Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

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Inspirations - Fresh Cut Flowers

My studio window with today's garden bounty

I did not grow up with fresh cut flowers in the home. 

• My mother did not garden
• With little disposable income, trips to the florist were for "rich" people
• You couldn't by cheap beautiful fresh flowers at the local grocery store
• In the upper midwest, growing seasons were short

But I've reached a point in my life where I feel spending a little money on flowers is important. Whether it's planting your own and harvesting them for your home or picking up a nice bouqet at the grocery store, flowers can really lighten your mood.

I am blessed to have a dear friend who works for a bulb company. Every couple of years or so, in January, when the ground is rock hard and no one wants to plant bulbs, he makes a present to me of some of his overstock. I dutifully head out into the frozen tundra and do what it takes to get those bulbs into the ground. (One year it meant using hot water in buckets to soften up the soil first.)

It is COMPLETELY worth the hard work it takes to plant them. Come April and May my yard is overflowing with tulips and daffodils.

Here are a couple of tips for bringing in cut flowers:

• Cold water is good - especially if you don't want your tulips to immediately "blow out". I often add a couple of ice cubes to the vase when I first insert the flowers
• Small decorative stones help hold flower stems in place and are much cheaper and easier to deal with than those little glass marbles. (Just be careful not to break the vase when you put them in.)
• Daffodils excrete some chemical other flowers don't like - keep them in a vase by themselves
• I arrange daffodils the way I want them in my hand first and then trim the ends to even the stalks.
• Tulips have a natural "bend" that will increase as they sit in the water. Try to use this to your advantage when deciding what type of vase to use for them.

Tulips just brought in and cut - note the use of ice cubes and stones in the vase

Tulips later in the day after they have opened...

Same tulips after 3 days - almost, but not quite, blown out

Mother's day bouquet selected, cut, and arranged by my lovely daughter!

A nice close up of my Mother's Day bouquet

 

I've Outgrown The Ground...

 

 I have camped.

I have camped in tents.

In tents at campgrounds with bugs, raccoons, skunks, bears, alligators and other assorted wildlife. And probably snakes. (I have a pathological fear of snakes so I prefer to imagine that all my camping trips have been snake free.)

(But they probably weren't.)

I have camped in almost every kind of weather, from sunny and carefree, with starry campfire nights, to dismal, rainy, thunderstorm ridden nightmares. In temperatures ranging from balmy and 72, to over 100 and sweltering, to a finger stiffening, bone chilling 30.

I’ve squeezed into little pup tents for one, two person tents, four person tents, even the tent we borrowed from our friends that sleeps eight. (It actually had little tent “dormers” – I took to referring to it as the “Taj Ma Tent”.)

What I am saying here is this: I. Have. Camped.

And I like to think I have been a good sport. I have put up with bugs and campfire cooking recipes that don’t turn out right - or even edible – and questionable weather and scary wildlife, all because I genuinely enjoy the outdoors. And I enjoy the magical bond you form with people as you sit around a campfire on a beautiful, starry evening telling stories and singing classic "we're sitting around a campfire" songs. And the even more magical bond you form with friends when you all suffer through the same camping mishaps.

But I have to be done.

Because the bit about camping I haven't mentioned yet is the actual sleeping bit. The "sleeping on the ground in a tent" bit.

The "sleeping on the cold, tree-root-ridden, slightly sloping, this tent isn't as waterproof as we hoped" bit.

When I was younger and full of spit and vinegar I could handle just throwing my sleeping bag on the ground and calling it a day.

When I was about 30 I started noticing that they weren't making ground like they used to. It was getting harder. And stonier. So I started putting a foam mattress down under the sleeping bag. (You know the kind. It looks like a giant egg carton. And, now that I think about it, it did make me feel rather like a giant egg. A hard boiled egg.)

Then, at 40, the cold started to seep into my bones during the night. My joints would stiffen and, by morning, I would have to be pried out of my sleeping bag like a pit from a peach.

So. I bought an air mattress.

