I kicked my newest born out of the house today. Now don't be alarmed, the kids left sometime before the beginning of this geological age. Today it was time for the Okra and Broccoli to leave the shelter of our dining room.
The weatherman had a little to do with forcing our latest attempt at self-sufficiency to leave the building, but mostly I kicked them out because I finally located my tarp. As those of you who have put up with this collection of mixed tenses and misspelled words for a while are aware, my garage is a mess. Nothing is yet where it should be. Oh, it's clean enough to walk through, but that's just because all the boxes are on the shelves. The problem is, I have very little idea what each box contains. Not to worry - my plan is to look in each box, one at a time as I need stuff. I'll start sometime next winter.
Yesterday, while looking for a missing three piece set of vice-grips, I found my tarp. Well, by golly, that was good enough for me. I've been trying to find it for the last week or so, ever since the plants started to show a pair of healthy leaves. To heck with the vice-grips, I'll find them some other time while looking for something else. I'll fix the loose cabinet door with the stripped screw then.
My tarp is a thing of beauty. It's a real oil treated canvas tarp that I bought over thirty years ago. A tarp like this one goes for $135.00 these days in the 8x12 size I bought for around twenty bucks back then. I know because I just looked it up. Unlike the several blue poly tarps I have purchased every time I needed something a bit larger since then, this puppy has lasted. It's welcomed the challenges of sun, rain, snow and abuse I've heaped upon it since it was new, and asked to be mistreated more often. The only thing it asks of me is to be dry when it's time to be folded and put away. All the new poly ones, you know, the ones that claim to be "Heavy Duty," have been thrown out, shredded and unraveling around the edges, like an old pair of cut off jeans. Modern miracle tarps. Ha - I sneer at the new ones. CCC's I call them - Cheap Chinese Crap.
A moderate-to-severe wind came along last month and broke a bunch of branches off the two Birch trees I suspect are dead. I lopped the smaller stuff off these and was left with five sturdy limbs, each about six feet long, which I intended to use as supports for my tarp to cover the plants against the cold start of the growing season and again later in the year. The limbs are much more pleasing to the eye than a bunch of two by fours or furring strips leaning against the house, in my opinion, and besides, they're too small for the fireplace and too big for the trash can.
Tarp and branches in hand, I placed everything so that it could tightly cover an open space in the flowerbed against the house on the sunny south side. Next I served the eviction notice and carted out the soon to be orphaned plants. Having found my garden trowel last month, while looking for my drill, I was able to use it to dig holes of approximately the correct size and soon had a bunch of potential veggies in the ground.
If they survive the next few weeks, Carolyn and I will be eating in high fashion while the rest of our neighbors are saving their fifty cent pieces to buy less tasty green groceries in the store. They'll never be able to buy anything if all they're saving is nickles and dimes - REAL inflation is running around nine to ten percent these days. Don't believe your government when it tells you inflation is around two percent. Believe me instead; I've got less to gain from lying about it. http://www.cnbc.com/id/42551209
Tomorrow I'll replace the Jiffy-Pots from my starter tray I put into the ground today with new ones and start all over with new seeds. Soon, I'll start feeding the neighbors too, and they can use the fifty cent pieces to buy an ounce or two of gasoline.
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