And the Creek Don’t Rise

May 24, 2021 — Pat Bertram

There’s a flood warning today for the area, though despite the title of this piece, it’s not a creek that’s rising but a river. Since there’s been no rain, the higher level of water must be runoff from the distant mountains. Odd to think that although we can’t even see them from here, the mountains can still affect us. The flood watch notwithstanding, I’d be surprised if there were any flooding in the area, but who knows. This has been a time of surprises — good surprises.

Yesterday I got a call from one of my erstwhile dance classmates. I haven’t talked with her since I moved here, so it was a wonderful surprise to be able to talk with her and to catch up on all our news. She’s been reading my blog, and because she wants to get out of the state (geographical not emotional) she’s in, she thought this place might be a good fit for her. It would be, too, except for one thing — doctors. Anyone with any issues has to take a two-hour drive to get to specialists. Oh, there is a part-time doctor here, and there is a hospital in the next town over, but I’m not sure how good that hospital is or what sort of services they provide because almost everyone I know who has ended up there has been transferred to a bigger hospital in a bigger city.

It’s too bad her brief thought of moving here won’t come to fruition — it would have been nice to have someone to practice our dances with. Assuming, that is, my knees ever get healed enough to do the gyrations necessary for both belly dance and Hawaiian dancing. (Except for that, my knees are doing well; the exercises I’ve found seem to be helping.) But oh, I do miss dancing!

Another surprise came today. I went out my front door, planning to go to the library, and I saw a neighbor cutting the weeds in the right-of-way between my sidewalk and the street. (Around here, they call that area a “parkway,” but to me, a parkway is wide strip of park-like greenery dividing a street.)

I am so delighted! I do have a string weed trimmer, but that thing and I don’t get along very well. Besides, it would have taken several reels of string to do a halfway decent job and taken me a whole heck of a lot longer than it took him with his industrial weed cutter.

And as a final surprise, the forecast was right, and the winds have died down. Ah, the lovely stillness.

So see, although it would be a surprise if the “creek” rose, it wouldn’t fit with these other surprises. With my luck (all good at the moment), I don’t expect there to be any problem.

Actually, the Creek really won’t rise. Supposedly the saying, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise,” originated during the Creek Wars of the early nineteenth century. The Muscogee Nation, descended from the historic Creek Confederacy, is nowhere near here, so the chances of an uprising in this area (or any area?) are surprisingly slim. My luck really is holding!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

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Seasons Out of Season

May 23, 2021 — Pat Bertram

It’s been very windy the past few weeks, as well as rainy, but starting around seven this evening, the wind is supposed to die down. The rains are also supposed to be leaving us for a while.

What this has to do with anything in my life, I’m not really sure, except that I get to experience the flow of the seasons. Or more accurately, the flow of seasons when they’re out of season. Except for the relatively cool temperatures, it has seemed more like July monsoon season around here. Many recent days were pleasant in the morning, with the winds bringing rain (and more wind) in the afternoon and evening.

But then, the seasons have always been out of whack in Colorado. I remember Christmases when I was young that were so warm, we played outside in the sun without coats. I remember Easters that were so wintery, our Easter finery was buried beneath snowsuits or heavy coats and leggings. (Leggings today are merely footless tights. Leggings in my youth were heavy wool pants worn beneath skirts for the trek to school or church to keep our legs from freezing.)

I’m looking forward to the quiet (and the lack of headaches) that comes from still air. No creaking branches on neighborhood trees that sound as if they will be breaking any minute. No roaring gusts of wind. No windchimes. Just . . . quiet.

