Identity Crisis

In my lifetime there are many things I thought I knew about myself, or the way my life was going to go. Like how I never wanted children, would graduate in four years from UK, would never enjoy frugal living, wouldn't dream of having savings accounts and investments and by now I'd have gone to Europe at least once and met some beautiful Greek man of my dreams. I would also never do things like garden or work my hands through a container of cow shit.

Oh how life makes liars of us all.

It goes without saying that I am most definitely not the person the 16 year old version of myself thought I would be. And I would say I've embraced these changes in myself and my attitude towards life. My biological clock is ticking, I'm perfectly fine with being a 5th year Senior, I love saving money, can't wait to have investments, and Greek men are no longer my idea of perfection.

However, I can't say I've embraced the goings on of the past two weekends. And today as I was elbow deep in compost and topsoil I whispered to myself, "I don't even know you anymore."

I can tell you this little "hobby" of mine is time consuming, body ache consuming, and pocketbook consuming. But I am loving it. Every single, dirty-icky-disgusting cow manure filled minute of it.


Last weekend I finished the bird retreat. This weekend I put the final touches in by planting various little plants, not visible to the naked eye yet, and finally putting the container together for the dogwood.






I then proceeded to "what the hell, let's go for it" and put together a small garden. Without a tiller, might I add. Saturday I drug my mother to Cheeks Produce in Elk Creek and bought 16 beautiful tomato plants. I picked up three squash plants today and a cucumber bush to complete the ensemble. I worked the ground the old fashioned way, added soil and compost, planted and added the weed-ex lining. I ran out of mulch to finish the top, but pretend it's all covered.






And when I was done with all of that I decided I wasn't done yet, so I dug a hole for my Redbud tree (yes, the one I dug up myself), staked it into the ground, mulched it and stood back to enjoy the view.





And while I'm tired, overworked and underpaid and no longer know myself I have decided in the end it is all worth it. Especially when I can sit back and watch these little critters:

Before and After

I worked hard all weekend long to finally reap the rewards of my little backyard makeover project. On one hand I can count the number of things I've planted in my lifetime, they all happened on Saturday.

I am so thrilled with the end result. Not because I think it's some kind of masterpiece, but because it's all a product of my hard work. It's a very satisfying and rewarding thing to be done with.

Here is the before, a tiny space that housed two shepherd hooks with feeders on them. All in all it worked wonderfully as a space to attract the birds.



However.

This:



Is so much more amazing.

When everything starts really taking root and spreading out I imagine it's only going to get more amazing. I can't wait.

And yes, I sat on the patio waiting for the first birds to arrive after I filled the feeders. It took about 5 minutes!

The Details:

• The tree is a flowering dogwood, which according to my research does well in containers.
• We can't plant the tree there due to a lateral field in the backyard, so the only option was container planting.
• There is a dogwood bush in the back, on each side of that a compact holly.
• The white shrubs on each end are azaleas.
• All of the flowers, except for the red petunias, are perrenials...including English Daisies, Salvias and others I can't recall the names of.
• Clematis is the only thing missing, it will grow up the trellis.
• Oh and I suppose Mulch is missing as well, I simply haven't bought it yet.

Happy

I spent much of my time this past Winter writing about how much I hate Winter. Or how unhappy I was. Or how much I couldn't stand another cold day.

I've come to realize that while I devoted much time to the bad side of things, I've yet to devote that much to the good stuff. The good stuff deserves its own post. There are many things to be happy about now that the weather is fantastic and my mood has lifted. Let me indulge.

I'm happy about stopping to smell the roses. Or flowers of any sort. Planting, and relishing in the feeling of renewal.

I'm happy about Orange Crush in glass bottles. All sticky and sweet and refreshing.

I'm happy about flip flops in fresh cut grass and pink toenails.

I'm happy about sunglasses and UV rays and chilling in the warm glow of a sunny day.

I'm happy about warm puppies.

But most of all, I'm happy about feeling so good.

