This too shall pass...

It's been a week now since my graceful entry into the garden, and all I can say is... I'm old! This fall has really kicked my behind! I'm still suffering a bit, can't quite make it through the day without the pain meds (no I'm not addicted, yet). My foot and knee both swell terribly... but things are getting a tad better.

But oh, let me tell you about the miracle of message! What a wonderful invention!

Jackie, blessed Jackie, is finishing up her massage therapy schooling and lucky me got to be one of the first 'customers'! And what perfect timing!

She came and set up shop in my front room, table, sheets even music! The kids were shipped off to 'play' at other's houses (am I a bad mom?) and I had an hour massage... focusing on my injuries. Before she started I could not bend, or straighten for that matter, my elbow... but magic hands... my elbow was mobile! Yippie. All those tense muscles from the fall were now quite relaxed. ahhhhhh I was a satisfied customer!

So any of you locals visiting my blog... let me know if you are looking for a nice relaxing massage... Jackie does wonders!

Blogs coming up....

Garden losses (yes, already)

Lost

English language

Texting

Violation

Klutz status increased!

As many of you know I'm a klutz! And this week, Wednesday to be precise, I had the ultimate klutz experience! *sigh* I'm not bragging, just stating a fact.

The story:

After lunch on Wednesday, I bought some tomato cages for my glorious garden. Eric and I decided to swing by the house and drop them off. As we pulled up I noticed the neighbor boy looking over our fence... they spend almost as much time in our backyard as my kids do. I asked him if he lost yet another ball, which he then nodded yes. So I let him into the back. Now the only reason I mention this part of the story is because this poor little boy received quite the vocabulary lesson, and that's not a good thing.

Eric proceeded around the corner carrying the cages, yes all of them, I can't even blame my predicament on that. I stopped at the back door to hand something to Rebekah, then started toward the garden. As I rounded the back my foot for some reason slipped, my right ankle rolled, so that transferred weight to my left leg, which we all know is quite laughable since any sort of weight throws my knee out. So, rumble, rumble, rumble my knee went in every direction which then sent my weight shifting back to my now injured right ankle... which didn't quite like that, then I felt a crackle... or something... then I was on the ground.... HARD!

I was in pain! I'm used to my knee going out... I deal with that, unfortunately, often. But this, this was different... much much more pain! But the pain to the ego.... even worse. And needless to say, I said some .... well, not so choice words. =(

Eric helped me to the house, my foot was already swelling... and I wasn't even quite sure what I had done to it. But the surprise pain was my left elbow, considering I fell on my right side, I was a little confused. I soaked my foot in ice water, changed my clothes and headed back to work... after all I had stuff to do! Plus, I had to save face one way or another.

I called Kaiser, insisted on seeing a doctor and not going to the emergency room, that costs way too much! The nurse made me an appointment for 5:30, at the Elk Grove facility in Medicine 2. These details are important, trust me.

So after finishing up some stuff at work, I go pick up Zackery at day care, drop him off at the house with Rebekah and head up to Elk Grove. Keep in mind that I was in a lot of pain. Just about every part of my body ached and my knee was really shaky having to bare the majority of my weight as I had to baby the right foot/ankle, and my elbow was swelling.

I hobbled my way into the building, trekked over to the elevator. I got off the elevator and dragged myself over to Medicine 2.... *sigh*.... it was closed! Hmmmm... maybe the nurse meant Medicine 1, ok... so I turn around and head back down the hall... Medicine 1... lights out... closed! Grrrr...

Ok so the nurse MUST have meant the Sacramento hospital facility.... so I headed toward the elevator.... there was an EMT standing there holding thee door open... "sorry mam, we're using this elevator for a patient. Ummm, ok.... pain shooting through my foot... I can wait.