Even so, except for perhaps a few hours in the early morning or an occasional overheated day when one desperately hopes for a breeze, it’s never really still out here on the plains. There are no mountains to act as windbreaks, no hills or forests, though luckily, the winds aren’t as fierce in town. Also luckily, my circadian rhythm now tends to favor the dawn. (That’s not my preference. I prefer to sleep in, but my body senses the rising sun, and that’s the end of any possibility of shut-eye.) It’s probably smart, anyway, to do my outside summer chores in those cooler hours. I certainly don’t need to be pulling weeds when the temperatures climb into the nineties and hundreds

But that’s not something I need to think about now. Today, I just need to hold on for another few hours. Then the dangerous winds will die down, and I will have a semblance of peace . . . for a while, anyway.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Showing My Life

May 22, 2021 — Pat Bertram

People often express concern about my posting photos of my house and my yard. They think I am setting myself up for theft or home invasion or some such, and perhaps that’s true. However, most people who read this blog don’t know exactly where I live — in fact, most live in distant parts of the United States or in other countries — and those who do know where I live, know because they have actually been to the house. Despite that, I realize anyone can find anyone nowadays, probably with just a few keystrokes, so it behooves all of us to be careful.

In a way, posting photos works in my favor because although my rooms look inviting, it’s quite obvious there’s nothing of value in the house. The furniture is old, handed down from relatives; the kitchenware was inexpensive when I bought it decades ago; and whatever tools I have are both handed down and inexpensive. Still, when it comes to a more expensive tool (expensive compared to old rakes and shovels, but still relatively cheap), such as the lawn mower I use, I make sure not to post any photos, though truly, that’s not the sort of thing that goes missing around here. The tools people like to steal are the sort they can pocket and perhaps pawn — or maybe even pawn off on an unsuspecting buyer.

I am careful, though, at least as careful as I know how to be. If I were to go on a trip, I wouldn’t talk about it until I returned home again. It really is nuts the way people post their vacation photos while they are away, as if to tell the world, “No one’s home. Feel free to break into my house.”

I did post photos when I took my cross-country trip, but even then, I waited until I’d moved to my next stop before I posted the previous stop’s photos on the off chance (the off, off, off chance) that someone would be stalking me. At the time, I had no home, so it didn’t matter if people knew I was away, but I had enough people telling me how dangerous it was for a woman to travel alone that I took a few precautions. I’m glad nothing dire happened, and even more than that, I’m glad I took the trip. Although I thought that trip would be the first of many, it turned out to be the first of merely a few. I tend to think my traveling days are now over, especially since I spent my travel money on a garage. But truly, if I do ever take off, I won’t be announcing to the world that my house is empty.

Still, whether I heed people’s warnings or continue showing my life, I do appreciate the concern. It’s nice to know people care.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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If At First You Don’t Succeed

May 21, 2021 — Pat Bertram

My brother left a lawnmower here the last time he visited, almost two years ago. I’m sure he planned to come back and help with the yard whenever he traveled this way, but then The Bob intervened, and he hasn’t been back.

Last year, it was so dry, I didn’t have to worry about a lawn. To be honest, I have no lawn to worry about even now, but last year I didn’t even have any weeds in the yard, so the lawnmower just sat immobile.

Well, this year, with all the rain, the weeds are growing rampant. Even a bit of grass is growing. And it all needed to be cut back. For some reason, I felt nervous about using the machine since I’d never used it and didn’t remember how. Still, I dragged out the lawnmower, found the manual my brother left with me, and proceeded to read the instructions. The machine had been put into storage mode, meaning it was locked and folded and set in an upright position to get it out of the way. It took me a while to find all the right parts, first in the manual and then on the machine, and get it back to working condition.

I thought I’d read the instructions properly, but when I tried mowing, the blades never engaged. I called my brother to see if he could figure out what I was doing wrong, but he didn’t have the time right then. So I went back and read the instructions again.

And then it clicked. Literally. I had to push this button, pull that lever, and like magic, the thing turned on and I managed to get my weeds aka “my lawn” mowed.

No wonder the thought of mowing the lawn made me nervous. I’m out of the practice of concentrating, and it takes concentration to read instruction manuals and try to decipher the graphics.

It just goes to show, if at first you don’t succeed, read the instructions, and if you still don’t succeed, read them again.

