Idiomatic

I’m still behind the eight ball, busy as a bee and have too much on my plate. I’m snowed under, swamped and have too many irons in the fire!

I’m also at a loss for (good) words (or maybe I’ve used them all up at work)!

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Gardening For Pretty

My mom came over to the house on Saturday (the rest of the family, too).

We ate ribs and cake and salad, drank wine and talked and talked and talked. We celebrated my step-sister’s birthday, my nephew’s birthday, my birthday and an early Father’s Day. It was fun.

And as I was showing everyone around the garden, I realized that this year I’m gardening for pretty.

The Agony & The Ecstacy

It’s that time of year again. Gardening time.

I’ve got all sorts of things coming up in the garden which means, during the week, I’m glued to wunderground.  Did it frost last night?  Will it frost tomorrow?  Why has it only rained a tenth of an inch this week?  Gardening from afar is stressful (I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of this PlantCam, at least it would help me feel like a little less of an absentee gardener).

We have a few big projects going on this year.  Two weekends ago I dug-out the compost pile. I think it dates back to both of the two previous owners of our house.  I found lots of unusual things in there: the film of green grass that keeps sushi separate from wasabi, pencils (yes, plural), chicken bones and a ceramic snail.  I sifted it once on a wide grid.  The pile is, no lie, the size of a Smart Fourtwo, and now I’m working on sifting it again through a finer sieve.  This is hard work, but it is good work, and once we’re done with projects two and three, all that shaking will have really paid off.

Project two is creating what we’re calling the Plumpkin Patch on one of the lumps our land is dotted with.  We covered the area with a tarp over the winter which not only killed the grass but also served as a nice warm spot for our mice to escape the snow.  We’re hoping that by giving the squash some room to run wild that we’ll actually get some squash this year (winter squash I mean, there was no shortage of summer squash last year!).

Yellow

It has never quite hit me how pervasive yellow is in Spring.

But it’s everywhere.  Daffodils. Crocuses. Forsythia. Violas. Birds. Boxes. Ties. Hairpieces.

Finding Time

Where.  It’s a word I find myself using to preface many sentences lately.

Where has the time gone?  Where have I been?  Where am I going to find the time to … run? shop for shoes? get my hair done?  book a hotel?  weed? get a manicure? blog? start tomato seeds? go for a hike? take another meeting?  Where has my mind gone?

Fortunately, one of those questions has an easy answer: We were in Bermuda, just last weekend.  It was glorious.  Beautiful, warm sunshine, rippling water, pink beaches and everyone wishing everyone else a good day.  I love Bermuda.

One of my favorite things about the place is how easy it is to tell the locals from the tourists.  The locals are anyone still wearing a puffer jacket and a winter hat in 70º weather, the exact opposite of upstate New York, where in the winter any day without snow on the ground is an opportunity for shorts and flip flops.  Oh, and another thing I love about Bermuda?  English candy.  Especially right before Easter when Cadbury Mini Eggs profusely populate the shelves.

A less easy question to answer is: Where will the wedding madness end?  We’ve crossed the point where it’s under a month until the big day.  Things are coming together: Isaac’s family have booked hotels and flights, I found a dress, Isaac found a suit, dinner is set, the cake is ordered and we’ve settled on a photographer (what a tough choice, I would really like to be my own photographer, but I’m told that would be less than ideal), but it still feels endless.  People keep telling me “It’s your big day!” and yet everyone has an opinion about how the day should be.  I can’t wait until it’s over!