Elizabeth’s Journal

Company Withdrawal Symptoms; The Pain of Gardening

Jonathan is off at his Bal Pals from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. today, and I am just wandering around the house wishing for someone to talk to. Where’s my company gone? (Andy went home yesterday.) Luckily Dale’s parents arrive tomorrow. I sometimes have an adjustment period when visitors arrive; the first morning Andy was here, he pulled up a chair at the breakfast table to talk when I had just sat down with my first cup of coffee to read the paper. I thought, “Oh no, I have to make conversation! Not yet!” But by the end of his visit, the paper happily went unread. (See, I can be a sociable human being.) At least he broke me in for having Brian & Joy around. It also helps that we knew each other much better by the end of the visit. Having people stay with us is fun! We are booked up now through May with Dale’s parents here through 3 April and then Glen coming in May for 10 days, but our guest room is open after that . . . any takers?

Just came back inside from wandering around on the deck. Couldn’t wander too far as it’s cold and raining, but I admired the work done on the garden while trying to ignore the aches and pains in my body. Someone who shall remain nameless got me working in the garden on Saturday then went off with Dale to buy “toys” from the music store (one of them being a MIDI-enabled guitar—you’ll have to e-mail Dale for any details beyond that), leaving me to finish up. So although by the end of the day many plants had been trimmed back (pruning is too kind a word for what I do) and the leaves had been raked and bagged in both the front and back, my fingernails caused me great pain for nearly two days from dirt being pushed too far underneath them, and my legs—suffice to say, they are sore. Somehow I always hurt the backs of my thighs when gardening, probably through bending the wrong way. I tried very hard to be careful with that on Saturday, but obviously failed miserably.

I need my body to recover quickly so that I can do the next things on my list, the first one being to pull out some horrible groundcover planted where some red-tip photinias used to be so that I can mix compost into the dirt and use it as a little vegetable garden. I bought some seeds last month to plant with Jonathan (Scarlet Nantes carrots; also rocket mix snapdragons and Texas hummingbird sage), and also I received from Jenny as part of my birthday present a seed kit for an edible flower garden (anise hyssop, signet marigold, johnny-jump-up, mixed nasturtium, and garland chrysanthemum). Perhaps she was inspired by the edible flowers I put on the cake I served at their wedding shower last year. I also need to turn over the dirt in my little patch where I plant my herbs so that it’s ready for new plants, which I hope to put in while Brian & Joy are here. In the front of the house, we have absolutely got to plant something by the huge ugly electrical box to replace the equally ugly Texas sage plants we dug up last year. Right now all we’re growing are weeds. It’s just so hard to find something to cover those electrical boxes up! Especially something that can grow without being babied, since that doesn’t happen with me. Suggestions are welcomed.