My next venture will be to see if I can figure out the string trimmer. The right-of-way between the sidewalk and the street is overgrown with woody weeds and tall tree sprouts growing out of the roots of a tree that had been chopped down, and it all needs to be cut back, but that’s a project for another day.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

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Garden Surprises

May 20, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I was cleaning away weeds this morning when I discovered a patch of mushrooms. It’s always a treat — and a surprise — to find any sort of mushroom or toadstool in Colorado due to the generally dry climate. But so far, this spring has been anything but dry.

Although most of my wild roses are gone for the year, I did find a couple of yellow roses still clinging to their branches — another lovely surprise!

Then there is the candy bouquet flowers that I planted in a hanging pot. I doubt it’s the best place for the plant when it comes to enough sun or shade, but so far, it seems to be doing well.

And the final surprise is the new growth on the green-gage plum tree. The tree was a six foot tree, but except for a small sprout near the graft, the tree died.

I don’t really want to get another six-footer to plant in its place because this one seems to be doing well, but then, if I’d wanted a six-inch tree, I could have paid a whole lot less for the tree. For now, I’m just waiting to see what happens. I wonder if I could root the twig when it gets older so I can have my six-inch tree as well as a replacement 6-foot tree? I’m not sure why the tree needed to be grafted in the first place. Maybe because it’s really a bush? There’s so much to learn!

Luckily, I have the time to figure it all out.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Rainy Days and Cloudy Skies

May 19, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Rainy days and Mondays . . .

And Tuesdays. And Wednesdays. And probably Thursdays and Fridays, too.

Unlike what the song intimates, all those things don’t get me down, but recently, the days been cloudy enough that if I had a tendency to get depressed from cloudy days and rain, this certainly would have been the time. Luckily, I don’t have that problem, though I do have another problem, sort of an odd one. Many plants either need full sun or some shade, and when there’s no sunshine, it’s hard to know where the plants should go.

You’d think after two years and two months living here in this house, I’d know where the sunny and shady spots in the yard are, but those spots move. What’s shady in the winter is full sun in the summer. And vice versa.

I’d planned a container garden to go in a triangular area between my house and the back ramp. I couldn’t put it there because the workers hadn’t yet finished graveling that area, which turned out to be a good thing. It’s almost always in the shade (at least from what I remember back when we had sunny days), and the plants I bought need full sun. So I put the containers on either side of my garage door, thinking they will get sun in the afternoon. The trouble is, since it’s cloudy every afternoon, I can’t tell how much sun the plants would get. I do know that area is shaded by the garage in the morning; I figure that in itself should tell me the plants won’t get full sun, so today I moved the containers to what I hope is a sunny location.

I have to laugh at how I almost outsmarted myself. I put gravel at the bottom of the containers to help with drainage and to make the pots heavy enough not to get blown over in the high winds we often get, and they were almost too heavy for me to move. If they’d been any heavier, I’d have had to ask for help. (It’s not that I have a problem asking for help, but I do have a problem with waiting around for help to arrive when I am focused on getting something done, so it’s generally easier to do things myself.)

Apparently, without knowing what I was doing, I got the dahlia in the right place because it is doing well. Such a cheery color! Next time I’m by the hardware store I’ll check to see if they have any more. I do enjoy seeing spots of color in my yard.

We’re supposed to have a few rain-free days, which will be nice. The drainage in this town is terrible — I had to walk several extra blocks out of my way yesterday to be able to go the two blocks from where I live to where I work because so many of the streets, gutters, and sidewalks were awash with rainwater. Hip boots would have helped, for sure!

It’s funny that new people who come to town always try to get things changed, such as painting murals or setting out trash containers or opening even more pot shops than are already here, but no one addresses the drainage issue. I tried. I even went to some town council meetings when the new mayor was setting out his objectives. The matter was actually brought up by other people so I didn’t have to be one of those people who move to town and immediately try to change things. Although everyone at the meeting agreed there is a problem and that the standing water exacerbates the mosquito problem, nothing is being done. I suppose it’s too expensive — it would be something the town would have to pay for, while those who paint murals do it on their own dime.