Air mattresses are an adventure all their own. If you are cheap (like me) you buy the kind with a foot pump. Or worse, the kind you have to blow up using nothing but your own lung power.

You do this once.

Not only is the cheap air mattress smooth, (which means your sleeping bag slithers about on it and dumps you onto the ground periodically), it also springs a leak sometime in the middle of the night so that, eventually, you find yourself lying on a large vinyl crepe.

So you invest in a better air mattress. One with flocking (non-slip), and a built-in electric pump which allows you to refill said mattress periodically through the night. Of course, it has a loud motor, which, not only wakes up everyone in your tent, but also the occupants of surrounding tents in a radius approximately eight campsites deep. (You do not care.)

Sadly, no matter how expensive this air mattress, or how diligently you keep it inflated, you are still basically lying on the ground. And, as surely as the princess could feel the pea, the cold and the tree roots make their presence known.

So you grit your teeth, lay your hard earned cash down on the counter and purchase the super duper deluxe air mattress with a folding frame like a cot. This mattress sits 20 inches above the ground. This is almost a real bed.

You are set.

You are ready to sleep like a king. Until, in the middle of the night (it always happens in the middle of the night, doesn’t it?) the ubiquitous leak again appears, and you find yourself draped, pretzel style, over the aluminum frame.

It was at this point I decided I was done.

No more tents. No more egg cartons. No more leaks.

"But wait!" you say. "You haven't tried a pop up camper!"

That is correct. Nor am I investing in a gas guzzling RV.

I am graduating. As I approach 50 I am graduating to the campground I lovingly refer to as "Le Holiday Inn". With the comfortable beds and the indoor swimming pool and flush toilets and a restaurant.

Because I've earned a good night’s sleep.

Charcoal Pizza, Anyone?

 

I have done a lot of camping. And, with camping comes a special kind of cooking.

Sometimes you cook over a campfire. Or you may have a small traveling Hibachi. Or a propane fueled campfire stove. Or, if you get really lucky, the campsite provides grills.

(We are not talking about cooking over a cute little electric stove in an RV. That’s cheating and you know it.)

 While such outdoor cooking should, all things being equal, be just like grilling out in your back yard, it isn’t.

Not by a long shot.

Because, unlike cooking on your own turf - where your kitchen and your sink and your pantry are handy - when you cook on a camping trip you are cooking “on the go”.

And cooking “on the go” means being prepared.

When you are not sufficiently prepared you wind up with such delicacies as: Invisible Bacon, Shingle Steak, and Charcoal Pizza.

Never heard of any of these?

Allow me to illuminate you with my camping recipes:

Invisible bacon: On our first camping trip as newlyweds, my husband and I brought all the food we would need to cook over the campfire. Including some lovely bacon.

Unfortunately we forgot to pack any pans.

How to cook the bacon?

Lightbulb!

“You can wrap a baked potato in aluminum foil and put it in the fire to cook. Let's do that with the bacon!”

We did. After 6 minutes we peeled open the foil to reveal..... Nothing. The bacon had been completely consumed by the heat. Leaving behind only a few ashes and some grease.

 

Shingle steak: One of my favorites.

When we bought our first house it needed a new roof. When we tore off the old roof, it included the original cedar “shake” shingles. Being thrifty, we saved this wood and thought it would be a good idea to take it with us when camping, thus saving us from having to buy firewood.

This turned out to be a colossally bad idea. Little did we know that 1917 cedar shingles are covered in creosote. For those of you not familiar with creosote, it is not tasty. It is not savory. It is, in fact, toxic.

The steaks we cooked over this fire would have to work hard to rise to the description “inedible”.

 

Charcoal pizza: We often camp with another veteran camping family.

On one occasion the wife was eager to try out a recipe for campfire pizza that she found in a camping magazine. She layered “pop open” biscuit dough and pizza sauce and cheese and pepperoni into a Dutch oven, covered it, and put it into the fire.

Then she got to the part of the recipe that said "bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes".

I don't know if you are aware of this but campfires A) don't have thermostats and B) get MUCH hotter than 400 degrees.

