Jenmenke

Road Warrior

mud

Tired of the Eggroll Post Yet?

What an amazing discovery. All these amazingly cool and nice people read the stupid stuff I write. They actually cook some of the recipes I post. It’s utterly baffling.

And wonderfully flattering.

And very guilt provoking when I’m not timely at updating.

And terribly frightening. What horrible things have I written about again? Good thing I can’t remember pretty much everthing or I wouldn’t even be able to look people in the eyes anymore. Poor Dave.

(for new readers, we like to work “Poor Dave” into the occasional post as a celebration and honor to my husband who, in his ever loving and constant devotion, has to put up with me). Hopefully new readers will also know where to place my witty sarcasm.

Anyway, I so wish I could just cut and paste some soccer emails here just so you could see the inanity that I deal with this time of year. Hundreds of mind-numing emails a day:

Filled with mind numbing questions… and helpless people… and….

I digress. I digress. I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about was my annual post about mud.

And rain.

And snow.

And my car.

…which is filthy. But not nearly as filthy as it could be, given our recent weather.

And that thing hanging off the bottom?

…I’m pretty sure is a worm.

And my driveway.

… that the FedEx truck got stuck in a few days ago.

And the reason

…that we had to drag the garbage all the way to the top of the God-forsakken very long and muddy driveway.

Which is responsible for

…this extra stash of mud I like to carry around on my running boards.

That is, no doubt, the source

… of the worm.

Think Spring!

 

Spring?

Yes: when the mud starts flowing, it’s Spring.

It’s about time for a gardening post, don’cha think? Even though I’m getting my annual end-of-the-winter cold and feel pretty crappy, I was still chomping at the bit to go up to the barn and clean out the greenhouse yesterday. For crying out loud, the thermomulator said 40 degrees!

I didn’t get to it until early evening, right after I walked The Sociopath and before I started dinner. Given that my greenhouse is single-paned glass, I finally gave up heating it in the winter. Oh, I tried everything: bubble wrap insulation, Refletex (or whatever that silver bubble stuff is called), shrink wrapped film, plastic, passive heat (water filled 40 gallon drums painted black). You know I gave it my obsessive all.

And I also gave it most of my money.

Even with all my tricks, it still cost a lot to heat it, so I gave up.

Now, my program is to keep whatever I am trying to overwinter in the greenhouse until the sub-zero temps hit. Then I move everything into the garage, where it sits until the sub-zero temps are over —  without light or water, at about 33-45 degrees.

I always screw it up.

This year, I failed to get the plants out of the greenhouse when the temps dipped into the -20 range. Amazingly, I only lost two plants, albeit two of my favorites — the two 5-foot tall upright rosemary plants. Boo. There is still a chance that they will come back, but as of yesterday, they were looking pretty crispy.

I’m sure I will continue to battle low temps as we wade our way through March. Why, just this morning it was only 7 degrees! I do have a small heater in there, but the energy miser is resistant to turning it up much above freezing.

[The energy miser is me. Just ask anyone who comes to my house during daylight hours during the winter.]

Anyway, I swept the greenhouse out, being that it is pretty much a giant home for the fat cats all winter long. They while the days away in the sun with my giant garden toad,

making a mess, whittling away the legs of the benches.

…Eventually these redwood posts will simply collapse. But that is probably better than scratching the other stuff in the barn, right?

It was fun to drag all the plants back into the sunshine and water them. Just look at the rosemary plants — all ready to bloom!

It amazes me that they make it through the dark winter in the barn. No light, no water. Even the transplants from last fall look pretty good. Nice and green.

Soon I’ll be filling the spaces with little pots of seedlings.

So that I can forget to water them and throw them away.

Nice to know that there is someone out there more disorganized than you, isn’t it?