Well, long story short, too late, I headed up to Sacramento while on the phone with the new nurse. I found out that the 5:30 appointment was supposed to be a phone appointment, which the first nurse never put through anyway. So the only alternative was to go to the emergency room. *sigh*

Of course as those of you locals know, they are doing TONS of construction up there and there was NO place to park near the emergency room. So the nurse told me to park in the parking garage and push the emergency button. Huh? me? *sigh*

I saw a wheel chair sitting there, and I thought just as I always do... "I can do it... all by myself!" Yes, I'm 3! I kinda forgot that my elbow hurt... and after crying out in pain I soon realized that I was going to have to use the emergency button, but not after having an emotional break down, literally. Which as you know is one of the worse things to happen to me (the other one being to vomit... I HATE that). I was so angry that I was emotional.

A nice security guard came and transported me to the emergency room where I met some 'interesting' characters. Two nice 'gang-banger' girls fighting over some guy in a room... you know he should feel quite flattered that these girls 'cared' for him as much as they seemed to. But after a nice talk with some rather large security guards the girls decided to 'care' somewhere else. *sigh* I also met a nice man who had an unfortunate 'accident' with the police. It seems that the 'police' just yanked him out of his car and threw him to the ground and beat him up and trashed his back. And those uncaring police officers didn't even escort him to the hospital... hmmm... seems they just jumped him and left him on his own... you know how insensitive and volatile police officers can be especially with the 'suspects' they just beat and let go. *rolls eyes*

So the verdict:

hairline fracture in the right foot, sprained right ankle (tho I didn't even feel that), dislocated elbow, dislocated knee (this was a given), and some very sore muscles... still!

When I do something, I do it all the way!

Zackery took care of me when I got home, I did have a couple of scrapes on my leg, so when I got home Zackery put about 8 on me. lol So I'm all better now! =)

Now it's on to recovery, lots of time up off my foot. Now I have a valid excuse to catch up on my dvr!

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

I finally remembered to download my pictures. Yippie for you, just what you wanted!

Needless to say, after I filled the first garden box, I was quite sore, and not just sore muscles. As my co-worker would say, I 'used my big brain' and thought, "heck, I'll throw on my bathing suit top and get a little sun while I'm at it." Heh... white turned RED girl here to say.... NEVER do that again! (on a side note, Zackery was quite fascinated that his mother was shedding just like a snake)

The rest of the top soil sat on my driveway for several more days. After work Zackery and I would load up the wagon two or three times before it grew too dark, but I could tell that this would take way too long at that rate. Luckily I received a phone call, "Hey Bonnie, I thought I'd come by on Wednesday and fix your gate, and bring along some youth from church to help with your garden boxes. Whad'ya think?" Hell ya, oh, I mean 'thank you, thank you, thank you!'

So, they showed up Wednesday evening and within 40 minutes box number 2 was filled! Much faster than me... but hey, they had two wheel barrels and 4 people! But a huge THANK YOU goes out to them! They even dug a hole for my beautiful cherry tree! Yippie! Bonus!

The next day a friend and I headed to the hardware store and he built me a fancy gadget to bring water over to my boxes! No standing there watering by hand! We attached two soaker hoses... and off we go! Whooot!

btw, these fancy soaker hoses come with this fancy washer, I guess to control water pressure... unfortunately I lost one, somewhere, somehow. And these 'bright' store owners do NOT carry the replacements. Grrrr.... using just a regular washer helps, but it's not the same... so buyer beware.

Boxes are ready! Finally!

Here are my beautiful boxes, with soaker hoses and all.


And just in case you wanted another angle!

What's that? Oh, the flags, yes of course... While at the hardware store with Zackery, he decided our garden needed decorations, which OSH had many to choose from... statues of frogs, kids, benches, cats, buddahs etc..... I convinced him that these .10 cent flags would be perfect, so these are Zackery's small touch.

Speaking of Zackery, he, like his Mommy was quite excited about this garden thing. But my back was already starting to hurt, yes, I'm a wimp. I needed some sort of potter's bench. And being the resourceful, practical woman that I am I headed over to the torn down shed to find something to put together a makeshift bench/shelf. It only took me an hour to take this apart! lol.... I swear this shed would have withstood a hurricane they used so many nails! Sheesh! But I got it finally and threw this 'table' together. And it looks so stable.... right?! Right! (just nod your head and agree!)

