Ouch

I do not know if it is from all of the recent playing in the garden or unrelated, but my sciatics are killing me. I have not been able to blog on either site because I can not sit down for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I am too young to feel this broken.

I had hoped to not need to go to the doctor, but they do not seem to want to work themselves out. So maybe the doc can work me in tomorrow.

My back is already throbbing, so up again until another day.

Why Don't More People Plan Meals?

I found a list earlier this morning through comments on Laurel Plum Online in one of the Menu Planning articles called "10 Reasons You Should Not Plan Your Meals" (Now that I want to link to it, my host server is down - will try to remember to link later.) The list was a jest that actually pointed out the reasons you should. But it got me to thinking.

What ARE the reasons more people do not plan their meals?

I know of two.

1. Even though it will save tons of time (and peace of mind) later, many people do not feel they have the time to get started.
2. They never learned how or have not found a way that fit them/was easy enough for them to stick with it.

But what might some others be? If you happen to come across this question, maybe you can share your thoughts.

Turn Out Some Lights

Am I the only one that misses true customer service?

Today I had to visit my cell provider to work out a quirk in my phone. It is a particular errand I always dread and would put off if I could.

The only chairs they have available are the ones you sit in while you are being assisted, yet the lobby is always full of people standing. waiting. for an hour or so for help. I have never gotten lucky enough to get a seat in less than 45 minutes regardless of the time of day.

While I was standing around rocking from foot to foot pondering the irony of the chair situation, I had plenty of time to thoroughly study just about everything in the store. And I mean everything. I know this is their intent. They want you to stroll the merchandise until you are enticed to buy. But most people walk in with the same dread on their faces that I feel. The company would be better served to have a large wall display instead of those silly stands everyone uses as an arm rest while they stand. Waiting.

I noticed they had a bundle of customer service survey cards in a custom display you could only see if you looked just right as you exited. I think it was the combination of seeing them a little early in my visit combined with the irritant of the chair irony that set my thoughts down the path for the remaining 56 minutes. I spent the largest part of my thought time noticing the multitude of ways the company went beyond a lack of customer service to show their out and out disrespect toward their clientele. Even if in subtle little ways.

I will not go into a total tirade and share them all, I found enough to write short book. But I will share that the last straw in these days of frugal and green living was their lighting situation.

Hear me out.

The store has two adjacent walls that are nothing but windows situated to get the best natural light all day every day throughout the year. Then of course they had the standard industrial fluorescent fixtures in the standard drop panel ceiling. Either one alone would have been plenty to flood the room in appropriate brightness, but they did not stop there. They had eight sets of track lights in the 20' x 30' room PLUS a pendent light above each of the 12 desk stations (only two reps).

My brother-in-law went through an obsessive phase a few years ago where he actively measured the energy costs of every single device in his home and office to include the lamp of his fish tank. Then he would talk about it in length to everyone who would listen. As a result, I know that the company could easily cover many family mobile plans monthly for the same expense of running those lights weekly in this one facility.

So I am thinking I would love for them to turn out some of those lights and

• a) reduce all of our bills,
• b) hire another rep or two,
• and/or c) bring in a couple of chairs, benches, even concrete slabs on top of cinder block so that we could at least change positions during our LONG uncomfortable wait.

And do you know to top it off, the reps only helped two of the thirty some people during that time? They sold one person a new phone (and the long term contract plan that went with it) and they walked another through an insurance claim before providing them with a replacement. Do you know what the rest of us got? 800 numbers, website addresses, and, "I am sorry I can not help you with that..." for various reasons.

I grabbed the customer service survey on the way out the door. But I was the only one that did. Everyone else missed them as they angrily walked out the door spilling expletives on their way.

I am contemplating, okay daydreaming, of going back to written letters, cans and string. At least shopping at Mom and Pop shops, and much more self reliance strategies? Where is Hubby and tonight's garden chore? I need to play in the dirt.

I have noticed pitiful customer service more... and more... and still more over the past decade. I worked retail and I know the customer is not always right, but when did the standard policy shift to polite indifference to all? And, why do we just take it when all of the occurrences stack to bring down our day?