But I’m getting off track here. The point is . . . hmm. I’m not sure. Rainy days and cloudy skies and lack of sunshine and gardening, I suppose.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

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Watching Things Grow

May 18, 2021 — Pat Bertram

The problem with a wet spring is that the weeds are everywhere, and they grow like . . . well, like weeds. If it would dry out enough, I could mow the weeds in the yard to give me a semblance of a lawn, but in some areas of my property, I have to dig them up by hand. The biggest culprit is the end of the driveway. The driveway slants down to a gravel bed, which is nice, but at the end of the gravel is a depression where water and weeds gather. You’d think this was a swampy part of the state the way the things are proliferating, but unfortunately, when the dry heat of summer hits, it won’t make much difference. It will slow the growth somewhat, but these are all-purpose weeds. They will grow no matter what.

Even though the depression on the edge of the driveway is outside my property line according to the surveyor, the building inspector and code enforcer go by a different measure — the utility poles — so it should be possible to extend the driveway out a bit more to meet the graveled alley. I can take care of the weeds now, but as I get older, I sure as heck am not going to want to be pulling up weeds for hours on end. I suppose I could poison them, but I really don’t want to resort to such drastic measures, so I’m hoping that graveling them over will solve that particular problem.

On a more positive note, the constantly wet soil is giving the old seeds I planted a chance to germinate. The radishes are coming up in clumps, so it won’t be long before I have to thin them. Even more than having to get rid of weeds, I dislike having to pull up perfectly good seedlings. Maybe, if they aren’t too close, I can try to transplant some of them. Or leave them be. The radishes probably wouldn’t grow big enough to eat, but the green swath sure would be pretty.

Surprisingly, the Pee Gee hydrangea bushes the Arbor Day Foundation sent me in thanks for a small donation are all doing well.

They are tiny and perhaps fragile, but they did survive the winter, so that’s especially good. It’s amazing to me that any gift from them is growing because the bare root trees they send with a membership are notorious for not doing well. Mine all died, as did three of the five lilacs I got at another time. (I thought all were dead, so I planted other lilac sprigs in the same area, and two of the lilacs decided to come back to life.)

When the bushes grow up — the lilacs and the hydrangeas — it will help with some of the weed growth because the bushes take up a lot of room.

Meantime, I enjoy watching anything grow, even weeds, as long as they don’t encroach too much on areas where they could be damaging.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Small Town Living

May 17, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Some days, like today, seem quintessentially small town — not just the blue skies, the slight breeze, the friendliness of the people, but all of it, good and bad.

I was out walking my errands (no more “running” errands for me!) when I saw I woman I know weeding her property. I made some fatuous comment about it looking as if she were having fun, then we talked for a bit. She mentioned that a high school senior girl had been beaten to death by her boyfriend, which shocked me. That sort of extreme behavior doesn’t seem to fit this area, though I suppose bad things can happen anywhere. Still, we expressed horror at the girl’s fate, wished each other well, and continued on with our respective tasks.

I dropped my books off at the library and was pleased to note that the library hours will be extended starting next month. It won’t change anything for me if they open earlier or stay open later because I usually go mid-morning, but it’s still good to see that some things are returning to normal.

Then I stopped by my mechanic’s shop to ask about my brakes. The brakes worked normally when I left his place last Friday, but on the way home, they stopped working completely, and I wondered if the broken part he was going to replace could have caused the breakdown. (Dare I say brakedown?) He thought the part he ordered for the rear brakes would solve the problem, but I’m not so sure. When I got home from my errands, I noticed a large stain by my front passenger tire. At first I thought the garage roof might have leaked, though I couldn’t understand how that could happen with a new roof, but then it occurred to me it could be brake fluid. So perhaps there are two things wrong with the brakes? He’ll be able to see the stain when he comes to pick up the car after the part arrives, which will help him diagnose the problem. That sort of delivery service isn’t something he normally provides, but when I told him how scary it was to drive without brakes, he said he’d come get the car. Whew! What a relief.

After leaving to the mechanic, I continued to the house I am looking after for friends to make sure everything is okay and to water the plants. A neighbor of theirs hailed me when I left the house, and asked how our friends were. I told them the latest information I had — that the woman was bedridden from advanced cancer, but that the doctors thought they might be able to help her regain a bit of strength. The neighbor expressed sympathy, and when I remarked about how young our friend was to be dealing with an end-stage disease, the woman told me about the high school girl who lived across the street from her who had just committed suicide.