We opened the Dutch oven to find a sauce covered charcoal briquette.

The cheese was almost edible and, being desperate (and starving) we scraped it, and some of the sauce, off for the evening’s sustenance.

 

 

Even when you are properly prepared, cooking on a camping trip can be an adventure.

One time I got to make Sloppy Joes in the pouring rain – the secret to this is bringing frozen Sloppy Joe filling that you made the night before, putting it into a saucepan, getting the fire going just before the rain starts, covering the saucepan, and ducking into the tent to stay dry while the filling starts to thaw and, hopefully, heat up to a temperature beyond tepid. You then are in a race between the time it takes to heat the filling and the time it takes for the rain to put the fire out. Leave the tent every two minutes to stir.

Another adventure are “almost cooked” pancakes. You make these with a small nonstick skillet or griddle on the propane camp stove. I call them “almost cooked” because, as with the Sloppy Joes, it is a race between the batter cooking all the way through and the camp stove running out of fuel. My score so far: pancakes 2, camp stove 5.

Of course, if you want to take the easy route, you just stick to hamburgers, hot dogs and brats.

But where is the adventure in that?

 

Beachfront Property

Regular readers of the blog know that we got whacked by a big storm this June and lost a good portion of our driveway.

Here is a pic taken right after the tree went over:

Well, we finally are getting the driveway fixed, read "completely replaced". Of course the insurance company only pays for the damaged portion and, of course, the whole driveway has to be redone and regraded or nothing will drain properly.

So last night, phase one: Stump Removal

Then today, phase two: Driveway Removal

It turns out all that talk for years that, by living on one of the only hills in our town, we live on a sand dune is true after all. Here is our current, personal "beachfront".

Tune in later for a detailed account of the grand overhaul of our backyard. We're just too deep into it for much live blogging at the moment.

Whacked!!

This has been an interesting Spring/Summer for us weatherwise. If I were a paranoid sort of person, I would think someone up there has it in for us.  We spent the end of May dodging some of the most severe storms seen in the Midwest in years (you can read about that little gem of a road trip here.) Then, right after we drove back West across Massachusetts, that state was hit by a series of Tornados. For those of you who live in the midwest where such things are common, it would probably help to know that New England is not known for twisters.

In mid June, our area was hit by a pretty serious windstorm that took out several trees along the lakefront and we took it in stride. 

Then, June 30th at approximately 7:45 we got whacked.

It had been a pretty normal day, hot but not that oppressive, high humidity, 90+ degree heat that usually precedes serious storms. I was in the backyard trying to convince our 16 week old puppy that now would be a good time to empty his bladder and let me move on to other exciting household chores. John had just finished watering the garden and headed in  to change clothes. And our daughter was at the bottom of the driveway creating her usual sidewalk chalk masterpieces.

Little things I remember:

Far off rumbles of thunder and a vague flash or two of lighting which led me to believe that my efforts to get the dog to pee were going to be fruitless.

John looking up at the sky, which had turned a sickly shade of yellow green and commenting: "Sky's looking pretty weird - Tornado weather...." (We've spent most our lives in Tornado riddled states so we pretty much know that sky when we see it.)

And, I would later find out that my daughter happened to have her camera with her and also had the presence of mind to feel that something was brewing because she filmed the clouds as they passed overhead and commented "Clouds are moving pretty fast....."

The next thing I knew I was surrounded by a wind I can only describe as "Wizard of Oz" like in it's intensity. I ran to the top of the driveway and yelled down to Kate, only to have my words whipped back into my face. I gestured frantically and screamed as loud as I could to get her attention. She looked up and give me the typical 12 year old "Just a minute" raised finger. "NO! RIGHT NOW!!" I screamed.

They say a Tornado sounds like a freight train. Well, I live right next to some train tracks and hear the freights go by on a regular basis and I can attest to the fact that this wind sounded exactly like a freight train. At that point I knew I had to get my daughter and myself into our house and down into our basement immediately.

