It started with a crash in the night...

Yes, a huge crash. At about 2 am! My laundry "area" shelves came crashing down... all of them. We have no "laundry room" and no garage, carport or anything that might suffice for any type of storage so these shelves literally contain the weight of our world on them. Needless to say, the next morning instead of starting my seeds we spent the day picking our world back up again. In a way, it was good that this happened since that very night my husband was due to leave on the ship at 7 pm. In military life, we have what is called "a Jody". Some of you may have heard of him, he is the guy who "takes care of" your wife/girlfriend while you are deployed. As crass as that is, it is the unfortunate truth for many servicemembers. Now, I don't have that kind of Jody nor will I. My Jody is the kind who stops by to leave a path of destruction whenever my hubby deploys. You name it, it has happened. Exploded water heater, broken heat pump, broken pipes, unexplained electrical burning smells, sliding glass door shattered, ceiling cave in from a leak, even a fence that blew away in a hurricane! We own a duplex, and live in one side and rent the other out....so you can take all that and multiply is by 2!! So I actually do consider myself lucky that Jody stopped by a day early so my hubby had time to fix my laundry shelves before he left. I have tried numerous times to break it off with Jody, but he won't hear of it. Deployment is coming soon, so I know he'll be back.

There is is, all fixed up again!

Daddy giving hugs as we dropped him off at the USS Truman

How have I lived 39 years and not known the joys of quiche? My kids love eggs so I can pretty much put anything in there and they will most likely taste it. Here's my first quiche, and it qualifies as a garden dinner since I used frozen peppers, little grape tomatoes I had frozen, and fresh chopped leeks. Yum! Now I know what I can do with all those eggs once we get chickens, my kids would eat eggs every day if they had their way. I hear these freeze well, anyone have advice on that? I would love to make these ahead of time for homemade convenience food in the freezer.

So anyways, being the OCD person that I am, the laundry shelving incident lit a fire under me to start reorganizing the house and throwing stuff away. I am definitely not a hoarder, but there are always things taking up space that need to be tossed. Hmmm, for example, the 5 black floor length evening dresses in a size 3 from a prior life that are still hanging in my closet? Yeah, them's not 'gonna fit and nowhere to wear them, LOL. Time to face facts, I am a mommy and chase 2 boys around in my standard uniform of yoga pants and a t-shirt everyday, and they are definitely not a size 3... so out they go! I started my early Spring cleaning by completely emptying out all my cupboards and in an OCD fashion started wiping everything down and putting stuff back in. This took me a whole day and a morning... for what? It looks exactly the same as before. I am not a magician, not sure what I thought I was to gain from this, but at least it's one less thing swimming around my head.

Now here's where things get even crazier...

Yes, that's a gazillion pots I washed by hand. I had all my stuff in the shed since last spring so I felt the need to get all the dirt out before I start filling them with dirt again????? Someone please tell me A&E is going to do a show for the opposite of hoarders, and then please sign me up!

As nutso as the gazillion pots look, they all condense down into this neat little stack!

A makeshift clothesline to dry my trays. I think the neighbors were watching this one.

Which brings us to the seed starting! Finally, tomorrow it's going down. I am starting them in the kitchen this time on top of a large cabinet my husband built. It was actually a stand for our 100 gal aquarium, but I got rid of that and now it is our storage area for homebrewing supplies, bottles and keg stuff. This is in keeping with my belief that every item in my house must serve at least 2 purposes in order to be able to stay! There was already a shelf above that worked perfectly for hanging my lights from. So all is ready. I have made my list of seeds to start tomorrow, mostly herbs for now, and will start the messy task tomorrow morning. I just realized that hubby has been gone for several days now and time is flying by since I have been keeping so busy. This time is a breeze, only a couple of weeks, and I hope that the summer garden craziness will make the long upcoming deployment fly by.

By the way, unless you live in New Orleans, you need to show your loyalty to me by rooting for the Vikings tomorrow. Go Vikes!! :) :)

The Flip Side!

And for another take on the same subject.... feast your eyes on this!

What aspiring gardener, or architect for that matter, wouldn't want to be involved in this?! Read more here.

Honestly, I am in a good mood today! But...

This morning I had the displeasure of reading this article. Make sure you click on the link within the article to read the original story.

Normally, when I find something interesting in the news that relates to the garden, I will pass it along without any commentary, but it is also rare that any garden-related news event even requires it! This had me spittin' mad - as a gardener, parent, student, and teacher to my children.

You all can form your own opinions, but since this is my blog, here's mine:

1. The idea that a school garden fosters a propensity for manual labor and repression.

WHAT? If you ask me our children need a good dose of manual labor, sunshine, fresh air, and sweat. Maybe the diagnosis of ADHD would go down... As for the repression, don't get me started on that crap - last time I checked, there was no danger of our citizens inadvertently being sent back to sharecropping and slavery days because they learned to garden.

2. The concern that immigrants would feel their children are sacrificing an education to go back to manual labor involving lettuce picking and such.

Puh-lease.... and as far as opportunity goes, with CA being a state that has 50% of its students listed as immigrant with this supposed horrible child-knowledge of agriculture, how about letting them serve as teachers, coaches, and peers for our urban children that won't even eat veggies, much less cultivate them? There is a possibility to turn this complaint upside down and even have these immigrant children she is so concerned about not only become productive citizens, but assume leadership and mentor roles. I mean, it's a CLASS, not a whole day spent out in tobacco fields!

3. Our children are sacrificing the more important classes such as math, science, etc to go learn manual labor.

HUH? This one goes right back to parents. When exactly was it that parents stopped valuing manual labor and an honest day's work? Not everyone can be the engineer in the air conditioned office, and those that build our houses, farm our food, pave our roadways and sweat it out in a foreign country to defend us should not feel that their work is any less valued. They make our world go 'round. As far as gardening being a ridiculous class, maybe it wouldn't even have to be taught if parents valued food production and taught their children simple skills from a young age. I know that growing up I knew where my food came from, how to harvest it, even watched my mom freeze and can the garden for winter. For all the children and the parents out there that think those French Fries are a real vegetable, THIS CLASS IS FOR YOU!

Come to think of it, I am not a moron. I went to college, by most standards I succeeded at life and am happy, but guess what? I garden. I sweat. I work in the hot sun. I stay up way too late burning myself with canning tongs when I could be shopping at W@lm@rt for my veggies in a can. Why? Because I know how! And thank you, Mom, Dad, Grandma, miscellaneous farmers in my community, their children... it's because of you that I didn't have to have "gardening" taught in school! But what about those who don't have anyone to teach them? It seems to be the majority of the population...who will teach them?

I think some people just need to wake up and not be so damn stupid. Why can't students nowdays fit this class in? Is this really an issue? Schools have killed gym class, driver's ed, Home Ec (yeah, remember that one? more life skills that are apparently repressive, HA!)... are our children really so dumb that they can't be expected to learn more than a math and science class? Or is it that expectations of the new generation of children have taken a nosedive? We feel we have to allow for videogame time, TV time, "downtime"..........REALLY???!!!!

Okay, I'm done. I am up to my arms in manual labor washing out my seedling pots and trays and I really wasn't going to blog until this evening, but nooooo, I just had to read an article I saw. I feel so repressed...

End rant.