Dear Garden,

I missed you last night. Are you doing okay? SE said that he gave you some loving care and attention, but I wished I had been there to tuck you in and say good night. Will you be okay until I can come again?

Love,

Optimist

Flooding

I just want to give a shout out to my dear friends along Little Cottonwood Creek in Murray. We used to own a condo that bordered the creek, and we still have dear friends that live along there. Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this stressful time. I'm also willing to send SE over to sandbag. In fact, he was doing that for a while last night at the elementary school.

This blog is supposed to be about me being positive despite life's adversities, but I honestly can't think of anything positive to say about this. Let me work on this for a second...


Okay--here's something I could say--SE needed the exercise, and he's always up that time of night anyway.

I hear the creek has crested, but I've also heard there's a chance that it will rise again today, due to hot temperatures. UGH!

Go BIG or go home!

Our family participates in a community garden of sorts--the community being my brother's in-laws, who have graciously invited us to participate even though we are not "blue bloods." (I think it's because they get more help with the weeding.) You can read about my brother's experiences here. We get together every Monday night during the gardening season and work a patch of ground that I understand is about 1/3 of an acre, more or less. Of course, when I'm weeding, it feels like it is definitely more than an acre, but I'll save my gripes about weeding for a later post. My crew and I are responsible for 6 rows that contain asparagus, peppers, beans, cabbage, broccoli and corn. I let SIT1 and SIT2 help plant the beans, and they loved every minute of it. However, they got a little crazy with the seed planting machine and I'm not exactly sure where those bean plants might be popping up.

Back on the home front, I've planted chives, basil and parsley, and I'm getting ready to plant another couple tomato plants and a few more herbs. I think I will buy a couple of packages of geraniums just to add color, and then my flower beds should be full to overflowing. My house is currently for sale, so there is a chance that I won't get to harvest any of the goods I'm working so hard to grow, but we haven't had ANY interest for almost four weeks, so I'm not too worried about it. I always have the community garden, which almost always produces more than we all can use.

I love having the opportunity to garden, both at home at with my brother's inlaws. There's something about being one with the dirt and being able to make something grow!

SERIOUSLY?!?

It says May 24 on the calendar, but...

And wouldn't you know, I finally got brave and planted my little helpless herb starts, thinking that by the end of May, we would be done with snow. I covered them this morning before I left from work, but I worry about them like they were children! (Are they warm enough? Should I unplant them and bring them back in?) I know that I have back up because my brother goes way overboard on his seedlings, but I still have put a lot of time into these little guys, and I want to prove that the "can-even-kill-a-silk-plant" curse does not live on in me.

STOP SNOWING ALREADY!!

Busted!

Last night, we were paid a visit around 9:00 p.m. from a dog who had apparently escaped his owner. His only tag had a vet's phone number on it, which of course, didn't get us anywhere because it was after hours. I debated about what to do, but then I thought,"What would I want someone to do if they found my dog?" I took the dog for a walk in the nearby park, thinking he must have escaped his owners over there, but no one seemed to be looking for a dog. I left him fenced in our backyard, but he kept barking and I was worried the neighbors would complain. We ended up bringing him in the house. However, our dog wasn't much into having a bunk mate, and pretty much treated our guest like an interloper and it seemed like a good idea to keep him separated. SE ended up sleeping in the boys' room with the interloper, and I slept in our bedroom with our dog. I use the word "sleep" here rather loosely, because between the two of them making noises, I don't think any of us, including the dogs, got much sleep.

SE called the vet this morning, got the owner's number, and called. Ironically, it turns out out the interloper belongs to a neighbor that lives less than a block away. He was a cutie, and obviously had a family, so I'm not sorry we did it, but I would like to tell this neighbor that I would like my sleep back and I would also like him to repaint the bedroom where the interloper scratched the door. Sigh.

Message from the Rooftop

I read on the internet yesterday about how a waitress complained on her Facebook page about diners who sat at one of her tables for three hours and only tipped $5. Her supervisor got wind of the post and fired her.


If my supervisor is reading this, then this is what I have to say: I love love LOVE my job, and I think our clients are marvelous. I can hardly wait to come in to work each day and deal with you and them. I think filing is loads of fun, and making copies/scanning is so exhilarating, I wish I could do it more often.

Is that sufficient to allow me to keep my job, or should I keep going on?

Chance at Repentance

In our family, SE (my husband the Survival Expert), drives a 1996 Toyota Corolla and I drive a 2002 Toyota Camry. We had always planned on him driving his car into the ground and replacing it, and mine would just go, go, go. It's a Toyota, right?

Then the engine light went on in my car....

What?!? Why my car? Why not SE's car? I was hoping it was just as sensor or something, so I took it to the equivalent of the Instacare for cars, only to find out....

MAJOR SURGERY! Pick me up off the floor...I was trying mostly not to cry and talk hypersonically, so I just nodded and listened while the poor mechanic crashed my world around my ears. Not only was it broken, but it was broken because I had neglected my car and failed to keep up on routine maintenance. I thought I was saving money, but hearing about this major repair did NOT feel like I was saving a single dime. We did our best, but it was just too much for us to handle, so we traded it in on a new-to-us car, a Toyota Highlander.

I swear I have repented, and this one, which I named Lassie, will go the distance!