Titties and Gardening

 I was outside pretty near all day long today, the weather was overcast and mild, and I have four city lots worth of display garden to take care of.  I was doing that thing - titties safely tucked away, not on public view for once - and I overdid it. Oy!

I am not going to whine about being sixty and everything's so hard now, because that isn't the case.  I have gardening in the shape of my hands, my arms and shoulders and the muscles in my legs and that's just not the issue.  I feel GREAT when I'm out working like a medieval peasant.  It's when I STOP that everything goes to hell.

So I'm sitting here around a mixture of pharmaceuticals and alcohol, and I've got on old re-runs of 'Unsolved Mysteries' because I like the sound of Robert Stack's voice.  I usually write with him or Fiona Bruce narrating away in the background. It requires nothing from me, and when I look up there's usually something interesting to see.  Brian Johnson used to be part of my background noise, until his tits got me kicked off Facenbuch (FUCK YOU BRIAN JOHNSON AND YOUR SENSITIVE NIPPLES)  but once I forgive him, he'll be back.  And I'm writing a story about something that happened to me, and that's nice too.  What isn't nice is the number of thorns stuck in me. Or the fact that when I get up from this chair to crawl off and take a piss, I'm going to make that Old Person Noise.

"HNNugh."  Or "FphluchAGH".  I like to switch it up.

Here in September the soil is as hard as (titties) - well, what it is; dried clay.  There's inch - wide cracks running all through the property.  I could water for a day and a night and it would only sink in about an inch, because what I'm on here is old lake bottom silt.  Fertile? Oh my God, it's fantastic stuff.  But you have to come at it planned out like Omaha Beach every year.  'Soil Amendment' ain't just pretty words to say.  

Welcome, rose of my dreams!  Now you just sit there for the next hour while I toil like the Volga Boatmen getting your new home ready!  Titties!

We are talking about CLAY.  (Clay's a baaaaaaad mutha -  Talkin' bout clay!  Well I can dig it!)  

You see what I did there?

Come Spring perennial planting here, you have to dig deeper and wider than the books would have you believe, and you have to mix in a lot of half-finished compost, chunks of branches and old grass and crap, to keep the soil light enough for the roots to spend their first year penetrating the soil as you water like a demon.  Come winter, all the surrounding soil is going to liquify and mix with that stuff, and next year, if that perennial (titties) doesn't have itself stuck in there, it's gonna bitch and complain and you'll have to jump up and down on a soil fork to loosen things up and then water with compost tea and do all sorts of bullshit all summer long while it decides if it wants to live or not.  If you can get it through that first summer, and prepare the soil correctly, you're golden.  If not, you just wasted 35.00 on a rose that's going to drop leaves and reach for the smelling salts every time the temperature fluctuates 5 degrees.

Titties.

My garden is finished. It has been for the past two years.  Now it's mature, and it's just a case of trimming and weeding and squashing slugs.  And in a few more years me and the Biker are going to look at one another (titties) and decide if we want to stay here, or say fuck it and  move to a smaller place.  I figure by then I'll be so stuck to this chair that we'll have to stay; or they'll have to carry me out palanquin-style, which would be very cool now that I'm picturing it. I may opt for that.

So I spent the day taking things out.  Downsizing.  And I have enough specimen plants to get away with that;  I'll just scatter around (titties) some annuals to take the place of the perennial groundcover. This is the perfect (titties) time of year to do that; everything is still in full grow mode.  Next week, it's going to be a different story.  Those plants are going to start socking away the carbs in the root mass for the winter.  How do I know?  Night time temperatures.  I've been keeping track for years. You get a feel for the time of year, when the first leaves begin coloring up.  This week is going to be hammer and tongs. 

Hand over the aspirin and vodka, tovarisch.  Comrade FirstNations is gonna be haulin' those barges.

Titties.