As we ran into the house I practically threw Kate and the puppy down cellar stairs and started screaming at John to get out of the upstairs. All I could hear was stomping and swearing. Turns out he was wrestling with the windows on our addition trying to get them closed and they kept whipping out of his grasp. He also was watching our 4 cedars lean over our cars at a 40 degree angle, threatening to snap at any moment.

Less than a minute after getting into the basement, the power went out and all was blackness. Three minutes after that it was all over. We could no longer hear that freight train wind and we emerged to take stock of the damage.

This is the first thing we saw:

Followed by this:

And this:

(That would be the transformer for our bit of the neighborhood) 

One by one the neighbors all emerged like folks leaving an air raid shelter. As we checked to see that everyone was all right and started to assess the damage we encountered this:

What you may not be able to see right away is the fact that there are two giant Maple trees down and that, under them, is a house.

From this angle you still cannot see that, to the immediate right of the house with the red roof is another house covered by tree. 

Here you can finally get a sense of the damage.

This was taken 3 days later after the tree removal crew had cleared the first tree and already spent a day and a half working on the second. The good news is that the tenant in the lower half of the house was unhurt and the tenant in the upper half was away from home at the time. Which was a very good thing as the tree sliced through the roof and into the upper story playroom where the little boy who lived there watched TV and played his video games. Under that tree is small child's chair that was completely annihilated. I'm told that the plaster is cracked on every wall, the doors won't close, and the entire house was knocked back off its foundation.

Needless to say the entire neighborhood was without power. John hopped on his bike to check on our sailboat in the harbor and also see if there was any power at his office. The good news was that our boat was fine and his studio still had power so, if push came to shove, we could always relocate down there. 

We would later find out that the harbor was hardly the unscathed area that John had thought. While our dock was fine, it turns out that several of the other docks broke free of their pylons and went careening back and forth in the marina. The dock immediately north of ours headed southwards, running into our dock. It then ricocheted back north and came to rest intertwined with the next dock over. In the following photo you can only just see that some of the boats are touching and the gap between the docks is not the 20 feet it is supposed to be.

The northernmost dock actually ran aground and these boats are all sitting on their propellers. Witnesses in the marina said that an enormous wall of water - possibly a series of waterspouts - climbed over the breakwater and slammed into everything in its path. 

It turns out we were extremely lucky. Our only real damage was the loss of our ancient lilac bush,

and the demise of our driveway. At first it looked as though our cars would remain trapped near our garage indefinitely but John managed to rig up a ramp and draw a sort of map with chalk to navigate the cars through. (The rainbow came compliments of Kate. Below she has written "cheer up - it's a rainbow" - gotta love that attitude!) Another note - the neighbor has been working on his garage and hired a dumpster for his debris. That dumpster saved his deck and his garage. The tree didn't even dent it.

The next morning I headed out on my bike to take stock of the rest of the area and take some pictures:

My daughter in my immediate neighbor's yard among 2 of the 6 trees he lost.

 

An all too common sight all over the area.....

Our lakefront parks lost probably 65% of their older trees.

You cannot truly get a sense of the scope of this. It is a pavilion roof for a picnic area and is easily 50 feet across.
 

Another overturned tree - the people give you a sense of the size of the roots. This is probably a 150 year old tree.

Another view of the same roots - This tree is right along the lakefront at the edge of the park and I'd love to know how the bricks got into its root system. There are no buildings anywhere near it. Perhaps filler from an ancient breakwater?

Another of the area's oldest and biggest trees - if you look closely you can see a young man sitting on the tree.

A closer view of the same tree's roots.

Let's hope this port-o-potty was unoccupied.....

 

An "ex" garage

Here is the same garage two days later after the trees are removed. At the right you can see the neighbor's demolished red car. Which was, sadly, brand, spanking new....

The scene at historic Kemper Center where John had a previous studio.

 
 And finally, our breakfast the day after the storm. When you are about to lose all the ice cream in your freezer, sometimes you have to take one for the team.

We are all still cleaning up and digging out from under tree debris. And we lost power again yesterday in another storm so the scary season-o-storms ain't over yet. But, so far (knock wood) that twister with our name on it hasn't found us yet!

