. We have changed the process of that part of our lives. Now it is no longer work, it is habit, and isn’t that just the answer to it all? The best of the trends should be our habits. They should be our culture, not a bandwagon. Of course, many of them used to be. You didn’t have to decide not to eat processed foods, figure out how to plant a garden, or declutter the ridiculous build-up of possessions. Go back far enough, and low carb wasn’t as outlandish as it sounds today either. Somewhere in our history as things got easier for us, living healthily got harder. Our country became rich and we became fat, anxious, depressed and bored and we’ve acquired stockpiles of stuff that doesn’t seem to help. Unfortunately, a lot of our trends are a direct result of calculated efforts from big companies to get us to spend more money: Processed over fresh, artificial over natural, disposable over reusable. It can be hard to filter through all the influences and get to the core of what real life should be like. Surely it shouldn’t be so hard to be healthy and content. Well, if I were to start a trend, I would boil down all of my favorite advice into this: Eat real food, stay hydrated, get enough sleep, nurture relationships, move your body, and live in the present. Oh, and stop buying so much stuff. My memories of Halloween as a child are not of trick or treating, but of my mother sewing. Each year she turned the kitchen table into a sewing cockpit. Front and center sat her ancient green sewing machine, a gift from my father. Fanned around her, in reaching distance, were all the bits and pieces of the project; most notably, mysterious shapes of fabric with brownish tissue paper pattern pieces pinned to the back. Invariably I hovered over her, anxious to try on my new costume. After a while, I would get bored with her concentration and the monotony of her actions and go watch t.v. Then I'd pop back in to hover during commercials, sometimes with regret as a rogue needle found its way into my sock. But no matter how late I stayed up, I didn’t get to see the finished project before heading up to bed. I would lie there and listen to the intermittent hum and rat-a-tat of the green machine until sleep took over. My mother was the kind who was breaking stray threads with her teeth while I was trying to line up for a Halloween parade. Still is, really. My sister and I have given her seven grandchildren and while we reuse most of the costumes mom has already made, she can still be found pulling at least one all nighter each fall. This is one of last year’s projects:  I don’t know why I never learned to sew from her. I asked my grandmother to teach me to knit, but I never asked my mother to teach me to sew. Perhaps because by the time I outgrew wearing homemade Halloween costumes, I also wanted nothing to do with any other homemade clothing. Now that I am older and value handmade a smidge more than my materialistic teenage counterpart, I find myself coveting my mother’s skill. This past Christmas she bought me my own machine and for its maiden voyage I lugged it to her kitchen and set up my own sewing cockpit. I also took her with me for my first trip to the fabric store as a chooser rather than a bystander. After spending a ridiculous amount of time picking out fabric, I looked into the faces of my children standing with us in the cutting line and in a flash remembered what it was like to be in their shoes. It was a weird sort of kharma. That weekend at mom’s I completed my first project, a make-up brush holder. Today I made a book cover for a blank journal. So far I have learned two things about sewing: 1. It is not as easy as my mother makes it look. 2. Attractive fabric hides a multitude of sins.  I can’t for the life of me figure out why I can’t make a straight line when I have a machine trying to help me do just that. But as a knitter and a potter, I am well familiar with the hours one has to put in to achieve any kind of competence with a craft. So I am going to just keep plugging away. I have no intention of ever making Halloween costumes for my children. The holiday has a renewed magic for me and I again get to hover, only now with a lot more appreciation, if no more patience. For the record, I still have yet to stay awake to completion. I love this tradition and my children will be wearing my mother's costumes as long as she and they are willing. But one day, I do hope to achieve some level of competence so that if I have a grandson and he tells me he wants to be a duck, I can answer, like my mother, with, “No problem.”   My ladies now look as though they are all captivated in a good book. Peas are officially my (current) favorite thing to grow. I'm even going to try to like eating them. At this point, though, I don't care what they taste like. Not only are they gorgeous, but they're little confidence boosters. See? I can grow something.