And that pink toenails in squishy sand is just 7 weeks away.

Hard to be unhappy when faced with this prospect.

Redbud

One of the casualties of this Backyard Makeover project is that I tend to exhibit my father's traits when undertaking a project of this magnitude: go on full throttle until something is done, over-exert myself and then spend days recovering from it all.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the project itself that kept me running all weekend despite pretty fair warning signs that all was not well with my body. Whatever the case, while I was hurting yesterday, nothing comes close to the pain I've experienced this lovely Monday.

If I may vent...

Every single step I take hurts. My legs are aching, my back is killing me, the palms of my hands and heels of my feet are sore, and my poor shoulders are wishing they didn't belong to me anymore.

I'm miserable.

I've managed to pop nearly every available painkiller in this house: Aleve, Advil, Tylenol. Nothing has so much as dulled the pain. I'm sort of longing for the early days of Dad's health problems when he had a cabinet full of narcotics.

Which is why earlier I approached him with an idea. I'll simply insert a tube into his abdomen and siphen off some morphine from out of his pump.

Brilliant, right?

Yeah. He was less than thrilled with the thought.

So until I score something on the street (kidding) (kind of) I'm at a bit of an impasse with the retreat/sanctuary. Or at least until I finish buying what I need at Garden Ridge tomorrow and decide where I want everything.

If you check out my Flickr Photostream you can see some initial work on the retreat thing. Trust that it is bigger than appears in the photos and that no plant or birdfeeder in those pictures is where it will end up...probably.

In the meantime here is a picture of what probably did me in this weekend.

You see, my favorite tree in the whole world is a Redbud that resides in the frontyard of my childhood home. For years I've told my parents that their current house is simply bare without a Redbud.

And for years my father has reminded me how much he hates to mow around trees. In a fit of stupidity yesterday I treked off into the woods near my house with a couple of willing 13 year olds to find (and dig up ourselves) a Redbud tree.

Turns out, when your daughter arrives home with a Redbud she dug up herself you kind of have no choice but to get over your problem with mowing around trees and plant the damn thing.

Becoming One with Nature

When I was four years old my mother sent me outside on a post-rainy day and made me play in the mud. When everyone else's mothers were chiding them about staying clean, mine was forcing me to get a little dirty.

She claims mud builds character.

It goes without saying that despite her best efforts, I've never become friends with dirt. I happen to think it is everything we say it is: dirty, nasty, grimy, filthy, disgusting, and mighty gross to have stuck underneath fingernails.

And up until this weekend I've managed to spend the eighteen years since I was four avoiding it.

You see, it all began a few weeks ago when I got the brilliant idea to expand our bird retreat, or sanctuary...I haven't decided on what to call it yet, into a rectangular backyard masterpiece.

Why yes, I have been watching a little too much HGTV lately.

But that's besides the point. The real story here is that I decided upon this retreat officially on Thursday night. By Friday morning I was spray painting the area to mark for digging. SPRAY PAINTING. There is like no turning back at that point.

Roughly an hour into digging the sod out of the ground I realized it might have been easier to own a garden tiller. Another half hour and one google search later and I figured out that was $200 I probably wasn't going to talk anyone into spending.

At some point in the day I ended up at a nursery and Meijers with my Mom spending that same $200 I couldn't talk anyone into for a garden tiller on various perennials, shrubs, trees, bird feeders and soil.

And by that night I was on my hands and knees in the mud digging up this rectangle in our yard.

The same mud I've spent most of my life despising.

I've never been so dirty in all of my 22 years. Nobody else has ever witnessed me so dirty. The neighbor kids were in awe. My father couldn't believe his eyes. And my mother?

My Mom was proud.

22 years of trying and her daughter finally got into the mud, willingly.

22 years and I'm thinking I need my head checked.

(The "project" is still not finished. I'll have more of my "Backyard Makeover" tomorrow. Maybe. If I can still move in the morning.)

(For the record: I still hate mud.)