Note: a special thanks to the crews from WE energies and also all the tree removal crews. They all worked tirelessly around the clock to get our power restored and our homes free of killer trees. If I could, I'd buy every single one of them a drink!

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Diary Of A Blizzard - Updated With Photos

Tuesday, February 1. 

7:30 am Bearing in mind dire, dire predictions of oncoming storm, called family we carpool with to see if we should keep the kids home. Since the weather really wasn't supposed to hit until school was over, we drove the 10 miles up and dropped them off with fingers crossed.

Spent most of the morning as usual but keeping a sharp eye on conditions. Had to venture out to get antibiotic prescription refilled for dog with bad tooth and surgery scheduled for Friday. Didn't want to take any chances of getting stuck with no meds and a dying dog.

12:00 Husband headed out to split wood for use in fireplace in case we lose power. Husband also braves frigid temperatures to fix broken snowblower. Pretty sure we're going to need it!

1:00 The winds get stronger and stronger, the waves on Lake Michigan get higher and higher, and cancellations begin popping up all through the southeast corner of the state. Cancelled all my students. Fingers still crossed to get daughter back from school. 

2:00 Receive email from daughter's school that they will dismiss at regular time but have already decided to cancel classes for Wed. Thrilled about the cancelled classes. Less thrilled that they didn't close early. The school is situated smack dab on the lake front where the worst conditions are. The drive up to school is so close to the lake that it is almost a white out from blowing snow alone.

4:00 Daughter arrives home safely. We make leek soup and hot chocolate for dinner. Definitely fine fare for hunkering down. John props up flimsy roof of back porch in anticipation of heavy snow.

6:00 The winds are really getting fierce. Spent 30 minutes just looking out my front window in awe of the power of mother nature.

7:00 We still have power so we continue to do the work we can do on the computer and also penciling up comic strips. Deadlines loom, blizzard or no. The room we work in is almost all windows so we can see the gale force of the wind as the trees bend almost sideways.

10:00 Winds are freakishly strong. The view outside my window looks like Hurricane Katrina with snow. The evergreens are bending like palm trees. Start chronicling the blizzard on twitter - view my twitter coverage here.

12:00 plug ipad in to charge for possible lifeline tomorrow and we call it a day.

Wednesday, February 2

3:00 awake to find power is off as suspected would happen. John heads downstairs to move my harps into the warmest room of the house. A note: my primary concern when we have no power in the winter is that we will lose the furnace and my harps will freeze. Unlike us, the harps can't wrap themselves in blankets and radiate their own heat. Harps that freeze crack. Not only are they my livelihood, they are each about $20,000 to replace.

Spend next hour planning for no power for the duration. Finally fall back asleep.

7:00 am son #2 bursts through bedroom door to inform us there is no power. Begins his process of internet withdrawl.

7:05 Son #2 discovers back porch door is blocked by 4 feet of snow. Desperate to access the cell phone he plugged into the car to charge last night, he bundles up (finally puts on a warm coat after two years of me begging him to wear more than a hooded sweatshirt in winter wisconsin weather) and he braves the drifts and blowing snow, heads out the only semi blocked front door, and battles his way back to the unattached garage housing said car and phone.

(A view from the garage to the blocked back door)

7:10 son #2 texts friends furiously, asks to go to a friend's house a mile away- Ha! that was a good one - receives an answer of "No!" most emphatically. He goes back to bed.

7:15 With no TV, no power to my internet computer and barely any coherent news coverage on the radio (I thankfully have a battery powered ipod dock radio I can access) the ipad becomes our only connection to the outside world. I surf the web looking for info on the power outage and a possible estimate of its duration to no avail. The best I can come up with is that our area has been declared a state of emergency and the national guard has been called out, several major highways have been deemed "impassable" and one news story that the power company repair crews keep getting stuck in the snow.