This all took way too long for Zackery, so while Mom dismantled and built Zackery went inside to watch tv.

I finally got everything in order and called him out. Oh, but wait.... I've got to take pictures! As you can see he was not all that happy with yet another delay.


But he warmed up for the peace picture!



Now it was time to plant! And plant I did, with a little help from Zackery. You may not be able to tell in the picture below, but them be some cucumbers a'growin'!

And in here we've got, onions, radishes, eggplant, tomatoes and corn! Whoot!



And in this box, there are: bell peppers, thai peppers, peperonchini, tomato, cantaloupe, watermelon and the cucumbers!

Not pictured... I have dug a mound on the backside of my house where I have planted some zucchini, crookneck squash, french melon and an extra tomato that was given to me late. In another area, one of the areas the boxes were thought to go, I have planted a pumpkin patch! Yippie! I really didn't intend to, but the area was there so I thought, heh why not?! Maybe the Great Pumpkin will fly over and choose it on Halloween night! =)

Now comes the hardest part of all.....

WAITING!

In the mean time we have been enjoying our fresh strawberries... they are quite tasty... and those pesky birds? F0'ghett'about'it.... I WIN!

We interrupt this program...

I've 'misplaced' my next set of garden photos, so I will take the time right now to brag! Yes, every mother has the right to brag. We've earned it! And MY daughter is the best... so that gives me all the more right! =p

For the last three months(ish), Rebekah has been practicing for a play. Alice in Wonderland, Jr. This last week, she had 6 total performances... and she did awesome! She played the door mouse, and was as cute as a button! Here she is with a couple of her fellow cast mates, Nick a.k.a The Catapiller (who was quite good) and Brianna, who made an awesome flower.

I was quite impressed with the overall performance, these kids really worked hard and it paid off! My hat goes off to the teachers that volunteered their time. Good job to all that were involved.

BTW, I would be showing other pictures of Rebekah, but she wouldn't let either myself nor her father take pictures, *sigh*. Must be some pre-teen syndrome or something. But I do have a short video of her trying to specifically NOT get her picture taken by us... I will post this sometime later, when I cover the teenage woes of parenthood or to show her Prom date... which ever comes first! =)

On another note... I canNOT believe that this school year is drawing to a close! Where did this year go? Rebekah is going to be in eighth grade and Zackery will be starting Kindergarten... I can't believe my children are growing up so fast! *sigh*

Garden 101 cont..... again...

I will start off today saying I love help. I love volunteers! I have had tons of help getting my garden going. Many ideas have been exchanged on how to arrange the yard. One of said discussions was moving one of the sheds to another part of the yard, to free up prime sunshine real estate. Well, ooops! As you can see in the following photos, the shed didn't quite make it in one piece... in fact it really didn't make it all. But that's ok.

What we should be focused on in these pictures are the rocks and all the general clean up! Yippie! It's starting to come together!

So below is a picture of where the shed used to be, and where I was thinking of putting the garden beds. Doesn't that look nice?

And here's a closer look.

See, even the dirt got a once over.

But, you know how you get that hankering to move the living room furniture around and so you do. But then you look at it and think, "Nah, that's just not doing if for me." Well, that's what happened to me... only with these HUGE garden boxes. So I wanted them moved, yes, back to where they originally were. *blush* But being the resourceful woman that I am, I decided that Rebekah and I could move them ourselves. lol Well, we did, move one that is, and it took about 25 minutes! Now before you mock us I have to tell you.... those things are FREAKING heavy! PLUS, we had to move it past the pile o'shed AND the pile o'crap... yes real poop... which had been delivered the week before. I must admit, it was about the funniest thing Rebekah and I have done together. You really should have seen it... oh wait you probably have... if you've ever seen any Three Stooges or Looney Tune episodes! Yes, THAT funny.

