[gardeners] Saturday and Sunday in the Garden, almost
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 19 Mar 2000 13:33:58 -0600
Saturday morning was beautiful, cool and sunny. Unfortunately we had our
garage sale from 7 am to 1 pm. Fortunately we made $180 so can indulge
ourselves with more stuff for the gardens. Most of it is earmarked for a
new construction wheelbarrow, 40 more cinder blocks, several bags of
Sunshine potting soil, etc, etc. You can imagine what the list is
starting to look like.
I did sell about half of a 40-year collection of LP albums and all of
the 45 rpm records I had. None were real valuable, at least not enough
to try e-baying them but were good enough to attract some attention.
Next time I'll get rid of the cassette tapes, all 300 of them, but, only
after I use a CD-R to take care of the ones I wanna keep.
We were resting after the garage sale when the rains came. Glorious,
beautiful rain, a deluge at first and then a slow drizzle that lasted
into the late evening and then returned at 5:30 this morning in the form
of severe thunderstorms and about 3 inches of rain. According to the
weatherman we caught up on 6 inches of the 22 inche deficit we had from
last year and this year so far. Forecast is for more so the crawfish
farmers may make it after all and the rice farmers are out doing rain
dances in hopes they can make up for two dry years. Although we irrigate
rice down here it's an impossibility when there's been no rain because
the salt water intrusion from the Gulf goes 60 or 70 miles inland.
(Think flatland, think very flat land)
This morning dawned unseasonably cool and dank and has developed into
another cool, sunshiny day. Went out and gathered up the oak limbs that
blew out and raked up the new leaves that had dropped off in the fierce
winds. Luckily none of our plantings was damaged but it scared Sleepy
Dawg something fierce. She woke up at 5:30 barking danger and trying to
get me up.
Should say something about that little dog's behavior yesterday during
the sale. We had been concerned that she would bark at everyone coming
for the sale as she is very protective of Miz Anne and I and the
property. She politely greeted everyone who came and escorted them
around. We just told them she was our security and was there to see they
behaved. Since she only weighs 16 lbs that got a good laugh. We were
surprised when her grandmother showed up though. I had never met the
lady who gave her to me through an intermediary but here she was.
Waltzed up to Sleepy and called her Frito, her puppy name. I had known
that much and asked her how she knew the name and she told me who she
was and that Sleepy looked exactly like her mother. Also told me that
she didn't dock ears or tails and the dogs kept what they were born
with. Sleepy has a stub tail about two inches long and I had just
assumed it had been docked. The lady told me that Bullet, the mother of
Sleepy, also had a natural short tail and half her pups always had
natural short tails. Anyway, Sleepy didn't recognize her and came and
got up on my lap to hide from the attention. I think it hurt the lady's
feelings as she said she had bonded with Sleepy when she was a pup but
just couldn't afford to keep her.
The woman accompanying the lady who raised Sleepy ended up buying most
of the plants we had on sale. Well, she bought all of them that hadn't
already been bought. Turns out she's landscaping a new house and wanted
everything she could get. I pretty much went out and cleaned everything
out of the greenhouse that we didn't particularly want and then spent 30
minutes telling her how to care for the plants as she wrote down the
instructions.
A young woman who walked with the aid of a cane came in earlier and
bought 3 or 4 bucks worth of herbs and wanted to talk herbs too. She
seemed like a nice person so I gave her instructions on how to join
gardening lists. She was primarily interested in herbs and also told me
she had two dogs that chewed on all plants so wanted nothing that could
be detrimental to the dogs. All in all an interesting day on Saturday.
It's Sunday afternoon now and we're lying about reading, watching
gardening shows on HGTV and just generally relaxing. Sleepy is still
sleeping, greeting all those folks yesterday and running security just
wore her out.
Life is good.
George