MoanDay: We Shall Fight Them in the Gardens!

Once again, it's been ages since I updated. It's because I've got this new boyfriend who's been taking up all my free time. His name's Hammer, and...

Well, okay, he's not so much named 'Hammer', as he is a hammer. And he's not so much a 'he', as he is an 'it'. But we've been having so much qualitay time that I think I could be forgiven for a touch of anthropomorphism here.

My annual unfeasible garden makeover is in red-hot medias res, and it consists of me building from scratch and installing new raised beds all around the edge of my tiny yardage. Why? Because I love the pain. Love it. Cannot get enough. Why do you think I own a chihuahua/Jack Russell mix?

Um, but it's also because nothing will grow in our actual soil, y'know the stuff that came with the house. In fairness, 'soil' is probably too generous a term. Mrs. Kincaid's second-grade class could have one hell of an awesome arts-and-crafts hour with the stuff because it is neither more nor less than 100%, solid, elementary-school-grade, suitable-for-building-coil-pots CLAY.

Also, it is a ruthless killer that makes Charlie Manson seem like a laid-back kinda guy that you wouldn't mind having as a sitter for your goldfish while you're in Newark for that management-strategies seminar.

I wouldn't begin to try to list all the living things the CLAY has taken in the nearly-three years we've been here, but as a mere taste let me tell you that we have carefully, lovingly sown grass seed at least six times in those years and then, when that inevitably failed, spent a ton of money and back-pain putting in sod.

Is there any grass out there now, as I'm typing this? I dunno. Do monstrous hell-weeds with roots that reach to Sidney count as grass?

Then there's the honeysuckle. *crosses self* Oh fragrant vine, we hardly knew ye.

The poor little poppies never even stood a chance. 'Cometh up as a flower' is right.

My theory is that raised beds can save my future seedlings because they will be filled with superior, store-bought dirt (it hurts my soul so badly that I'm going to the store and paying for dirt. Next thing you know, people will be charging money for freakin' water.)

And thus, I've been making these raised beds, which my friend the Internet alleges are SO simple that even a child could put one together.

Speaking of which, yesterday, I'm out there sawing and hammering my little heart out when I look up to see six of my neighbour's grandchildren lined up along the low fence that separates our yards just staring at me working. Village of the Damned much, kids?

This is another reason that I need raised beds. I must have the ability to grow some tall flowers or shrubs or really anything would do -- maybe I could grow a big brick wall. Do they have seeds for those?

It's just too creepy to know that you can be out there in the backyard minding your own business, maybe reading some Nabokov or perhaps Anais Nin, drinkin' ye hooch, sunbathin' in defiance of all Surgeon Generals everywhere, thinkin' your grown-up thoughts about sex, violence, tobacco or one of the other major taboos, and then suddenly you look up to meet twelve identical blue eyes, all of them roughly three feet off the ground, all of them disapproving, all of them boring into the depths of your sin-smeared adult soul and going 'Ick!'.

This does not promote relaxation, at least not as I would define the experience.

And so I fight on, although it's beginning to feel like the Big Push will never end. I was so adorably sure that I'd be able to finish off the project this weekend (was I ever really that young and innocent? *sighs*). But no.

Now this piece of lumber is splitting along the grain, now that one hasn't been measured exactly-exactly-EXACTLY to the 1/16 of a cm and consequently this whole bed won't go together, now the man of the house has to go off to the pub for four hours just when I need him to hold this one thing for me while I hammer it into place...You get the idea.

But I shall battle on, unwearied, for the plants and for the kids.* Because that's the kind of garden warrior I am.


*Okay, it's not so much 'for' the kids, as it is 'to get away from the kids', but it is about the kids, so isn't that the same thing in the end? The same spirit? No? Yeah, I guess you're right, it isn't. *hangs head* Behold: I am a TARRYBUL person.