Reclaiming the Land

Here be kale, romaine lettuce, and wildflowers.

Reclaiming the Land

This will be our third summer in our current residence. We have plenty of room for a garden. We’ve had good intentions to plant one. But two years ago we didn’t plan properly and then I tore a tendon in my ankle anyway. We were not up to the task of gardening. Last year we had a baby. There was no time to think about planting anything. So the weeds grew and grew and grew. And I cut them down but never seemed to keep up. This year I am reclaiming the land.

Taming the Wilds

I wish I could say I have fully subdued the land by now. I haven’t made as much progress as I had hoped. But I’m still on track. I need to get several things planted over the next week before I start falling behind the prime planting time.

Here’s what I’ve accomplished so far:

I planted morning glory seeds along our front porch. There are two varieties: Crimson Rambler and Clarke’s Heavenly Blue. Of course, I want to call that Dick Clark’s Heavenly Blue. Most of the seeds sprouted and it looks like they are going to do well.

I planted two yellow rose bushes by our back patio. These are the New Day variety. Or as I think of them, the New Doris Day variety. One bush has lots of new branches and leaves already. But I’m concerned about the other one. No leaves yet.

I planted a raspberry bush. I would hardly call it a “bush” right now. It’s more like a stick. When I took it out of the package, half the stem fell off. But a few inches remained and the roots looked good. Every day I coax it along: “Come on, little stick. You can do it. If you have the faith of a mustard seed you can grow into a giant raspberry bush and fill the whole yard… And then I wouldn’t have to cut the grass anymore and we can cook raspberry pie all day and sell pies to everyone and they would be happy and I would get rich. Come on, little stick!”

I cleared out a corner of our back yard that has been nothing but jungle of weeds previously (see photo above). I hoed and raked and picked out stones. Then I planted kale and romaine lettuce with a row of wildflowers along the fence. Only I ran out of wildflower seed and couldn’t cover the whole length of the fence. I’ll have to get more seeds and remedy that. We’ve had some good rain lately and those seeds have begun to sprout. We will have plenty of greens for our Paleo endeavors.

Enter the Beasts

Lest I give to rosy of a picture, I will tell you that there is trouble in paradise. This trouble is in the form of groundhogs. There is no mention of groundhogs in the Garden of Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve. But I would bet my whole crop of kale that those critters became a thorn in Adam’s side real soon after things went to hell. These beasts love to eat gardens.

Last year I did plant sunflowers. I started them indoors and then planted them outside when they were a few inches tall and the weather was warm enough. The next day every single sunflower plant was eaten. Soon thereafter I saw a groundhog lazily eating weeds in my yard. Damn that beast!

I don’t feel real great about this, but I used a pellet gun to get rid of that groundhog last year. This year there has been no activity around the hole where he was living. However, there’s another hole at the back of our property this year. Again, not feeling real good about it, I put an end to a groundhog out back. I filled in his hole. But two days later another hole was opened near the same spot. So the battle continues and I continue to feel rotten about killing these critters. But I also don’t want my garden eaten.

Plans for the Land

I have two additional sections of the backyard which I intend to prepare for planting. I’m planning on planting corn, green beans, butternut squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, thyme, oregano, basil, and some flowers. These need to be done within the next several days.

In June I will be planting a good sized section of sunflowers at the back of our property. As well, there is another area near the back where I intend to plant pumpkins. It will be a great pumpkin patch and we will await the arrival of the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It will be wonderful.

The Dead Stink Bug Band

Meanwhile on the windowsill during toddler story time at our local library…

He was dead. Dead as a stink bug in a library. I poked him a little to make sure.

I’ll have to keep going to story time to monitor how long the carcass remains on the sill.

Migraine Season

“3 AM” – 18″ x 24″, oil pastels, watercolor on paper (2016)

It must be migraine season. After three months without one, I’ve now had two in this first week of May. When it rains, it pours. This one got me at 2:30 AM.

The weather may actually be the culprit. We’ve had some rainy days lately. If there’s any consistent pattern of a migraine trigger for me, it’s changes in weather. Specifically, it’s the change from low pressure rainy periods to high pressure clear weather periods. After the rain clears and the sky is clear or has clouds that are thin and miles high, that seems to be a prime time for my head to cave in. A high pressure system did move in sometime during the night.

Before waking up at 2:30 AM, I had a dream that there was a light shining in my left eye. The odd thing was that I could only see that light when I closed my eye. When I opened it, the light wasn’t there. I puzzled over this in the dream. Then I woke up to “see” that I had an aura going on. I say “see” in quotes because the aura is there whether I open or close my eyes. Is that really “seeing?” The mildly unnerving aspect of waking up at night with an aura is that it makes me question whether my eyes are really open or not. Am I even awake or am I still dreaming?

When I notice an aura in my “vision,” I take migraine medicine as soon as possible. But at 2:30 in the morning, I didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of swallowing those big capsules. They aren’t as bad as the big chalky pills I used to take. (You can read about how I nearly choked to death on one of those while at work: “Super Bowl Sunday/Death by Migraine.”) I just didn’t have the energy to get out of bed to get the capsules. The baby woke up at that time too. My wife changed him and got him back to sleep. I had difficulty getting back to sleep and contemplated getting up to make coffee. But what would I do downstairs alone in the middle of the night? So I just stayed in bed slowly morphing into a zombie and eventually falling asleep.

At this point in the day, I’m doing okay. I’ve had two cups of coffee (so far). I’ve had eggs and toast for breakfast. I feel a bit worn out. My head doesn’t hurt all that bad. I’ve been able to get some work done and write this blog post. Looks like I’ll live.

As for the artwork above, it was created after having a middle-of-the-night migraine a few years ago. That piece was accepted into an exhibit at Atlantic Healthcare Systems last year. I was honored that the piece was used on the exhibit flyers. You can view the exhibit catalog here.

More of my migraine art can be found at http://www.doodlesam.com/blog/migraine-art/. Here are a few pieces that I drew after nighttime migraines.

“5 AM” – drawing in private journal (2008)
“Clock Strikes Migraine” – drawing in private journal (2010)
“Axed” – drawing in private journal (2011)

Some Mornings

Some mornings are just like that…

Some mornings, I get up and the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and the William Tell Overture is floating softly through the hills.

Like in this video:

But some mornings things go awry right from the get-go.

Like this morning when I heard the baby waking up and I promptly went to the kitchen to prepare a delicious wholesome bottle for the child. I would let the bottle warm while I went to his room to greet him, William Tell emanating from the very earth around us. I would change his diaper and freshen his bottom before he had a chance to fret. He would smile at his daddy. I would smile back. He would smile again.

I pulled the bottle out of the fridge and in one swift motion the damn thing slipped from my grasp and propelled itself toward the floor like a Grade-A-Vitamin-D-Added-Homogenized Kamikaze!

“Oh, fffffffffffudge!!!!!!”

“Only I didn’t say fudge. I said THE word. The big one. The queen mother of dirty words. The F-dash-dash-dash word.”

Like this:

I threw up my hands in defeat. Then I threw in the towel. Literally. Hell, I threw in multiple towels.

The baby? Oh, he went back to sleep for another hour.

I don’t blame him.

This situation reminds me of “Super Moist Fat Tuesday.” Incidentally, I have a migraine as I did that day too. Spilling copious amounts of liquids must be a migraine symptom. I’m good at it, apparently.