Here's an example.... She and I would be standing inside the boxes, using the crossbar supports as handles to transport. We'd bend down, grasp the bars, I would start counting... "One, two, three" and on three I would promptly pick up my end... Rebekah would stand straight up without picking it up and say something like, "what are we doing on three?" Or once we actually timed the picking up part, she would only be able to take one or two steps before dropping it, so I would try with all my might to drag it that one extra step.... *sigh*

We did move it... as in one... I wasn't going to attempt the second one. Just left it for the 'muscle' that moved all the rock for me.

So there they are, and there they'll stay! Whew.

Now it's time to fill them. I ordered 3 yards of top soil from the local top soil supplier, with the bright idea to have them back up into my yard and dump it, right there at the end of the beds! I have this wonderful double gate, opened it up wide, had everything cleared out of the way... so I sat and waited.... excited to finally get more done.... after-all it's just me, myself and I today... hauling 3 yards of dirt, just a short distance....

Well, Mr. Truck Driver had other plans... he decided NOT to back into the back yard... so he just dumped it in my driveway *lip quivering*.

Ok, I can do this... after all what's another 100 feet, over lawn and rock drainage line, up a small incline I never paid attention to, into the backyard and over that uneven terrain to the garden boxes... that shouldn't make too much of a difference... right? *sigh* Oh, did I mention I don't have a wheel barrel? Well, I DO have a wagon, and as I kept reminding myself for four hours, you've got to use the tools that you've got, and in Zackery's words, "you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit". Of course he was talking about Halloween candy... but I had to distract my mind with something!

So I started shovel after shovel... and did you know.... it takes approximately 23 shovel fulls to fill my wagon? Just in case you wanted to know... because I sure know...... now.

So below you can see the first box is filled.... half way, yep 6 inches of top soil. Only 20 wagon loads! *sarcasm* Then I shoveled in some poop... then back to the top soil. Oh by-the-way... did you know that a wagon full of top soil will travel over rough terrain a lot easier when the tires are FULL of air? Yes, I figured that out about 3/4 of the way through! *sigh*

Yes, beautiful half way! *deep breath*

Oh yippie! It's full! Yes I'm done! Isn't it beautiful?! *patting self on back* Only 40 wagon loads of top soil and 16ish loads of poop! Whew!

OH SNAP!!!! There's another one! *sigh*

For another day, I'm tired, sore and .... Oh no.... I forgot the sunscreen!

I'm going to bed!

Garden 101 cont....

Strawberries are fine and all, but I need more!

But what to do? Before I was limited (yes, one of my excuses) because I was just a renter.... but THIS, this is MY house, and I can do what I want! Right? Right! So I decided to build a raised garden bed. I mulled around different ideas, rock walls, cinder block, pressure treated wood, but finally settled on redwood. The kids and I spent a lot of time walking the aisles at Home Depot and Lowes. I even walked around taking pictures of price tags and wood with my phone. *rolling eyes* I had some strange excitement building up inside me, and pictures of planks of wood on my cell phone was some how going to help. Lol

My 'advisers' let me know it was time! Time to do some real shopping... so Advisor 1 and I headed off to Home Depot (only after doing much price comparisons online) and bought the wood... oh, and nails. Whew! Step one complete. I'm on my way!

Advisor 2 picked up the wood and dropped it off at the house. Zack and I arrived just as Danny unloaded the last of the wood. Now it was our turn to get our hands dirty. We had to move it to the backyard.

There's my big helper carrying a 2x4x8' all the way to the back yard!

As you can see this was not a short jaunt for this laborer!

But soon enough the two of us had all of the lumber in the backyard. Perfect pieces of redwood to create 2 4'x16'x12" garden boxes.

But apparently the wood is not JUST for garden boxes.

These made for a great race track. In fact, the wood sat outside for a couple of weeks and the kids found many uses for these, including but not limited to, race tracks, balance beams, tight ropes and believe it or not, jump ropes.

So after all the wood was moved to the back, I decided to walk around and take some before pictures of the back yard. The yard had actually not started it's 'jungle phase' as of yet, so it doesn't look too bad in these pictures, but soon enough the weeds grew and grew. Below are/were my sheds *sigh*, more on that later.

