HeronDragonWrites: Dancing for Joy, Weeping in Horror

The new shed door

The shed is done! The shed is done and the workbench and shelves are in place, and I’ve moved what’s left of the garden stuff I’m not leaving in the under-stairs shed into the new shed, and the hose holders and pegs for the potato bags and weed bags are hung, and I’ve started to re-store the bamboo posts that mark vegetable rows when I’m planting seeds in the spring. And the plastic cloches are stored, up high, where nothing will fall on them and smash them, and I tossed out the ones that had been fallen on and smashed when they were in the old shed. And I haven’t hit my head once!

Yes, I’ve done several dances of joy.

Unknown visitor

A toad seems to have moved in, and chipmunks go in and out at will – the shed isn’t that tight, which is fine because it’s not a place to start (or store) seeds in. But it is a place to store out of season garden tools and tomato cages and weed bags and potato bags and other summer garden things, and where I can fill plant pots and get any leftover big bags of MooDoo and Mainely Mulch and potting soil out of the garden in the fall, and entertain Rasta who’s supervising where I put stuff. I LOOOVE having a real garden shed and I’ll love it even more next spring when I’ll be able to get out what I need without having to remove everything to get the one thing that’s way in the back, and then put it all back again, ‘til I need the next thing.

Supervising the shed

The garden is in some ways already out of control. I’ve had to walk down the paths and remove huge masses of daisies and California poppies and strawberries, as well as Indian paintbrushes, cinquefoil and some massive mulleins, wood sorrel, dandelions, violets and dill , and a whole lot of I’don’t-know-what-they-are other wild flowers that have taken up residence in every crack between the garden pavers and are gorgeous and blocking my ability to move around the garden. I leave the milkweed when I can – not only is it edible and quite tasty at different stages of growth, but the flowers smell incredibly sweet, and they’re food for Monarch butterflies.

The asparagus went to fern and is now 6 feet tall and humming with bees, which love the flowers. And also blocking my progress; I have to admit I trim it a bit. Carefully. There’s tickweed and bladder campion that have pretty flowers, so I let them do their thing and try to cut them down or pull them out before they send seeds everywhere. Every year there’s new wild flowers that show up from somewhere – all the mass of daisies planted themselves, for example – and sometimes I let them stay, and other times I don’t. After all, some people pay lots of money to buy daisies and goldenrod and Black-Eyed Sues to plant in their perennial gardens – I don’t have to. But the wildings do tend to get out of control easily and don’t ask me, first, where it’s ok to plant themselves. And some are incredibly beautiful and I have no idea what they are.

Early zucchini

This summer is going to be a bit of a pisser, because the Husband has just had surgery for a detached retina, so he can’t do anything – literally – for awhile, and none of the things all summer that he usually does around the house, and won’t be able to do for months. So while he’s lying face down for weeks on end and has only limited activity allowed (“Be a sloth,” his doc told him), I’m trying to find time to do the stuff he usually does, plus my own stuff. The “lawn” isn’t going to get mowed: it’s mostly thyme, anyway, and it is a field, and I’m not going to be able to get to that; good thing he’d just mowed it before his eye fell apart. With luck, friends will help cut up the winter firewood and stack it. Friends are driving him to Boston for his surgery and eye appointments; and he’s not going to be able to do most of the actual money-earning work he usually does, ‘til fall. He can’t help in the garden, and even his around-the-house stuff has to be restricted. I’ve been making a lot of bread to go into the freezer, a job he usually does weekly; and the weekly dump run is now mine, as is the milk run, and for the stuff he can’t do (like crack open jars and bottles that my arthritic hands can no longer do, move heavy things I can’t lift, etc) I have to make sad puppy-eyes at manly male friends and ask them to do. It’s a pain – for the Husband, literally – but at least it’s not winter with wood to haul and snow to shovel.

What hangs outside the shed

And speaking of pissers - Good God, what’s happening in our country? Guns out of control, women’s rights and lives destroyed, racist shootings and beatings, climate change still being denied, a Supreme Court that’s demeaned itself beyond belief and a Congress that’s effectually ineffectual --- it goes on. Infuriating stuff, stuff to mourn every week, if not every day. I can’t say how furious it all makes me; when I try, I find myself spitting and incomprehensible. If I was younger I’d be out of here. Not sure what country I’d move to, but this one is embarrassing and rapidly sliding down a slope to nastiness and evil intent being too often the norm, and unremarkable it’s so commonplace. Scary and horrible. And hurrah for the Jewish congregation that’s suing the Court for illegally refusing them their Constitutional right to practice their religion!

And Covid? Lots of people are still getting it, and they’re always surprised when they do. Wear your masks, people, the pandemic isn’t over, and sanitize your hands when you touch things other people are spreading virus upon. Or don’t, and let’s see how sick you get, and how many other people you can infect, and of those, how many get very sick or die, or get long Covid, or any of the other bad things that can happen to people who catch Covid, or happen because people who catch Covid can’t work, or do their volunteer work, and so on. The numbers of people infected with Covid are higher than they were at this time last year, and they’re higher than they appear to be, because the home tests don’t get reported – the numbers we’re given are just the hospital and PCR test numbers. All the maskless people out there have proven we can’t be trusted to do the right thing by our neighbors – so protect yourself until consciousness shifts and we all become kind.

HA! Don’t hold your breath while we’re waiting…