Spring fussing

We're keeping busy with garden prep work here. The garden still has a bit of snow and lots of winter detritus, so we're doing our gardening indoors.

I've built a big ugly shelving unit in the dining room for starting seeds. It's covered with quarter-inch hardware cloth to keep the mice out, and is made from pallet wood and scraps, so it is no thing of beauty. We call it the cage, or the monstrosity. It holds 12 flats, and could hold four more if I added a shelf and more lights.

The fixtures are ordinary (cheap!) 4-foot fluorescent shop lights, converted to LEDs (I just ripped out the ballasts and did a little simple rewiring). The bulbs should last and stay bright for years and years, which is good since they are $10 each. I bought four bulbs last year and eight this year from these guys. The bulbs are wonderful, with plastic and metal covers instead of glass. (I'm not a fan of plastic, generally, but if you've ever had a glass fluorescent tube break and scatter thin shards everywhere, you'll appreciate these, too. Be sure to buy 5000K frosted bulbs if you plan to start seeds under them. The fixtures came from yard sales – and I bummed a few from DD Emma. They can be beat up and non-working, as long as the wires and "tombstone" bulb-holders are in decent shape.)

Tiny tomato plants

The yellow hose at left is for watering. It hooks up to the kitchen tap.

So we're puttering. The wood stove is still going, since it's chilly, if not downright cold.

Em is on a five-day road trip, so we're watching her three dogs. I did try to talk her into taking the dogs along, and leaving 2-year-old Liam with us, but noooooooo.

It isn't great fun since Lola, the black shepherd, is well-behaved but can't be trusted with chickens and Arnold, the Basenji/kangaroo, has a hideous bark/howl/chirp that he uses way too much, may run off, and will lift his leg in the house. Bono, the scratchy little Shih Tzu mix, is good as gold but will pine for his person. So Arnie is staying outside with Earl, and we try to be extra attentive with Bono.

I am trying to love Arnold, but it is a hard road.

We went to town yesterday to dig up more of our cottage garden at the Ancestral Home. Our grown boy, who is in the process of buying the place (fingers crossed!), is not a gardener and plans to replace the roses, shrubs and perennials – with lawn.

I know. I know. We tried to raise him right. I blame society. And maybe the public schools.

On the positive side, he is a kind and considerate person, adores his little family and is good to his ancient parents.

So we dug plants, and marveled at our 18-month-old granddaughter who rampaged through the house and climbed onto the coffee table to dance. This made me so tired I had to go home and lie down.

C. is working on putting the rescued plants into the ground. I'm still traumatized at the thought of keeping up with that terrifying and very cute toddler. Sheesh.

It's here!

The weather has been beautiful – 56 degrees yesterday – and the snow is on the run. It's spring!

I parked myself in front of the south wall with a cup of tea and just basked in the glory that is the sun. Beautiful.

Then I rushed over and cut up a bunch of old fenceposts into firewood with the reciprocating saw, and hauled 100 pounds of chicken food to the chicken house, and a big bag of oats and one of potting soil into the house. And swept the porch (but not very well, because, despite the giddy excitement of the season, I'm still a slob).

Spring is good. I feel like doing something! which is quite a relief. I thought I might just sit in the recliner and brood forever. And watch bad television. And glower out the window at the damn snow.

Spring is here! I've just ordered a bunch of drip irrigation gear because, this year, we are going to have an irrigation system in the garden. Jump back – it's a giddy woman with a credit card!

Life is good.

Advice

As an older person, I am often tempted to give young folks advice, so that they may benefit from my many years of experience (mistakes, I mean). Even though I know that people can't learn from others' mistakes, and have to go out and make their own versions. I know this because I was never able to learn from my parents' advice (which explains a lot about some early boyfriends).

It's sad. That's why human civilization is stalled, struggling with the same issues, generation after generation. Sigh.

But if I were to give advice, it would go like this:

Never buy a horse named Nipper.

Never pick the puppy called Crybaby.

Don't take the cat named Shit Cat.

There.

What advice do you have to offer the world?

Down, inner gardener!

Just as I was coming back to life with all kinds of projects and garden plans, an arctic system has dumped a foot of snow and sent temperatures plummeting.

So it's back to winter mode, stoking the fire and reading and NOT thinking about spring. That's right, I'm NOT thinking about spring. Furiously. Take that, winter.

