Cathleen is watching the plants grow out in our new garden. That's what she said for the third time walking out the front door, I'm gonna go watch the plants grow again. And that's what she's doing.
A few weeks ago we enlarged our tiny garden to a small garden by pulaskiing the heck out of a thick line of African Lilies that were choking out a line of earth along the far wall with our neighbors. Now we have rainbow chard, carrots, spinach, lettuce and tomatoes poking their heads from the soil and the final crisp pods of snap and sugar peas growing on some stunted vines in the flower bed.
She found another sprout of one of her mystery plants growing from seed on the balcony. These starts are surprises and she won't tell me what they are. Perhaps a superstition to my hampering their growth if I only knew what they might be. Whatever the case, she tries and succeeds in making my quiet life interesting every day.
Lately I've been a real pill, carrying an erratic mood about me all this past week. Today I feel it breaking away and am happy for its riddance. The stress of job searching and the panel interview are behind me. There's nothing to get your blood moving like three interviewers all eyeing you curiously and frantically scribbling answers to methodical questioning. And knowing in that mid-afternoon screening that matters had proceeding exactly this way since early morning; the only difference being the person in the chair I was seated in. Phew! The bay area has many ways of wearing a person down.
And so there hasn't been quite the spry step in my gait lately. Instead I've been kind of bitching and temperamental and not really doing much other than following the NBA playoffs, shopping for groceries, and for the most part eating them.
Today has been beautiful. The summer warmth we felt last month has returned and plenty of bugs are finding their way inside our home. We ate Lucky Charms Cathleen bought from the pharmacy and walked down to the Saturday market. We bumbled around the stalls for a while and bought some minneolas and then headed over to the library and lakefront. On the way home we had one of those coincidences that make a person feel kinda special regardless of whether they actually are. Stopping at a yard sale we found a brand new hand-capping instrument for bottling beer (which we'll be in need of next week, considering our current one is on the fritz). We also found a trivial pursuit board game for a buck, which has been on the list of things to purchase. Plus a few non-necessities that yard sales are known for. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I know the Great Magnet when the Great Magnet comes to pass.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Next!
It's nearing 80° in metropolis. We found our way home through the network of streets, baking slow rotisserie-style in the black confines of our car Cubby. Bellies full of tuna melt from our favorite cafe, Lois the Pie Queen, aptly named for its fabulous sweet digs, though a sprite and melt always suits me fine leaving little room for yam or cream pie.
I'm a free man again, though you wouldn't know it the way I kowtow to my baby day in and day out. Yesterday I shook a few hands and wished the small company I was selling myself to a fond farewell. No more Dickies blue jumpsuits, gloves, and giant Lawrence of Arabia hat to block the sun. No more picking on non-natives that'll die and grow back next year. No more blue herbicidal mist cascading across steep stretches for the reception of a poor broom or gorse.
Let em live I cry...cry all our tears cry them all out now. Let them flow down and clean all the rivers. And the evening sky is the reason why I'm going driftless. We're the same people that miss the clean rivers our mothers swam and grandmothers drank. And yet this is our solution for habitat restoration~ herbicide treatment and the rare case of hand-pulling. And we do this with the complete knowledge that disturbance creates the ideal niche of invasive weeds. We know this as we tromp heavily weighted on steep sliding slopes. We work in wet ravines and in the rain leaving deep prints in the soil. Weeks later the treated plants brown and we look at our work and say effective. Six months later a barren circle where it once was; and, one year later a giant clump of thistle. It's replacement. Translocation. Favoritism. And, quite ineffective. Creating future work with present work. I'm out...
The good news: everything. The bad news: none. A few fresh checks in my pocket and a few interviews ahead for possible vocations. Battlestar Gallactica, the sweetest sci-fi show ever made (minus The Next Generation) is on tonight and a few couples are coming over to beveragify and throw popcorn at the tele. Modern traditions are perverse and wonderful.
Cathleen's starting dinner now and I'm melting in the heat writing. If by chance I'm correct in sensing a cowboy pastlife, I must've been the mountain Montana-type wrangler up where moose and antelope roam. I marvel at 90°+ days and seeing the Latino community walking about in boots and black jeans, button-up western shirts with ten gallon hats on their heads. I mean, what in the flying fuck, right? I'd be sneaking across the border for different reasons, looking northward to the crisp air of the Rocky Mountains...
I'm a free man again, though you wouldn't know it the way I kowtow to my baby day in and day out. Yesterday I shook a few hands and wished the small company I was selling myself to a fond farewell. No more Dickies blue jumpsuits, gloves, and giant Lawrence of Arabia hat to block the sun. No more picking on non-natives that'll die and grow back next year. No more blue herbicidal mist cascading across steep stretches for the reception of a poor broom or gorse.
Let em live I cry...cry all our tears cry them all out now. Let them flow down and clean all the rivers. And the evening sky is the reason why I'm going driftless. We're the same people that miss the clean rivers our mothers swam and grandmothers drank. And yet this is our solution for habitat restoration~ herbicide treatment and the rare case of hand-pulling. And we do this with the complete knowledge that disturbance creates the ideal niche of invasive weeds. We know this as we tromp heavily weighted on steep sliding slopes. We work in wet ravines and in the rain leaving deep prints in the soil. Weeks later the treated plants brown and we look at our work and say effective. Six months later a barren circle where it once was; and, one year later a giant clump of thistle. It's replacement. Translocation. Favoritism. And, quite ineffective. Creating future work with present work. I'm out...
The good news: everything. The bad news: none. A few fresh checks in my pocket and a few interviews ahead for possible vocations. Battlestar Gallactica, the sweetest sci-fi show ever made (minus The Next Generation) is on tonight and a few couples are coming over to beveragify and throw popcorn at the tele. Modern traditions are perverse and wonderful.
Cathleen's starting dinner now and I'm melting in the heat writing. If by chance I'm correct in sensing a cowboy pastlife, I must've been the mountain Montana-type wrangler up where moose and antelope roam. I marvel at 90°+ days and seeing the Latino community walking about in boots and black jeans, button-up western shirts with ten gallon hats on their heads. I mean, what in the flying fuck, right? I'd be sneaking across the border for different reasons, looking northward to the crisp air of the Rocky Mountains...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)