The New Garden

Sweetie and I spent the better part of last weekend working in the yard, planting two new trees, moving another one and populating the front of the mobile home with a nice selection of perennials and shrubberies. It was the culmination to the Super Great Birthday Present that almost never was; due to the Unforeseen Circumstance Beyond our Control also know as, Our Summer.

By the time we finally left the trailerpark, we had really started to hit our stride with our garden. The flowers we had planted, the grape and the trees had really started to come into their own and by the end, we were both able to spend an afternoon out there without hating the yard, the world or even each other. The new Mobile Home is nice, but the people who lived there before us didn’t have a clue about gardening or landscaping. There was not a tree or healthy looking plant anywhere near the front yard. My great gift idea for Sweetie's birthday this year was to have a garden installed while she was away at work, but the day I was to meet with my guerilla ground crew that would make this happen was also the day that Sweeties brother died—an event that marked the starting point to one of the suckiest summers ever. (Or at least in the last five years)

The gardeners I hired wound up being flakes anyway, and after taking some money for “plants” disappeared off the face of Tacoma. So Sweetie and I just decided to create what beauty we could out of the shambles of the last few months and do the work ourselves. Once I got past the idea that I was paying someone else for my labor, things went pretty smoothly…if by smoothly one includes the fact that I backed my pickup truck into the rear of a bright red Oldsmobile on Monday. Hardly put a scratch on the truck, though the same couldn’t be said for the Olds. Well that’s what insurance is for I guess. Right now I’m just working on keeping both events separate in my head, as while I came to relative terms with the cost of paying someone else for my employment, lumping both the money the gardeners took, along with my insurance deductible makes my hourly rate pretty damn steep. On the bright side however, if I could just find some other sucker to pay me that rate, I might just quit my job at the Mill and start gardening full time.

We planted a Birch and a Flowering Pear, moved the Maple a little closer to the house, put some Heather down along the steps leading to the porch and other plants along the front bedroom windows and wheelchair ramp. Now all we have to do is wait until next spring before we can really see the end result of all our work—give everything a chance to fill up and out and bloom those first weeks of May.

On a sad note, and with a summer like I just had it seems all the notes I know anymore are sad, Doug, The Prairie Dog’s drummer and my good friend for just about ever, will be moving to the great state of Texas come October. It seems that his work has given him an offer he couldn’t refuse and now the honky-tonks of Austin are calling. I wish him nothing but the best.

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