Ow.

Friday: Planted seeds: just peas and basil this year. Then Puck and I took down the front fence.

Saturday: Brought fence to recycling center. Rented rototiller. Puck tilled out the stretch along the north side fence and the tree spots. Did proper double-digging for the first time, amending the soil way down there, then sifting the topsoil back in without all the grass and roots. Worried we didn't make the bed wide enough. Moved peonies. Are they too close together? I have no sense of scale! Puck did all the real work, yet I was dead on my feet. Am wussy. Went to The Rental, saw Mr. Kluges (yay!) and assorted family members thereof. Did a little deck staining, but mostly just visited.

Sunday: Poor droopy peonies. I hope they make it. :-( Back to The Rental. Tried to turn gravel pit into zen garden: raked the gravel, found one good rock, placed it, decided I was out of my league. Got to meet Sprout and see her milk-drunk face. Veggie and AJD seem so relaxed and well-rested for new, first-time parents! Went to look at flagstone for front walk. Rocks are pretty. And expensive. And we want lots of them. Hot, tired, utterly wiped out. Meant to clean the bathroom; watched TV instead.

Gardening is love pain worth it.

Pissing off the earthworms

I turned over the vegetable garden. Started Sunday, donning shorts for the first time this year, having to adjust to showing my birchlike* calves again. Then it rained. Finished yesterday. It gets easier every year, and I like to think this year was especially (relatively) painless because of the time I've put in on the elliptical. I've learned things over the years: where the oak roots snake across, where the clay deposits are. You can get sunburned even in April. Don't try to pick up the pitchfork of dirt until you've levered it up by pushing the end of the handle down. (That may seem intuitive to everyone else, but my earlier pitchfork experience involved clean, careful lifts so as not to scatter the horse pooties...) Today I get to add peat moss, which I always mentally call "folding in" because it reminds me of adding whipped egg whites to a batter to make it fluffy.

Normally I swear by The Renegade Gardener and heed his advice to a decidedly non-Renegade degree. However, Sunday I broke one of the big ones, one of the Ten Commandments Tenets of Renegade Gardening: Gardening and rock music do not mix. Rock music is what's in my iPod, and while his sentiment, "The sound nature makes in your yard is the most relaxing accompaniment to gardening," is lovely, it does not account for barking dogs, chainsaws, University Avenue, the pissed-off chickadees fighting in the neighbor's arborvitae or — and this was the one that put me over the edge — having the Smurfberry Crunch song stuck in your head. It's berry red and smurfy blue! Didn't take me long to realize that my pitchfork action was starting to feel more and more like stabs of rage.

Last night Puck came out and put in landscape edging for me so the lawn won't encroach quite so much. (Yes, Landscapalooza attendees, until this year I hadn't practiced what I preached. Shame on me.)

And...I had to stop writing to do actual work, and now it's time to go home.

*Ghostly white and thick as tree trunks.

Plant sale list

I may not need to court disaster by trying to track down and plant Zone 4 bamboo if I can get my hands on a 10-ft. tall ornamental grass at the plant sale. Yeah, Miscanthus x giganteus, I'm lookin' at you...

Amber is the color of your energy

I love Internet quizzes. I especially love the way they take failings like "You're a lazy ass" and turn them into "you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project." Hee.

you are lightcyan #E0FFFF

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you're working. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Random

First of all, congratulations to happyveggie and AJD on the arrival of their brand-new Sprout!

Temp was in town this weekend and reintroduced me to Perry Mason. I have decided that I want a Paul Drake action figure. Two, actually: one perfect coiffed Paul in a shiny grey suit, and one wind-mussed Paul in the loud check jacket. I also have a crush on Della. Perry who? (Kidding, Temp, kidding! Please don't disown me!)

Puck & I celebrated seven years tonight with our traditional dinner at Jax, where I ate way too much and then had bread pudding. Mmmmmm, Jax's bread pudding. [insert Homer drool] Happy Anniversary, Puck!

Speaking of anniversaries, Mixologist and the Wog are coming up soon on ten years! Congratulations, you two. I'm very happy for both of you.

Thanks to Syl for letting me know that the Arboretum Plant List is up! Reminder for those who are new to this: being on the list does not guarantee that it will be at the sale.

I don't need to buy an elliptical machine

Since J & T.S.B. were kind enough to "store" their elliptical in my basement during the house-building thing, I've been working out on it pretty regularly. Well, regularly for me. Maybe three times a week average? Sometimes more, some weeks I skipped entirely. I didn't so much as look at it for the whole month of November: I blame NaNo. But still! I ... don't hate it. Which is weird, because it's exercise.

Anyway, I don't hate it enough that, faced with giving it back at the end of the month, I actually contemplated getting one of my own. But then! My company, in an effort to keep us all from being fat and costing them jillions in health care, has a workout room. With *dum-dum-dum!* an elliptical! And it's free. So now all I need to do is get over how creeped out I am by potentially exercising in front of coworkers and I'm set.

In other happy news, Puck, who is awesome, reupholstered the chair yesterday while I spent the day dinking around online. Best. Husband. Ever.

Jaysan shouldn't read this one

I gave blood today, for the second time since being told back in college to please stop trying because of that unfortunate passing out thing. I remained conscious again! Go me! I'm still not very good about it though. Poor bloodbank workers. This time I got nervous giggles. They had a little trouble, and there were adjustments, and it took forever, and I started humming "I wanna be an airforce ranger" under my breath and couldn't stop. They probably don't get paid enough to put up with the crazy people, but they were very nice to me anyway.

Have any of you reupholstered furniture? I really need to stop watching HGTV and convincing myself that I could totally do these things.