The previous owner had these random shrubs and rose bushes throughout the back yard, with no rhyme or reason, well none that I could figure out anyway. But my rose bush patience was completely spent with the last place I lived, so they HAD to go! Luckily the young men needed a service project so I promptly offered up my yard!

Rose bushes gone! yippie!

Along side the fence were these Heathers and a random boxwood, just one *shaking head*, don't ask me, but the real puzzler was the cactus. When I moved in that cactus was three feet above the fence line and about 15 feet wide! No kidding! The thing was a monster! We hacked away at that thing, but it had 9 lives. It just kept coming back. In the picture below you can just make out the remaining stumps, but before the stumps were actually removed it produced cactus paddles 3 feet long!

*note to self: NEVER ever plant a cactus!*

So now the real work begins, no, not the labor.... the 'Bonnie's got to make up her mind' part, and that was hard. Just where is everything going to go? Let's think about that.....

Garden 101

As many of you know, I have wanted a vegetable garden for years, but have lacked the motivation... well I was just plain lazy. Oh, I tried to do it the quick and easy way... containers, was successful with two tomato plants at one point but neglect and lack of attention usually became my worst enemy. I had many excuses mind you, but regardless, the result was still the same... brown, whithered plant stems.

But, this year is different! This year, I have an awesome support system that won't let me neglect my garden! And to keep the fire lit beneath me!

I started small, just so I could start... I mean I HAD to do something! I had two half wine barrels sitting here, so I promptly set in to plant strawberries! Yippie! Strawberries! They looked so awesome and the kids helped and were excited.... unfortunately so were the stray cats. They really thought the new little box I planted for them was pretty cool! *sigh* OK, next idea... consult the advisers! Advisor 1 suggested *insert Indian(middle east, not American) type music*, 'If you build it up, they will not come'. So I headed off to Ace, where I promptly bought green bamboo sticks, bird netting and staples, for my staple gun.

I got home and quickly made a netted 'wall' around my strawberries! Mission accomplished! Cats stayed out! And we were excited..... unfortunately so were the birds! To set the scene, every morning Zack and I would head out to look at our wonderful strawberry plants. And for a 4 year old I'll let you know he was being quite patient. We had been keeping our eye on one particular strawberry that was an 'early bloomer'. One morning, this strawberry looked just about ready, so I promised Zackery that when we got home from school/work he could pick and eat our very first strawberry. There was much excitement in the air. As soon as I picked him up from pre-school all he could talk about was that strawberry! We couldn't get home soon enough. He jumped out of the car and ran to the backyard with me following close behind. When we reached the barrel... the look on that poor boys face.... *sigh*.... you see a bird had eaten our precious strawberry! Zack was devastated! (think rain scene from Shawshank Redemption where Tim Robbins stares up into the sky)

I guess when you get rid of the cats hanging around then other guests move in. And this wasn't your average bird either... he got pretty smart, (remember I did use BIRD netting). That silly bird would flutter around the edge of the barrel, land, then push the netting so he could reach the ripe strawberry. Long story short (too late), there were several attempts at keeping that nasty robin out of the strawberries. The above scene, happened twice more! grrrrr...

But now as you can see, I have grown wiser and we have been enjoying fresh strawberries regularly. Now the only problem with our strawberries is trying to make them last until we get inside... this doesn't happen often, especially when Zack is around!

And that robin? Well, he's still around. Just saw him again yesterday... but he hasn't figured out how to get to our strawberries..... yet!

That's enough for today, I will continue the garden drama later this week, hopefully by Wednesday. But here's a preview.....

Well, strawberries are fine and all, but I need more!

But what to do? Before I was limited (yes, one of my excuses) because I was just a renter.... but THIS, this is MY house, and I can do what I want! Right? Right! So I decided to build a raised garden bed. I mulled around different ideas, rock walls, cinder block, pressure treated wood, but finally settled on redwood. The kids and I spent a lot of time walking the aisles at Home Depot and Lowes. I even walked around taking pictures of price tags and wood with my phone. *rolling eyes* I had some strange excitement building up inside me, and pictures of planks of wood on my cell phone was some how going to help. Lol