A close second (and third) would be potatoes and garlic. Not as exhilarating because they didn't come from seed, but still making a grand splash in an otherwise inauspicious brown garden. The onions are hanging in there in a way that has me feeling guilty. Like, they have a will to live and if I could just figure out what I'm doing wrong they would kick things into gear and thrive. So I tell them I'm working on being a better gardener, but until then, they are just going to have to figure things out on their own. A few have given up completely in disgust, but a large number of them are still considering it. Good luck little alliums, wish I could help. I've decided it is time for the tomatoes to leave the nest. I think the hubs is worried I might be jumping the gun on these needy little things so he has even taken to helping me bring the flats in and out. But if they are going to survive in the ground, I don't want us to be hauling them everywhere superfluously. I will be holding several flats back just in case, though. Basically, I'm just decreasing the number of trips I have to make up and down the steps morning and night. One might say I am sacrificing the seedlings prematurely out of laziness. And I would have no response to that. My herbs all seem to have something against me. Perhaps they've somehow discovered I mean to cook them one day. Aren't herbs the kind of thing you have children grow because they are so easy? Maybe my 5 and 6 year olds will have better luck than I. I'm wondering if everything is moving along so slowly because it still isn't quite warm. The hubs is willing it to be by opening windows and dressing the children in short sleeves, but he can be meteorologically delusional, I've found. Vague notions of chemical reactions needing heat as a catalyst are trying to poke their way into my obstinate brain. The thing is I want it to be warm enough for everything to grow. And if I were a Floridian or a Californian, it would be. Where is the justice in that, America? Recently the guru sent me some gardening quotations by Ellen Sandbeck from Eat More Dirt; perhaps to help me through these rough times of hardening off tomatoes. My favorite is, "Life is a process, not a product. Gardening is also a journey; if it is only enjoyable at its completion, what's the point?" A cold pragmatist might answer, "food". But such a person is not likely to be the life of any gathering. Because if everything we do is explained away by survival instincts, than really, what is the point? Where is the joie de vivre to be found?
Admittedly, I have been known to say that we Homo sapiens tend to elevate ourselves above the rest of the animal kingdom without strong grounds to do so. From our brutal, greedy past to our brutal, greedy present, human beings as a whole can learn a thing or two from less advanced, yet more civilized species. That said I do not want to discount completely our advanced cerebral abilities. Daniel Gilbert in his book, Stumbling on Happiness, says it is our ability to make predictions about the future that elevates our intellectual status above all other animals. That might make us smarter, but does it make us happier? Not really. The theme of his book is that we might be able to make predictions, but regarding our own happiness, we tend not to be very accurate. Making informed guesses about the future doesn't do us any good. It is all about the now. Lap it up, people, this is it. Which isn't to say working toward future goals isn't a source of happiness, of course it is. The point is, reaching that goal is probably going to be a bit anticlimactic. From the day after graduation all the way down to the day after Christmas, most of us have experienced the uncomfortable tinge of, "now what?” Countless self help guides talk about not waiting for something to happen in your life to be happy; be it graduation, marriage, reproducing, getting the kids out of the house, retirement. Putting yourself in a happiness holding pattern is akin to planning to one day enjoy a cake while eating it. For years, I've wanted to be a potter and a writer. You know what you need to do to become these things? You need to throw pottery and write. And that is it. There is no secret handshake to learn or club to join. That really is it. Now to make my living off of either of those things is another story, but to be them, I just have to do them. When I write or throw pottery, my life is no different from any other potter's or writer's. I might not be as good or as recognized, but if that were the only point I'd be living for a goal rather than enjoying the process, wouldn't I? The moment I started planting and tending seeds, I became a gardener. Whether or not a single vegetable is produced from my garden, whether I ever sell a pot or a single person reads my writing, I am these things. More importantly, I get to enjoy the process of doing them. How many people never try something because they're afraid they won't be good at it, or worse, successful? Probably the same people who can't find happiness because they are waiting for the right moment to begin looking. It's here! Right here. Now. Choose to be happy at work, washing dishes, potty training (a baby or a puppy) and you get to be happy. And it's really that simple. Maybe not easy when what you are doing to earn a living is not a process you naturally enjoy doing, but even that seemingly hopeless situation is conquerable. Sometimes it really is impossible for a person to change gears on a dime to make a living at something more in line with what she favors doing. We tried to predict what would make us happy, we were wrong, and now we have to live with the consequences. Some choose to live with them forever, which I will never understand, but living with them long enough to meet obligations and alter course is part of the reality of being a grown up. However, enjoying the process is not about being passively happy because everything you do is pleasurable. Pottery is work. So is gardening, writing, child rearing, marriage, life. It is necessary to find satisfaction and meaning within this effort. To recognize you can smile just as easily while cleaning feces as walking along the beach. It is a decision, not just a reaction. There seems to be a mass delusion that being the best at something or being recognized by our peers is the end all of life. Here I am, writing my little blog, and there are literally thousands of other people out there just like me. Not just writing blogs, but having highly similar thoughts living highly similar lives. Why is it that when we see a hive of bees we see them as an undifferentiated group, yet we despise the thought that we as people can be seen the same way? It is "the Myth of the Fingerprints" as Paul Simon put it. (Daniel Gilbert talked about this in his book as well, I really do recommend the thing!) Differentiating ourselves is not the path to happiness. How many famous people have taken their lives after having achieved just that? Happiness is found in choosing to live like our fellow animals, I think, disregarding our suspiciously auspicious ability to predict outcomes. In our toils, in our community with others, in meeting our hierarchy of needs there is happiness if we choose to recognize it. So enjoy the process, for it is life itself. Kids' parties: oh, what have we done? It was not a proud day when I realized I was part of the problem rather than the solution. When you have a child and become a first-time mom, your brain rewires itself for a while. It's not a subtle change, really, one day you've just become crazy. It might be as early as the day you find out you're pregnant. The day is different for everybody, but it comes, just as surely as a woman planning a wedding one day turns into Bridezilla. (FYI, one of the perks of getting married in Vegas is you cut your Bridezilla time substantially.)
