The six new baby chicks have just moved to their outdoor digs during the daytime. It's still too cool at night for them outside. They are practicing their pecking and scratching.
Here's Hilary after she has just finished devastating the monarda patch I've been trying to grow next to the chicken run. Is that a satisfied look on her face?
If he weren't so stupid--I mean simple--I would swear that T. Boone Chickens knows when I'm taking his photo. He always seems to pose and flap his wings for me.
People either get it or they don’t. They either dream of showering outdoors or they think people who want to stand buck nekkid under the water in the great outdoors are nuts. For the record, I belong in the first category.
I am not at my most fragrant and lovely best at the end of a gardening day. In fact, most Saturdays and Sundays—when I do most of my intensive outdoor work—I have to end the day by vacuuming up the dirt, leaves and mulch I inevitably track or sprinkle in the house. And I stink. I definitely channel my peasant roots on weekends.
So an outdoor shower isn’t just a hedonistic luxury. It serves a practical purpose to de-stinkify the head gardener at our house.
Finally, I bit the bullet and installed the outdoor garden shower this year. I say bit the bullet because I had to hire two men to work for the better part of two days to install it. A licensed plumber ran the pipes through the basement to the great outdoors. A carpenter did most of the rest. If we had done it ourselves, the shower would consist of a cold water hose held up with a nail and a bungee cord. Two men/two days was a good investment.
The size is about 6′ x6′ with an 18″ bench along one side. What you don’t see here is what is underneath. Because the shower is against the house, they installed a French drain with a large tube that runs underground and into the woods. This keeps the moisture from gathering near the house and into the basement.
Tall walls surround the enclosure, but really, that’s a formality considering we live on 20+ acres down a long driveway. In fact, I actually liked showering there better before the guys put up the walls.
Although my husband was an early supporter of the idea, Ben didn’t get the allure of the outdoor shower. But now that it’s built, I notice that more often than not, he’s traipsing outside with a beach towel. Now he gets it.
I’m going to call my next book Why Bad Things Happen to Good Gardeners.***
The first chapter will be entitled “Sh*t Happens and Mother Nature is on Vacation.” It will be an indignant rant about how disease, pestilence, drought, flood and other natural disasters inevitably happen to every gardener sooner or later.
I will use my own experiences as examples. I will discuss how my tomatoes have fursarium wilt—for the second year in a row, despite rotating them to an entirely new location where tomatoes have never gone before. I will describe how a legion of leaf-footed bugs decimated my tomatillos and sweet autumn clematis last year and how I haven’t seen a single one this year. I will show photos of my monarda blooming with powdery mildew.
And let’s not forget the roses, otherwise known as black spot on a stick.
The title of the second chapter is currently up in the air, but I’m considering something such as “Plants Have Loved and Lost” or “Emergency Rooms I Have Seen, Courtesy of My Fiskars Pruners.”
*big sigh*
As I was watering for hours and hours today (see chapter on drought), I was wondering to myself, “What would I do if I didn’t garden?’
Being fairly obsessed with productivity and in love with checks in little boxes on a to-do list, I would probably do something useful. But what?
I’m not considering giving up gardening. This is more like an intellectual exercise I do when I get frustrated. What would you do?
***Why do I say “next book?” Because, yes, I am writing a book. To be precise, I’m co-authoring a book currently called Grocery Gardening. You’ll be hearing more about it in coming months, but you can reserve your copy now by ordering here.
Harry and I spent the better part of the weekend painting the master bedroom. We traded off between rolling and detail work and we both made our fair share of messes. For a while Sophie perched on top of a chaise to supervise our work. Sarah was distraught. She does not like change.
Today we get back to normal. I will have to do something about my manicure. Speckled fingernails in Benjamin Moore Light Pewter is not really a good look.
Here’s wishing you a happy, calm and productive week.
If you’re in the neighborhood and just happen to have your paintbrush and paint clothes with you, stop on by. Harry and I are taking the day off from work to start painting the master bedroom. We figure it’ll take until Sunday. Harry does most of the rolling—no small chore with high ceilings—and I do all the tedious detail work. You, of course, can pitch in wherever you like.
We’re painting it a dove grey. So if you see some grey in my hair in the next few days, it’s paint. Got it? The grey is paint.
Happy Groundhog Day! What are you doing to celebrate?
We’ll have a special dinner of NOT groundhog. Dinner will be a special pasta (TBD) and some yummy homemade yeast rolls. Then we’ll pull out the photo album of past Groundhog Days and reminisce. We will toast Puxatawny Phil by opening the first bottle of my homemade apfelwein, which I hope is sparkly by now. If it’s any good, you’ll hear more about it.
Working from a home office is not always what it’s cracked up to be. I have a lousy IT department (me). Interruptions range from barking dogs to crowing roosters. I hear my business phone ring during non-business hours.
But there is a lot good about a 15 step commute. Such as today. It’s cloudy and a bit drizzly, but the temps will climb into the mid 60s for the second day in a row. I will turn off the heat, throw open the windows and give the house—and office—a good airing. Ahhh!