I’m assuming the girl is the same one my first contact mentioned because two unrelated horrific deaths at the same time in such a small-town strains credulity. I don’t know the truth of the girl’s story, obviously, and I’m not sure who does, but it doesn’t matter. Either way, if any part of it is true, the poor girl is beyond help and her parents are devastated.

I don’t mean to sound gossipy, though on rereading this, I can see that I’m doing nothing but being gossipy. Still, that was sort of the point of this piece — to illuminate the good and the not-so-good of small-town living.

I finished my errands — as well as impulse bought some more plants — with no more gossipy encounters, then returned home and wore myself out putting the plants to bed. I potted some of the plants, which was fun because I got to use the counters in my garage as a potting table.

The counters were on the enclosed back porch when I got here, leftover from the old kitchen, I surmise, and they fit perfectly beneath the window in my garage.

It’s probably a good thing I go to work tomorrow. That way, I’ll have something else to think about besides women and girls who have to face their ends too soon, and I’ll have something else to do besides wear myself out playing gardener.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

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Gardening As Exercise

May 16, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Gardening is often touted as good exercise, though when I was young and able to run and hike and even lift weights, I didn’t understand why it would be so.

Well, now I do understand. I spent a couple of hours this morning pulling weeds and digging a few holes for planting, and I could barely do anything the rest of the day because everything between my ankles and neck hurt. It’s possible the aches have more to do with my relative lack of exercise lately than the gardening itself, but it does show me that gardening can work a variety of muscles as well as beautifying a yard.

Most of my yard is still a mess. There are bare spots that were torn up by the various machinery used by the workers I hired. They are supposed to bring in fill dirt, but haven’t done it yet. That’s only one of the many things they haven’t done, but I have hopes that some year they will finish all they promised.

Meantime, I am planting bushes, trees, shrubs, flowers — whatever vegetation I can get my hands on.

When I bought the house, a relative who has experience designing gardens volunteered to do the landscaping. She did all sorts of research, and I was excited when she finally came, expecting her to help me work on the yard. But no. She wanted to . . . actually, looking back, I don’t know what she wanted to do. All I know is that she shrugged off the yard with a simple sentence, telling me that planting can’t be started until the hard things are in place.

I paused here to look that up online, belatedly wondering if she were leading me on, but apparently, she was right. Topping a to-do list of landscape design essentials is that you have to do all the hardscaping before you set any plants in place.

Even assuming that the hardscaping is the first step, that’s not how I’m going about things. I’ve been told I’m contrary. I’ve also been told I march to a different drummer. To me, it’s not about either of those things but doing what I can when I can.

Even before the fence went up, I started transplanting lilac seedlings from a neighbor’s yard. (With his permission, of course.) I also transplanted some of his larkspur, which have now reseeded themselves for the second spring in a row. In fact, they are filling in the “island” between my two sidewalks. The garden I had originally planted around that area became defunct when the sidewalks went in, or so I thought. Apparently, clearing out the weeds and grass and tilling the soil made the seeds from the original larkspur take hold.

The bushes that are planted along the fence were dug up and transplanted from the area off the alley where the driveway now is. They went in before the pathways — those who laid the rock worked the paths around the plants that were already there.

The same will be done for the rest of the yard. I am creating a swath of garden on the left-hand side of the sidewalks, and eventually, another path will sweep alongside that swath.

There are some parts of the yard that I am not even thinking about at the moment and won’t until a bit more of the hardscaping is done, but it doesn’t matter. I have more to do right now than I can easily accomplish in the next couple of years.

It’s odd — the property doesn’t look all that big, but each small section I am working on seems to loom large. There is no way any one person could landscape this place in a matter of weeks or even months, and I certainly don’t expect that from myself or the people doing the hardscaping. (I like that word, have you noticed? I’d never heard it before, and it’s a fun one.)