And, expletive! why do customer surveys only point to single out a rep and not hold the whole accountable?

Little Rock Wall

- Or My Two Boys

My Mom is living in our old little house (Oh! how I miss it). Along that driveway there is a steep bank that use to wash the driveway in clay mud every time it rained. Years ago we painstakingly laid out landscaping fabric then covered it with river rock and field stone. No more clay eroding with the rains.

I took a few packages of those little expandable peat plugs and put a single ivy leaf into each one. Then I tucked them into many of the rock crevices. For the next two years, any time we had extra dirt from any other flower project, I dumped it over the rock and swept it into the cracks really well.

Years later, that ivy is full and plush and completely covers the rock. Some of the main runners have stalks as thick as Little Man's leg. The bank no longer needs the rock. The ivy will do the job and flourish that much more if the rock is removed.

Yesterday we went to the house and burrowed through the ivy to retrieve some of the rock to give it yet another visible life in our temporary kitchen garden. Tonight we dug a small trench along the border and made a dry fit rock wall just under a foot tall.

It was a lot of work. It has been chilly today. Tonight it was cold and drizzling as we tolled away. I no longer have any nails to speak of and my hand are already starting to look scuffed and rough. But that little wall is so pretty! It was well worth it all. I can not believe how much of a difference it made to that silly patch of dirt.

I am already picturing a day when the kitchen garden has been moved and this becomes a flower bed to play in. Some of the rock have a deep rose hue to them. I would love to add a single tree, maybe a red bud, right in the center and several laurels and the like that have rosy tints to them at various times in the year to bring out the color in the rock. Or maybe I will fill the whole space with rose bushes, baby's breath and lavender. Do they even grow well together? Don't tell me. I am still just drinking in all of the choices.

I sit here exhausted and dreamy. Too tired and muscle weary to stay awake, but so anxious to keep doing more that I find it hard to go close my eyes. We are following Hubby's to do list. I honestly have not known what he wanted us to do each night up to now, and I wonder what he wants to do next? He implied that we will be busy each night for a few weeks and planting time will not be for another good month.

In another life 20 years ago I would have balked at him or anyone else expecting me to be all rough and tumble doing such 'hard labor' especially every night. I am a woman. Women are suppose to be pretty and gentle. We are suppose to leave the snails, frogs and dirt to the boys.

Today? I love that we are all working together. I love that we are doing hard work. Finding out what Hubster has planned and then seeing the results each day is starting to feel like opening unexpected gifts! It is funny to think I have become this boring. And yet, I am happier now than I ever was flitting and doing the social rounds dressed to the nines in my girlie days.

Little Man disappeared into the back yard with a bucket after we got all of the rock unloaded and he had watched us for a short moment. He has taken to picking all of the flowers off of the wild violets that are now blooming everywhere, so I did not think anything of it. In no time at all, I see him walking backwards dragging that bucket as if he were trying to pull a dead horse. The little rascal had gone to the scruffy place where the raised beds of the kitchen garden will eventually be and gathered all kinds of baby field stone. The bucket was almost full - I could barely lift it much less carry it across the yard.

He took such pride and care to tuck those little rocks into the gaps in the wall. When my men were done, they both stood back to admire and inspect their work. I was too busy admiring them until they went inside to clean up. What a sight they were. So serious, yet satisfied with a job well done.

The sight of my two boys standing there all sweaty with the drizzle still falling ever so softly fills my cup. Their faces all pink and glowing from the heat they had worked up. Both of them dusting off their hands and wiping the sweat from their brows with the simultaneous rhythm of a synchronized swimming team.

When I am truly old and bed ridden, that is one of the moments I pray I will still remember.

I'm Sore

For me, the Spring itch brings on the urge to play in the dirt. In my mind's eye I see a day when I am one of those really wrinkly old ladies sitting smiling on a bench in her yard. I will be under a wide brimmed straw hat admiring the bounty of food and flora all around me while lots of little children chase butterflies and bubbles.

But in the meantime, there is a lot of work to do.