7:20 Thankfully we have a gas stove and can light it with matches to cook a hot breakfast. We also have phone service thanks to a landline with backup power. But there is still no heat and now that it has been off for 4 hours the temperature is dropping rapidly. A plan is hatched to open no doors to the outside until the power is back on. Of course, immediately everyone can think of a reason they have to open a door. The most pressing being the dog that needs to pee. That would be the 65 lb dog with a 2 gallon bladder that needs to pee. John suits up and heads out the front door with a shovel to clear a peeing space.

7:30 Dog having peed successfully, we settle in to do electricity free activities. We tent camp so this is less of a problem for us than it could be.

9:15 Woo Hoo! Power restored. Immediately crank up furnace to equalize temperature and also prepare for possible outage again later. (I'm a pessimist)

9:30 Now that we know we don't have to keep the house closed, daughter heads out into the snow to play with the neighbor kids and John heads out to clear snow and take pictures. He shovels his way from the front door around to the back porch to where the (thankfully repaired) snowblower is.

10:25 John still running the snowblower. Son #2 still asleep. What he doesn't know won't hurt him.... and trust me, he'll put in plenty of shoveling time later!

John standing in one of the shallower spots.

Off to shovel.

More later.

1:30 pm finally finish shoveling and snowblowing. For the reasons we have so much to shovel, click my earlier post here. Son #2 heads out with friends to shovel for other people. Finally has the good sense to dress warmly and take a thermos filled with hot tea. 

2:00 Sit down to go through photos and add them to blog. Those I haven't posted above you can find here.

3:00 Heading down to the kitchen to make molasses cookies with daughter. School has already been cancelled for tomorrow and, now that we know we can get the car out of the garage if needed, we need to kick back a little and enjoy some family time.

A Summation of the event - for what it's worth:

I can honestly say this was one of the most freakish snowstorms I've ever been in. 24 hours after it began, and with no more snow falling for the moment, I can still hear sirens all over the city. 

Kudos to every school and institution that took the warnings seriously and cancelled their activities. A big Rasberry to Carthage College which chose not to do that. Their reason being that it is a residential campus. Last time I checked, not a single faculty member lived on campus. I hope none of my colleagues - especially the ones who drive from Chicago and Milwaukee - got stranded in snow as a result of that decision.

Kudos to the state and city road crews who have worked round the clock to keep the roads as clear as possible. 

Kudos also to the new governor for declaring our area to be in a state of emergency and calling out the national guard to help find stranded motorists. This probably saved countless lives.

A Rasberry to our local radio stations for the lack of coverage moment to moment in the aftermath. When power is out, internet and TV coverage aren't much use. It would have been nice to have a radio station to turn to for up to the minute info on the power outages. I have a whole post about this problem planned for another day.

Kudos to the local paper - they had to cancel delivery for today but have done the best they can to put current news on their website. And special kudos for whoever decided to cancel their paywall during the crisis. The only flaw in this plan is that only folks with an iphone or ipad or power in their houses were able to get on the internet at all.

My Thing About Shoveling

I am a pain about shoveling snow in my driveway. 

I have this thing where I want it shoveled a certain way and no one else seems to get why.

Here's why.

A) Once you drive on top of snow - or even step on it - it gets compacted and sticks to the pavement. This means that you now cannot scrape it up with your shovel. Not your snowblower either. Which will lead to ruts.

And where I live, ruts are bad. Because within 12-24 hours of every snow fall, we get a follow up temperature drop where everything freezes. And it often doesn't thaw for a couple of weeks.

Especially the ruts.

B) I live on a hill. Once the snow is compacted into frozen ruts, the van won't make the trip up the hill. The neighbors are all familiar with the sight of me getting halfway up the driveway, spinning my wheels in futility, waiting for cross traffic to clear, backing down the driveway and across the street into my opposing neighbor's driveway, and gunning it in an attempt to get all the way up the hill - all the while praying not to be t-boned by a surprise car coming down the street. (We just got new tires that are supposed to be better in snow. God, I hope so - they could hardly be worse than the tires we've had up til now.)

