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Renee CK

writer, editor

I'm a fun girl who's on a quest to figure it all out. I'm cynical but living the dream- I'm not sure how that happened exactly. Follow along in my blog for fun, mayhem, and merriment. There's never a dull day!...

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My Garden Report

the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world

In the absence of our secret agents and their gardening, I am submitting my own garden report.  Only mine is actually about gardening. Sorry.

I almost killed myself yesterday.  Hubby had a truckload of soil dumped in the turnaround of our driveway to be spread between two raised gardens and our planter walls.  We have one raised garden done and growing but the other needed to be filled. The soil has been there about 2 weeks and I’m tired of seeing it so I decided that I’d be a love and push wheelbarrows full of soil to the back garden. 

Now maybe it was the fact that it was 88 degrees outside. Or maybe it was the fact that the back garden where I was hauling soil is much farther from the soil heap than the garden hubby filled.  Or maybe it was the fact that I was using a wheelbarrow which, like many of the things in my house, is inherited from my in-laws.  This particular piece is circa before I was born, is rusting out, sits about 2 feet off the ground, and has a wheel that could rival a tricycle tire- the back ones.  Or maybe it’s the fact that lately I’ve felt really bitchy for no particular reason which may be linked to the concussion I sustained earlier in the month- I’m still looking into it.  Whichever of these reasons, or any or all of them put together made moving this dirt intolerable. 

I’m not saying I couldn’t do it.  I am saying that I was annoyed after the first load when I realized the wheelbarrow wasn’t going to clear the side of the garden so I used one of the adjustable playset pieces from my kids to wheel the barrow up (which was about when I started amusing myself with thoughts of my own garden report- very different from pansours) and dump the load.  I was irritated by the bending to duck tree limbs and lifting the wheel barrow on the second trip.  My little OCD thing is that I have to do things in factors of 2. 2, 4, 8, 16- it all has to factor down to 2.  If there’s a leftover potato chip or M&M, you can bet I probably had 32 and left the single last one.  So I did the third load because hubby was so kindly changing the parts in the car.  But as I was ducking and weaving around the trees, I wondered why this was so hard for me. Why was this a job that I would usually leave for hubby?

On the way back I started to think about all the things I do that he wouldn’t.  Party planning.  If it was up to him, he’d celebrate the kids’ birthdays with a kiss and pancake breakfast. Happy happy, glad you were born, now go watch Zach and Cody.  Instead our parties are at least somewhat well planned with evites and the grill going and at the end of the night he is usually happily buzzed, falls into bed, and thanks me for getting together such a great night.  I wash the towels and sheets in loads separate from jeans and tee shirts so that I can put extra fabric softner in them.  I go to parent-teacher conferences and IEP meetings.  The stuff he’d never do.

Now am I saying I couldn’t haul more than 4 loads of soil if I had to.  Absolutely not.  It might take me longer and a lot more “garage words” than it takes him, but I could do it.  Could he learn when his mom’s birthday is and to set the reminder in his Outlook calendar a week before hand so that he has time to get a card and have it in the mail on time?  Sure he could.  But, we’re a yin and yang.  He actually read something last year about a guy who wakes up every morning and makes his wife coffee as a way of saying I love you. He thought that was nice and learned how to grind the beans, why we don’t have paper filters, how to change the water filter in the pot, and started making my coffee.  Since he was up, he also started to wake the kids up and take them to school. 

(Letting you have the ooh and aaahhh time.)  Don’t get your bubble entirely up.  There were days I got calls from my son on his teacher’s cell phone because critical pieces of homework or field trip slips were left on the table. When I’d go visit my daughter’s classroom, she looked like she’d been tossed through a windstorm complete with bits of twig in her hair and clothes that even Sarah Jessica Parker’s people would call a tragic fashion disaster. (Friends, if you saw her in the 1985 outfit and thigh high argyles in the movie- you know that they put Sarah Jessica in some bad shit and called it high fashion. It’s all about the risks.)  He is a man. He makes it run, he makes it work.  I am a woman, I make it warm, I make it home.  Could we make it work. Yeah.  Are we thankful to be able to let the other do their thing so we can do what we do better. Absofuckinglutely.

And, because I do so much, and because I simply loved this place, I thought I’d share my weekend project.  This is what I will be doing when I’m done making the world a better place for my family.

Enjoy!
Renee