This week we tilled up part of the yard for our little garden. I am paying for a lazy winter. Where did THOSE muscles come from? Funny you do not notice them until they are screaming in pain.

The new bed is about 15 x 20 feet long on the widest point. It has a wide arch cutting across one side where it starts at 5 ft. wide. It took a couple of days, but we got all of the grass clumps up. We used them to fill in a few holes around the property and start a compost bed.

We also planted strawberry plants in strawberry pots, moved three rose bushes, and drew out my tentative plan for the future kitchen garden. Hubby says it is very doable and that he has some surprises in his pocket to take it up a notch when it is all done. Take it up a notch? For me it is already a dream as it is!

The Garden Plan

The Garden - Starting from scratch.

We have not really had a garden since we moved into this house, we are still in the cleaning up phase where you scrub up all of the underbrush and figure out which trees are dead. The property is huge and has surprises everywhere (it was my grandfather's home and he was once an Ag Professor), but everything is SO overgrown from more than a decade of neglect. I think he would be happy that someone was now doing more than just mowing and weed eating, yet somehow I feel nervous when we make some of the changes. I catch myself wondering what things he had meant to stay. He was the kind of man that saw the beauty of some weeds.

This yard is easily 10 times larger than anything we have ever had before. The possibilities encourage my ambitions to soar!

The spot where we are initially putting our kitchen garden will later become a large flower bed with a tree of some type in the center. It will be really pretty to see from the patio. But for now, it makes sense to start there with a few veggies. The bed is as large as our past kitchen gardens. This year we will plant several peppers, bush beans, several herbs and greens. Tomatoes are a must. I love the taste of a sun warmed tomato and being from the south, I delve greedily into fried green tomatoes when they are in season.

We will do another spot for all of the vines and climbers. Cucumbers, zucchini, yellow and butternut squash, and I want to try pumpkins.

We have determined where all of the raised beds of the kitchen garden will go in the future. It will be bigger than we have ever had before by fourfold, but the raised beds should bring the work beck down comparable to the open beds we are used to.

It will be on a large plot on the far back of the property. Last year it was covered in underbrush and wayward vines. We literally took one of those mini bulldozers and just tore everything out. It was just too far gone to do it any other way. I am waiting to see what things start growing back so I can transplant. We have several patches of spring bulbs sprouting already. As soon as they stop blooming, I am digging them up. I can't wait to see what I find. You can tell by the fat non blooming leaves of many of the tulips and others that the bulbs are turned upside down and/or compacted. At one of our other homes I dug one like it up to be rewarded with 100's of baby bulbs at the base. I would love to pass out little gift bags on Labor's Day to my local dirt loving buddies.

Other than the new growth, the soil looks tired and is covered with all sorts of small field rocks. It will take all of this summer (maybe part of next?) to get it cleaned up and lay out raised beds.

The natural borders make a sort of triangle. I think that is where I am going to start. I would love to frame the entire space with a little mini orchard/fruit garden. There are already two apple trees. Beside the apple trees are two more little trees that are babies of some of the old growth further into the yard. I would like to move them and replace them with two edible pear trees. On the back side of the triangle is a ditch with a chain link fence on the opposite side. It looks like a great place for several berry bushes. On the third side I imagine a plum tree and a cherry tree flanking an in my dreams greenhouse.

The blackberries and raspberries are already a done deal as soon as I can get the underbrush cleared out and save the daffodils, tulips and other surprises I find to be moved to another flower bed. GB has several starters where her bushes are trying to take over her fence line.

There is a lot of brick on the property where Pops took down a chimney before one of the additions to the house. We found them when trimming back some vines in the back corner. They are very neatly stacked and covered up underneath all of those vines. There are a TON of them.

I want to use them for the raised beds for the veggies. I can layout footers and concrete the bottom row two bricks wide. Once they are set, I am going to use that liquid nails type stuff that they have now for the cascade block to build the walls up several rows filling in all of the holes with sand and rebar every now and again for extra stability. With a few gallons of buttermilk I can have each of the walls completely covered in moss in a couple of years. Won't that be pretty! AND soft to sit on.