I made the rounds, feeding and watering everybody, and hauled a wagon of wood in. That's it for work today.

I signed up for a free trial of Hulu TV, lured by the promise of D.I.Y. shows. We don't have enough wifi bandwidth, though. I'm frustrated by the pauses in every show (though the commercials seem to play perfectly) and by what passes for entertainment these days. It's really gone downhill. I used to watch HGTV, and enjoyed visiting artists' funky houses, and watching D.I.Y. shows that explained how to do all kinds of home projects – laying and refinishing wood floors, designing gardens, building furniture and so forth. Now it's all "reality" competitions that pit teams of attention-starved designers against each other. Oh! the fake drama! The judges are realtors (I refuse to capitalize that word), and the highest appraisal (all hail, almighty dollar!) is the only criteria. Dumpsters are filled – nobody recycles anything. There is crying and bitchiness. Ack. Every interior looks the same (grey is apparently the only color anybody paints anything, including children's rooms), and the women all have horrible Valley Girl voices, or maybe adenoid problems. Homeowners don't do any of their own work. And a big feature is made of "demo day," with dumbasses smashing walls with sledgehammers and howling like drunken fans at sports events.

TV has become (even more) profoundly stupid. Who would have thought it was possible?

Sheesh. I sound like an old person.

So it's back to the bookshelf, until spring, anyway.

Keep warm!

February is the longest month

Spring is just around the corner. The corner way, way down over there. I can almost see it. Just on the other side of that pile of snow...

C. started onion seeds, and they've popped up in their skinny glory. They are Dakota Tears, from Fedco, and good keepers. We had storage problems with our usual varieties over the winter, so we're trying this one.

The wire is to ward off mice, who like to decapitate a whole flat of seedlings at a time.

Come May, C. will be humped up over the onion bed, poking these little guys into the soil. Kind of like doing a hair implant.

The kids have been up several times lately, and Liam has been happy and engaged, making lots of eye contact with his old grandmas, and having fun. We've finally figured out his sense of humor, and make him laugh and laugh. We try to stop before he barfs.

What a great kid!

I've been working on my income taxes, which is a huge and ugly undertaking. This is my first year as a disabled person, and I am struggling with the rules, the forms, the tables, and the obfuscation of any kind of sense behind the thing. I may need professional help. And therapy, afterward.

It's chilly – I think the building has finally internalized the cold, so it takes a long time to warm the old heap of bricks.

Come on, spring!

Feeling worse

Still have the bloody cold. Coughing. Watching TV. Reading. Whining. That's pretty much it.

Lo.

Feeling better

I've spent days coughing and lolling in the recliner, watching television.

I've observed hours and hours of home repair and woodworking. I love that stuff.

And we've found some pretty weird shows on Netflix, like 'The Sniffer," a Ukranian crime series. The actors speak Russian, and the special effects are kinda cool, but basically you spend a lot of time watching a trendy guy with a bad attitude and a superhuman sense of smell as he puts things in his nose and takes them out. We watched one episode.

I've come to love "Brojects," a show about two adult Nova Scotian (Scotious?) brothers who make up silly projects and build them, while bickering and pulling pranks. I know it sounds dumb, and it is kind of dumb, but it celebrates do-it-yourselfishness and sibling rivalry in a charming way. For instance, they built a roof patio with ping-table, telescope stand, dumbwaiter and a station for fishing for chicken wings. I might borrow some of their dumbwaiter ideas. And they bought an old woody station wagon and turned it into a surf wagon, complete with solar shower, dressing room and grill, and converted a canoe into a paddle board (sort of). They use a lot of plywood, 2x4s (whatever they call them up there) and PVC pipe. It's inventive, goofy and mostly good-spirited.

And we've got Amazon Prime, too. "How Did You Do That?" is a sweet D.I.Y. show from New Zealand. The team takes a standard rundown old beach shack (or "bach") and transforms it into something cool over one season. The kiwi accents are very thick but charming, and projects range from paint effects to building a pizza oven, and making chairs from driftwood and twine. I might want to build that pizza oven.

And then there's "Shaun the Sheep." Great show. It's claymation, and follows the adventures of Shaun and his flock on the farm. Funny, silly, sweet.

That's what I've been doing. Watching TV, and eating a lot of chocolate chips.

And while I'm pretty much over the cold, I might sneak in a little "Shaun" or "Brojects" now and then.