Find An Assistant Who Can Play Chess In Order to Pass the Time During Winter Storms Gardening Hack #8: Hire an assistant. A good assistant provides companionship, fresh ideas and makes working in the dirt just that much more jovial. (Here we see my garden assistant and sales associate, Mr. Bitterman, taking my daughter to the cleaners using Munchausen's Defense #7. Obviously, he is perplexed by her latest move.) I would have used the dogs, rather than hiring Mr. Bitterman, as they work for kibble, but dogs don't listen, dig holes wherever they damned well please and have turned many of seedlings yellow due to the poor quality of the wine they insist on drinking. So far, they have buried three rawhides in the new garden in the hope of growing a herd of cattle. I do appreciate them for other reasons, though, namely, their friendship, loyalty and the idea that one must turn around three times before lying down. (Thank you, Robert Benchley -- Look him up. This blog owes everything to him.)
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Uncle Joe Finally Discovers His Raison D'etre Gardening Hack #35: Freshen up cranberry juice rehydration aid with more vodka. Skip sweetened lime and cranberry juice. Find that you are talking more sweetly with the seedlings. Finish re-hydration. Gardening Hack #36: Stand on top of your compost pile behind the fence and tell the people passing on the bike path that you're not wearing any pants. Tell police that it must have been your neighbor doing it, because he's all kinds of batshit crazy. Gardening Hack #37: Bend PVC pipes into hoops over garden to facilitate hail protection. Let go of one before fully attached, watch it sail over fence onto the bike path. React to cries of alarm. Hurry into house for more "cranberry juice" and to set up an "I was watching Netflix" alibi. Gardening Hack #38: Order a special ornamental fountain for your garden to give it a personal touch. I got mine online at "allthingsStalin.commie." Gardening Hack #72: Take care in digging to avoid power lines, utility services, water, sewage and any and all animal graveyards about which you have forgotten. (Also, be wary of neighbors who look around your yard suspiciously and say, "We sent Grandma to a farm so she could run and play and live out her golden years in health and happiness. How close to the fence did you say that garden was going to go? Oh, good. Good.") Assemble the tools. You'll need a shovel, a hoe and a pick. Snicker at the word "hoe." A bucket. A trowel. One of those diggers that has lots of screwdrivey looking fingers on it. A pair of real leather work gloves, not the pink ones your wife uses to plant the crocus in the front yard each year which survive for ten minutes before being set upon by fearsome, drooling rodents. A wheelbarrow would be good as well, as would a good supply of cranberry juice, which acts as a fine re-hydrator as the day progresses. It may be a bit bitter, but we can worry about that later. ("Hoes." Heh-heh.) As we consider our first foray into the wonderful world of gardening, let us not forget that fine old joke, "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think." Classic. I laugh myself stupid every damned day. You'll also need clippers, shears, a knife, a square end shovel, different sizes of pitchfork (four three-tine pitchforks, three four-tine pitchforks), a water bucket, hoses, fertilizer, pesticide, deer/rabbit deterrent that smells like working in an industrial chicken coop, Popsicle sticks to remind you where you planted everything that your children will move so that later in the season you're convinced that while your Romas look like Beefsteaks, your Beefsteaks look like Romas, PVC pipe for making hoops over which you can stretch plastic sheeting (see below) during adverse weather (hail, snow, The Rapture), plastic sheeting (see above), twelve 4x6x8 railroad ties with which to build the raised bed, sixteen 1/2"x3' chunks of rebar to hold ties in place, $75 of weed fabric, which after having bought and used, you find in brand new condition in your garage, 18 bricks to hold the fabric in place, 20 bags of 2-cu-foot garden soil (GUARANTEED TO GROW EVERYTHING EXCEPT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT!) to hold the bricks in place and five cubic yards of top quality garden soil to be delivered because you gave yourself a hernia lifting bags of dirt. Now, you are ready to begin. Wait. Seeds. Get some seeds. Now, you're ready to begin. You have now spent $3481.23. If you had gone to Costco, you could have bought all the vegetables you'd ever need for $48.50. But where's the fun in that? Hoes. Heh-heh. Large Amount of Dirt that Missed the Target by a Good 12-Feet Gardening Hack #11: A prominent belly can be a great help in pushing a heavily loaded wheel barrow up a hill. Gardening Hack #12: When you trip over the shovel and go face first into the freshly delivered, high compost garden soil, take a moment and inhale. You may find yourself saying: "Aw, this isn't so bad," as you think of your future as fertilizer. Gardening Hack #13: To smooth out the bitterness of cranberry juice you're using to rehydrate, add a small amount of sweetened lime juice along with high quality vodka. I know this is what we hope for, but the reality is ... Step outside your front door. Feel the beautiful allure of nature wash over you, calling for you to create new life within the soil. Open your heart to the call of your ancestors who farmed the arid plains of Kansas (until the Army chucked them off their farm claiming "national security" because some "goddamned brass hat," according to your Grandfather, wanted a new golf course). Visualize the steps you will take in building raised beds, hauling fresh soil, planting hundreds, if not thousands of little, tiny seeds one at a time to watch them shoost up toward the sun and sky. Suddenly realize "Ben-Hur" is about to start on TCM and tell yourself you'll only watch until the guy in Nazareth complains that Joe's son never did finish the polished maple entertainment center he promised him two weeks ago. Watch entire movie. Fall asleep numerous times. Dream of garden that will begin to shoost up toward the sun and the sky tomorrow. Just to get an early start: Order garden soil by phone. Guess at necessary amount. Order five cubic yards. Have no idea what five cubic yards of anything might entail. |
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