This is a project for a lifetime.

I remember reading a story once about a woman who planted a hillside of daffodils — acres of them. People came from miles around to see her hill of daffodils. There was only a single sign in the field, and that said “One at a time.” Apparently, everyone wanted to know how she’d planted so many daffodils, and she must have gotten tired of the question. Hence, the sign.

That’s my gardening philosophy — one at a time. Over the months and years, some things will die, others will take hold, so I’ll have a changing landscape. Meantime, I am learning to accept what grows here and what doesn’t (and how little control I have over either). Except for weeds — that I don’t always accept. Unfortunately, although I like to think everything has the right to grow, I have to draw a line somewhere, and I don’t appreciate anything — or anyone — encroaching on territory that is not theirs. So I pull up whatever encroaching weeds I can. (No poisons. I haven’t crossed that line yet.)

Yesterday a neighbor mentioned that in five years, after everything grows up, I will have a beautiful yard. That’s something worth working toward.

Besides, all that exercise will be good for me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

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More Planting

May 15, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I’d planned to go to a plant nursery in the big city (a joke — it’s actually a small town, but since it’s about four times the size of this town, it seems like a city), but my car is still out of commission. Bizarrely, I can go for years with no car problems, and then I hit a period where one thing after another goes wrong. I started out in February with spark plugs that had burned out even though they were only a few months old. The culprit was the carburetor. So the mechanic ordered a carburetor, and a couple of weeks later, when he received the order, I made an appointment to have him replace it.

As with everything else to do with a vintage vehicle, it wasn’t as easy to install as it would seem. My pervious mechanic had replaced the vacuum ignition with an electronic one. Apparently, the electronic ignition doesn’t “speak” to the carburetor that belongs in my car, so the previous mechanic put in an old, rebuilt carburetor. Not surprising, once the ew carburetor was installed, there were problems with the electronic ignition, necessitating the ordering of another part — a vacuum advance distributor. The part finally came it. I picked up the car a week ago Friday, and it worked perfectly. Except for one little thing. The brake warning light kept coming on.

So yesterday, I had another appointment with the mechanic. We thought it would be a simple matter of perhaps bleeding the brake lines and topping up the brake fluid, but it was more than that — some part on the rear brakes was broken, or at least that’s what I thought he said. On the way home, the part completely broke. Or maybe another part broke because if it was only a part on the rear brakes that was broken, I would have thought the front brakes would still work. Either way, I now have no brakes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the part that broke was very old. I don’t remember ever being without at least some braking power. It’s truly scary driving without brakes, even just inching along. Luckily, I only have to drive a quarter of a mile on side streets to take my car back in when the part is delivered.

Suffice to say, I haven’t been able to get to the nursery, so each of the past couple of days I walked to the local hardware store to pick up a few seedlings to plant. I did the same today, but when they agreed to deliver the plants to me, I bought several — way more than I could carry on foot. Which is good, because now I have several things to plant tomorrow. Which is bad because now I have several things to plant. I’m just being silly. There’s no bad at all, and I am actually looking forward to doing the work.

Last year, I bought a bag of potting soil, and because supposedly it deteriorates, I thought I should use it for sure this year, hence the petunias. To be honest, I’ve never like petunias, but a couple of years ago I saw black petunias (that’s what they’re called, but they are really just a very dark purple), and I became enamored of them. So now I have a few black petunias to call my own.

I also got a few cream-colored petunias to plant with the black for contrast. It’s funny to think I spent all that money to keep from wasting a few dollars-worth of soil, but having to use the soil did give me a reason to buy more plants.

The easiest part of the planting was the hanging plant. All I had to do was hang it on a hook. The pole for the hook was a fence post that got cemented into the foundation of the house. When the old fence was taken out and the new fence around the whole property put in, the post remained. A hook, a bit of cement, and the fencepost became something completely different!

I also have a post on the opposite corner of the house, but the store didn’t have a matching pair of hanging plants, and besides, I ran out of money, so that might be a project for another day.

What was so great about all of this is that I got some plants and I didn’t even need a car to go get them.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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