So as a Childzilla I let corporate America sweep me up in the con that it was necessary to spend hundreds of dollars on a party for a 3 year old. And a 4 year old. And a 5 year old. Right about this time my second child was ready for parties with his preschool friends and now I was spending big bucks on two parties a year. And that's when it hit me; when I was shopping yet again for the perfect obligatory favor after already paying for a party and a cake, not to mention presents for my little princess, that celebrating something as beautiful and natural as my child's birth had become a commercial enterprise. And frankly, one I couldn't really afford. When I was a kid, my birthday started with some butter on my nose (I'm sure you have your weird traditions too, try not to judge) and generally ended with a family meal followed by cake and ice cream. That was it. I generally got a present from my mother, each of my aunts and my grandmother. Sometimes all the cousins were over, sometimes not. My birthday is in August, so to my recollection I never had a party with school friends. My daughter's birthday is in July and I was determined for her to have the parties I didn't. Not because I didn't enjoy my birthday, I looked forward to my special day as much as any other holiday, but because I might have missed out on something. So no home parties for my girl; once she was old enough to invite school friends her soirées were outsourced. Let somebody else organize, entertain, and clean up the mess. Bring on the hoopla. And as is the case once your child hits school age, the invitations starting flying. She was invited to dozens of parties, some were home parties, but most weren't. Other parents were spending a mint too. And while the children love these parties (who wouldn't?) they are oblivious to how special these events are because they have become commonplace. And that is the problem. Where is the special? When you have 10 dolls, you might not care about any of them, whereas if you had only one, you're likely to drag it everywhere. Children are so surrounded by stuff that none of it matters. It is just background noise. As you might imagine, once my birthday epiphany arrived, I made the decision to cease all further birthday extravaganzas until I was able to wrap my mind around this thing. I have a couple of friends who give their children the choice: Do you want me to give you the party or presents? You can't have both. Of course they will get both because these parties tend to generate mountains of presents. I want my child to feel celebrated, but I don't think that should translate into an extravagant number of business transactions. This weekend my girl was invited to a party for one of her school friends. She went to a pottery studio and made pinch pots, followed by some good old fashioned playing and treats. Perfect. (Why in the heck didn't I think of that?) The next day we went to a family party where the entertainment consisted of the household's jungle gym, a piñata and mom face painting the kids. Also perfect. My daughter loved both. And I had another epiphany (hence this post). The children aren't there for the background noise of expense. The fun of the party is the people. It is being side by side with their friends, giggling and experiencing each other amongst unique circumstances. Just like all the things Bridezilla worries about for her party, t matter for Childzillas' parties either. Those kids don't care about the favors, no matter how clever they are. They don't really care about the decorations or the music or the games either. The best part of the party is 2 hours with friends. It is a child's version of a dinner party, an occasion I tend to enjoy immensely. So now I am on a mission to be an advocate for simple celebrations. To make amends to any mother who felt obligated to throw their kid an expensive party after attending one of my children's events. This Childzilla has seen the light. While my daughter won't be celebrating her 7th birthday in Vegas (it works for Bridezillas but not for Childzillas), her party also won't cost me what I'm likely to lose when I go there. It is one thing for fellow moms to really enjoy throwing lavish parties for their precious monkeys as I once did, and I will continue to send my children as guests to those parties cheerfully. But to those moms out there like myself who have spent enough already, if you want to invite my kids to a backyard potluck, I'll bring the taco dip. Children are a lot of freaking work. If pre-parents could accurately forecast just how much work children are, I bet there would not be an over-population problem anywhere. Thankfully, as they get older, if you are doing your job right, children get more and more self sufficient (until they are teenagers, from what I keep hearing.) I've come to realize I am banking on this whole gardening business working out the same way.
