her able hands

Boy, howdy, my blog Mojo, she is gone. I am beyond flummoxed about where my urge to purge has up and sauntered off to, and I have no idea if she’s coming back any time soon or not. I feel abandoned. Or maybe I’m just busy? Either way, it’s kind of a bummer. I miss talking here, but sit down to write and there’s nothing to say. It’s like a stillness but without the peace, because I’m also teetering on this thin edge of existence between anxiety and oh, crap. It’s calm, but only on the surface.

Meanwhile, stuff grows:

thanks to the constant and regular rotation of deep soaking rain and blazing sunshine.

And I am reading the blogs. How else would I find such wonderful trellising ideas? Thanks, Meg and Kelly! I’m going to get taller bamboo next year, though…these aren’t nearly tall enough — just about 6.5 feet.

and have I mentioned the lettuce? I probably haven’t mentioned the lettuce because I’ve been all mute and shit around here lately, but people, the lettuce! I’m riding the crest of the wave ahead of the slugs with my iron phosphate pellets and so far, these babies are just thriving in the cool nights, rainy/sunny days and awesome new lasagna beds. I expect to harvest a couple by the weekend.

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Shifting sands beneath my feet, storms rolling by to the north, the south and then overhead, giving the air a good pollen clean and the garden a frequent soak so I have not had to stand outside with the hose very much this season.

My brother is here for a few weeks, taking a ceramics workshop at KSU and thinking about applying to the graduate program — me, I’m just trying to not get my hopes up too high. It’s so grand having family here, to have a tangible way of getting in touch with who I am and even better seeing that reflection, the I get it piece.

I’ve been tired for a few days. So tired yesterday that I fell asleep at my desk twice during work. I left a couple of hours early, climbed into my bed under the old cotton quilt and fell into a deep sleep for almost three hours. This morning I still feel as if someone slipped me a Mickey.

So we sign the lease with option to own contract with that nice young couple with the five kids on Thursday afternoon. They start to move in on Monday and I’m ridiculously excited that tonight will be the last time we have to spend any hours of our summer driving out there to mow that infernal lawn.

What’s going on with you?

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I had a stomach thing going on yesterday so kept myself at home so I wouldn’t pass it on. It’s running (pun intended) through Lila’s school for two weeks now and Chris came home last night with it as well. I was mild, and actually thought I might get my house kind of prepared for my brother’s arrival this Saturday. But instead I spent most of the day trying to work out computer/technical difficulties.

My Airport Express that’s only 3 weeks old went kaput after I configured Ty’s computer for wireless. It restarted itself and then I spent the rest of the day trying to get either computer to recognize the device. Several hours of phone calls to the tech support department at MacMall where I purchased all of the new equipment — where a young man named Arin or Aaron or Erin put me through my paces connecting the thing directly to my macbook via every outlet in our house, and using three different ethernet cables. He came to the conclusion that the hardware failed so I get to send it back and order another one.

I also tried hooking up my 20″ Apple cinema display to my macbook using the huge frakking adapter that cost $100 because Apple decided to stop providing ADC plugs on their macs in total disregard for the many people who spent way too much cash on their gorgeous cinema displays that have ADC plugs. Nice. And no, it didn’t work either.

So yesterday was a day of tummy aches and headaches and low productivity. I have a big bruise on my forehead and a dent in the wall. I did however, manage to get the kitchen cleaned up before I dragged myself to the evening yoga class and I’m so happy I did that — I’m sure it helped me sleep (both the clean kitchen and the hour and a half of yoga). Even if I did dream of adapters and routers and a tangle of wires at my feet.

I know all of this stuff is solvable, but I’m sick of throwing money at it and having nothing work properly. Is the universe telling me to go analog? Tempting. I’m obviously stymied by the blog right now. It’s all surface material and no depth. Sigh.

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You know, I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed with the garden and yard work right now. Something is making quick work of eating the foliage on so many plants — both in the woods and in the vegetable beds. There are these red beetles all over things like my spinach, the loose strife, rudbeckia, the entire patch of thyme. They suck the juice out of the leaves, making tiny brown spots that cause the leaves to turn into brown lace and die. Can I find a photo of these things on the internet anywhere? No. Am I too lazy to go out there and take some pictures? Yes.

I’m taking a break right now in the air conditioned house (yes, we broke down and turned it on yesterday afternoon when the interior temperature reached 86º). We need to install a whole house fan in the attic. But first I need to finish preparing the new garden bed so I can get the rest of my tomatoes and peppers planted.

It’s so hot out there right now. I had to come inside and change out of my jeans and into a skirt so I could catch a draft up my legs while I shoveled six wheelbarrows of manure and moved it to dump into the new bed. Now I’m going back out to rototill it one more time. Did I mention how hot it is? And muggy? And how the air is full of yellow pollen?

I think I’ll wander around with the camera for a bit, first, so I can show you what I’ve been up to in between massive bouts of whinging.

xo!

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Every inch of my body now hurts. I spent yesterday in non-stop physical labor digging holes to plant the fruit trees — one hole needed the help of a spud bar (a long, heavy, metal pole with a spike on the end that you lift up and slam down into the bottom of the hole to loosen the clay). I squatted and bent forward to plant tomatoes, cilantro, more lettuce starts and some Roma beans. I cut another area of the lawn with the rototiller on the south side of the house where I’ll plant more tomatoes, peppers, beans and summer squash. The tiller pulled up several giant rocks and my muscles experienced a shaking like they’ve never had before in the process.

Arugula is starting to throw flowers, so I’ll pull the rest of it tonight for a salad and re-seed the spot with some mesclun mix. The yard-long beans are poking up, as are the cocozelle zucchini, green-tint pattypan, and yellow crookneck. Just two patches remain un-planted in the bed behind the deck — about six square feet each. I’m thinking I’ll pop some bush bean seed in there.

Tonight I need to rake the sod out of the new bed, dump a dozen wheelbarrows full of manure into it and till it one more time. I still need to prune back the two pears and the pie cherry tree, too, and decide what method of espalier I want to do with the pears. They’ll become a living screen for our front porch.

The beds next door await and I’m torn. I have a bag of onion starts, as well as some onion and leek starts that should all go over there. Plus I haven’t seeded any beets yet, and I was also thinking rutebegas and turnips. But there’s something in the soil that’s gnawing on my root crops and making them look horrific. So I’m tempted to not plant anything over there except for some clover cover crop and just work on increasing the soil fertility. Maybe I’ll do that with half of the beds. I already have garlic, potatoes and peas planted in 2.5 of them.

Hey, does anybody know if it’s too late to put in strawberry plants? I had intended to start a bed, and just kind of spaced it out this spring. I’ve never grown them before, but if I’m going to start producing my own fruit, it seems kind of silly to not have a strawberry patch.

OK. Time to wake the kids and head off into our Monday. Here’s to not letting it eat me alive.

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