 

C) The top of my driveway has a space to turn around. This is crucial, because I am a short person (5'2") with neck issues who cannot turn my head all the way around when backing up. Plus, even without the neck issues, I'm too short to see backwards down my driveway. The neighbors are also accustomed to the sight of me fishtailing backwards down my driveway as I attempt to determine where it is and where it isn't. Even when there is no snow I cannot properly back down. So being able to turn around (and not make ruts) is also really important to me.

D) Another reason ruts are bad is that I play harp for a living. This means I move my harp myself quite a bit for gigs and must be able to wheel it out to my van without hitting a rut. Hitting a rut makes the harp jump off the dolly.

This is bad.

My gold harp jumped off the dolly this winter and, after a fall of only about 2 inches, broke off one of the back feet. Turns out this foot is pretty crucial. The harp won't stand up without it. It is currently propped in a corner with two walls holding it up while I determine when I can get it repaired. This is why professional harpists all have more than one harp.

E) I am a female person. This means I wear ladies boots and ladies shoes. I have discovered something. Many ladies boots have no tread. That's right - no tread. Tread isn't stylish you see. Apparently falling on your can in pretty, tread-free boots is stylish.

This would possibly explain why all the guy people around me don't understand my obsession with an ice free driveway and sidewalk. They wear sensible shoes with great traction. Their boots are like all weather tires. My boots are like those tires they sell to people in Florida. I think this may be the year to invest in some high tread, ugly boots. I can always change them after I get to the gig.

So what does all this add up to?

It adds up to me needing the entire driveway shoveled down to the pavement, edge to edge.

Which is why, generally, I am the one who gets to do it. 

Which is what typically happens to people who are a pain.

I now understand all those people who move to Florida and Arizona for the winter.

I'm A Hacker

No, not that kind - you NSA types can go back to tracking down cyberterrorists and such.

What I mean is that I hack things. Like plant type things.

As in, I am a pruning idiot.

It's not as though I haven't tried. I own several books on gardening and have, indeed, opened all of them. I've even read a fair number of them. I've actually gone so far as to read up on the proper way to prune trees and shrubs.

It makes no sense to me!

I should mention here that, along with the "Hats I Wear" tab up there, I should also have one that says "Hats I Don't Wear" or even "Hat's I Can't Wear Because I'm A Stone Cold Idiot". Whenever one of my friends starts gushing at me over all the talents I have and all the things I can do, I politely remind them of the enormous laundry list of all the things I am completely inept at. (I suspect this is the German/Scots "don't blow your own horn" part of my upbringing.)

The thing is, when I'm bad at something, I tend simply not to do it. Or at least not to do it in public. This gives the impression that I am Pulled Together. Which is why I'm lucky almost no one in my local circle of friends reads this blog - my carefully crafted, I Know What I'm Doing cover would be completely blown.

Anyway, one of those things I stink at is learning anything manual out of a book. I can follow a knitting pattern if it is composed of stitches I already know, but I can only learn a new stitch if someone sits down next to me and demonstrates it step by step.

Maybe, if I could find some landscaping professional type person to spend an afternoon showing me what to cut and what not to, I would finally understand the basic rules of pruning. As it is, when the book says things like "Make additional corrective prunings to eliminate weak or narrow crotches and remove the less desirable central leader where double leaders occur."

What are they talking about?!!!!!

Besides sounding vaguely obscene, the above sentence is complete Greek to me.

So I'm stuck with hacking.

Another problem. Remember that little paint chipping OCD I told you about earlier? It tends to apply to shearing things as well.

I generally head out with the shears, intending to take a few minutes to trim some stuff back - a clip here and there - and the next thing you know I'm hacking off everything in sight. And, unless someone intervenes and takes those cross cut pruning shears (see, at least I know what to call them) away from my hacking little hands, my shrubbery will all be reduced to small clumps of sticks. 

Unfortunately, unlike a bad haircut, it won't all grow back in 3 weeks.

Here's the handiwork for today:

 

Background: unhacked bush, Foreground: hacked bush

All my little "non-stump" bushes with the pile of clippings that came off of them.