Two days ago I started hardening off my tomatoes. I thought that an odd term until I realized what was hardening was my quadriceps from lugging 7 flats of tomato seedlings up and down my basement steps twice a day. I mean seriously. I am gradually exposing tiny little plants to life outside? Pray tell, how in the heck have tomatoes survived this long? Then there's the celery. An Eighteen inch trench is their habitat of choice. I guess their seeds really have to get lucky if there isn't a human sap around to dig. The difference between my children and my garden is my children started to give back almost immediately; with their little gazes, holding your finger with their little hands, eventually smiling. Seedlings? Nothing. All those vegetables depend on my ability to predict being hungry in 3 months. Not only that, but hungry enough to eat vegetables, which, often I am not. This is probably why there are a lot more children than there are gardens. Okay that and although acquiring seeds was extremely pleasurable, it wasn't quite as satisfying as, well, you get my meaning. "Start small", they said. "It's a lot of work", they said. Did I listen? Obviously not. But nurturing babies of any species requires effort. Those of you without children or gardens but who have tried to potty train a puppy are with me. Those of you who have never reared anything, smart thinking. That said, there is an intangible remuneration that comes from caring for something. Plus, there's enjoying the process. While squatting in the sun digging in dirt doesn't sound alluring, it is. So is making the rounds assessing progress and keeping a watchful eye out for disease and pests. Weeding is almost agreeable in that you are protecting your charges with a vengeance. It's kind of an angry gratification. In my mind I tend to chant, "I've chosen that species NOT YOU!" It's a hard world out there, what can I say? So I was being a bit harsh when I said my garden is giving nothing back. It hasn't given me any of the promised fruit yet, but it has provided a rewarding sense of accomplishment in how I spend my time, much the same way my children do. Unlike my children, however, the seedlings don't talk back. The tomato plants weren't as resilient to neglect as I afore thought. Many have lost their will to live. Or perished from dehydration. Whichever. The point is, it was a blow. Luckily, my human charges have survived. I haven't checked their vital signs, but they appear to be in good shape.
Of course, I consulted the guru about the tomatoes and she reinforced her previous advice that all is not lost. I could kill off all of these tomatoes, start over completely and still have more than she is likely to grow in her stingy climate zone. I took that as encouragement to put more things outside. As a person who enjoys gambling small stakes, such as a few $3.25 seed packets, I figured it was worth a shot to see if Mother Nature has better luck at keeping these needy little seedlings upright than I have had. So far she has nurtured a gorgeous set of peas. Those girls have plumaged themselves some spiky vinelets to go with their ruffle of leaves. They now look as though they are ready for a tea party. Encouraged by my little ladies I planted bush beans, cucumbers, carrots, spinach, beets as well as more peas and sunflowers today. I also had the kids out there planting in their raised beds. My daughter was very methodical with the whole thing and carefully sowed her choices: the dreaded zea mays for popcorn, pumpkins and cucumbers. She left a row open not for future decision making, she knows she wants watermelons in her last row, but so that the fun of planting isn't finished for her. She preferred to save up a little for later. Daniel Goleman would be proud. All of her varieties need a lot of space so it should be interesting to see how they manage to contain themselves in a 4' x 4' plot. My prediction is much like my children, they won't. My son put the popcorn in and had enough. The call of the dirt pile was just too alluring. As for the littlest guy, he went from square to square wielding a toy trowel and making all of us nervous for our plots. In addition to all of those seeds, I plopped a lot of seedlings in too. It's early and I did nothing to harden them off, but they have a better chance outside than with me even with those odds against them, sad to say. So now there is a little herb patch and marigolds everywhere. Project buckshot is under way. Fire at will! Fire at will! After spending the day outside tidying up my gardening tasks, I headed in and began chipping away at the rest of my life that got backed up. Stacks of mail and backpack papers had to be processed. Bills, field trip permission slips, order forms, receipts, paystubs, art work, quarterly investment statements and the like all had to find their way somewhere other than my kitchen island. Under there I also found new Netflixes and past due library books. (It would be nice if the latter took some tips from the former about return policies.) And I finally unloaded my totes full of pots out of the back of my SUV. Much as the idea of always having stock at my fingertips is appealing, as in: "Ooh, Heather, I'd love to see your work." "Well, you're in luck, let me just run out to my car." My children were not fairing well lined up in one row. Not only did I have to do all of their seatbelts for them, but the touching distance proximity was just too irresistible for their little hands. That just never ends well. Now that I am all caught up and life has again been weeded and tamed, I was tempted to start in on new to do lists f the next projects down the pike. But the guru gave me another piece of advice which was to write a "To Done" list wherein you can concentrate on all of the things you have accomplished rather than all you still have to do. And so I have.  Well, I have my first show under my belt and I must say it felt good. I received a lot of great feedback which is fantastic. I left with my ego very much in tact, even perhaps a bit distended. To those of you who purchased pots and have now found your way to this blog, again I thank you, much obliged. To the rest of you, well, let's just say there's more where that came from.
Now comes the fun part of unloading all those bins and organizing the flotsam. The hubs was right about the event being a learning experience. I have all kinds of little notes about what I would do differently next time. Better labeling comes to mind. One customer asked if I had more little blue bowls and life would have been much easier if I didn't then have to proceed to unwrap anything that was a bowl shape in my overflow bin. Also, silverpixels suggested I have things in sets and, well, that was good advice. I tried to group things by color, but that still wasn't quite it. I love that nothing in my cabinets match but I might be in the minority of people who feel that way. I think when most people contemplate a collection of dishes that aren't part of a set they think 'college apartment' rather than 'eclectic fun'. I do drink out of Smurf glasses, but I assure you it is by choice not by necessity. Next up is to get a few things under 'Buy some pots' and there is also a charity event to prepare for called the Souper Bowl to which I donate several bowls every year. However these things will have to wait as tonight I need to switch hats and prepare for an evening of nursing. Although, you wouldn't catch me dead in a nurse's cap. But if you do, I implore you, please take it off! It's been a whirlwind adventure, but I seem to be on the home stretch. My final bisque firing is under way. I will glaze the pots tomorrow and fire away for the last time. Then it is all up to the magic of chemistry and physics. My stock for the craft show on Sunday will consist of mugs, bowls, vases and a few platters. Not really the variety I had envisioned from the cozy and delusional beginning when I signed up for this gig, but my table will have wares. Archeologists may one day dig up shards from these very pots thousands of years from now. Be sure to get your piece of history.
The hubs, aka Mr. Supportive, has helped me to reframe my vision for the show. Rather than a pure sales event, he considers it 'market research'. When you put it that way, how can I do anything but succeed? If nary a pot sells, I will know exactly what people don't want to buy. It is like an Econ class, only a lot less boring, considerably more work, and with a smidge higher probability to be ego damaging. Determined to have fun, regardless the outcome, I made magnets today. I used the same little glass I used to use to make biscuits. (Now I cut them into squares per the best biscuit recipe I've ever tried. It is a Fannie Farmer winner. The guy who posted it got most of it right, although he has you brushing butter on the biscuits rather than dipping them in the butter as the cookbook suggests. Hello? Why would anyone choose to use less butter?) Back to the magnets: simple circles with Heather Shuker Pottery scrawled on them. The plan is to glaze them a variety of colors and hot glue a magnet on the back. Now I challenge you to find a piece of artsy craftsy homemade marketing merchandise that is more fun to make. I sat on my deck in the sunshine listening to the dribbling creek out back rolling out clay and making biscuit magnets. Heaven. If my wheel was a touch lighter I would drag that into the sun on these beautiful days too. Or, more likely, have the hubs do it for me. But Mr. Supportive has his limits. As for my garden, it seems it has decided rather than patiently waiting for me to give it more attention, to fend for itself; much like everyone else in my household lately. The potatoes have sprouted leaves, as have the sunflowers and snow peas. The latter of which are my new favorite baby sprouts. Those peas grow their leaves with a stylish pizzazz. I half expect them to throw on heels and go dancing. My peppers are up inside. I've run out of room in the area the hubs created for the seedlings so I've had to move them into my pottery space. Now every time I go to wedge clay I have to shuffle around seed trays. Some may see the shear quantity of seedlings growing in my basement as ridiculous, however I find the abundance comforting. That said we'll see how I feel when I have a peck of peppers to dispose of. By the way, how could Peter Piper have picked pickled peppers? Isn't that a process that occurs after you pick them? No wonder children don't know where food comes from. If the Lord of the Flies scenario happened to today's youth they'd starve to death looking for a chicken nugget tree. |
I like to throw things.
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