But My Apple Tree Is Doing Great...

Not my garden

We planned a trip to Utah for a week at the beginning of April and I was hurrying to get my garden business taken care of before we left. The first item on the list was to mulch this huge pile of wood in the backyard we had tossed willy-nilly next to my garden last summer. A raccoon had taken up residence in said pile and was using my dang garden as his own private food source.

Babe and I had gone about two weeks before to rent a mulcher from Home Depot, but after the paperwork had been signed, we realized it wouldn't fit in the back of the van. Babe wouldn't entertain my suggestions to tie it to the roof or drag it behind us, and after that I was out of ideas. We ended up getting our deposit back after fifteen full minutes of rental.

Realizing that no mulcher was likely to fit in the back of the van, and attempting to find someone with a truck and time to kill was just more aggravation than it was worth, I bought one. I'm really glad I did. It's taken me several days of mulching and I'm still not finished, though the raccoon no longer has a place to hide. It would have cost us more to rent than it did to buy. Plus, free mulch for my garden! Bonus.

Anyway, I figured once the wood pile had been disrupted, the raccoon would find somewhere else to dine, but I was sadly mistaken. I know it was a raccoon because I have a fence around the garden, and it was STILL getting in. So I decided to make a cover. I bowed PVC pipes at three foot intervals and then zip-tied black plastic chicken screen around the pipes. I planned to cover the top as well, but we just barely had time to close up the sides.

I figured the screen would be too flimsy to support the weight of an incoming raccoon, but I was wrong again. The next day it had eaten my green bean seedlings and left a peach pit in my tater box, the cheeky bugger. I ran out of time before I could finish my projects.

My Kid sister took care of my garden (and the furry dingus') for most of the time we were gone. She was rightfully more concerned about my plants than she was the dogs. It rained a couple of times while we were away, which helped her out a ton.

The ground was nice and wet when we got home. I headed out to the garden first thing the next day. The sight that greeted me. It was just...amazing. I walked through the lovely little gate, which is a fun story in itself, and I saw my cucumber box full of green...grass. There was also grass in my bell pepper box. I think the green in my corn box was corn, but at this stage it kind of looks like grass too so...

Whatever.

Meenie and I were attempting to put the screen over the top of the PVC pipe to close it in and wouldn't you know it, the screen was about three feet too short. Also, it was too narrow. Also, my corn bed had been taken over with ant piles, but I didn't know that until I stepped in one. And when I stepped backwards, I found the other ant pile. Then, when I retreated to behind the potato box, I found the third one. That's when I fled the garden.

I bought death dealing granules and gleefully salted the earth, but I'm kind of afraid to go back inside my lovely garden. I ventured in once last week to plant store bought, healthy cucumber plants that were dead two days later, and haven't been back since. So I don't know what to do. If I set a match to it I'm certain to burn down the whole neighborhood, which may upset a couple of people.

I'm ready to call time of death. It's only April, but being that this is Texas, it might as well be Hell.

But my apple tree is doing great!

Mistakes Were Made...

Ten years ago we bought the home in which we currently reside. The Previous Owners (PO) had planted two lovely little evergreen trees on either side of the windows at the front of the house that we...thought were okay. They weren't our favorite, but whatever.

One of the trees died a few years back, so we plucked it out of the yard as one does. The second one continued to thrive, and grow out of control because we neglected it, but only recently had it come to my attention how out of control it really was. It kind of looked like a giant green starfish. Actually that entire front area has vexed me from the start. The PO's had created a stone border flowerbed in front of the windows and around the two trees. That area is a pain to maintain because every year weeds and anthills pop up like daisies, which incidentally, won't pop up in that area.

Last year, I stopped trying to plant stuff and just put down black screen weed blocker and rocks. Then I dropped some pave stones and a couple of potted plants in the bed to make my life easier. Spring came last week while we were in Utah and when we got home the flower bed that I had so lovingly filled with rocks and junk was once again covered in weeds. How the hell...whatever.

Anyway, back to the tree. I was looking Evergreen over and realized how out of control it was. Babe and I have planned to add a red oak to the front yard, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to lose that evergreen. So I took my trimmer out of the garage and set to work shaping it up. It was going really well...at first.

I was trimming those branches like a champ. One of the neighbors even offered use of his telescoping hedge clippers so I could reach the higher branches. I learned two things using that tool. The first being, my aim is just...terrible. Which may or may not have something to do with the second, I have miserable upper body strength. Mr. Neighbor Guy also grabbed a ladder and cut off the top four feet of the tree.

I cleaned out all of the branches at ground level as well as the dead and dying branches, which all happened to be at the back of the tree where it touches the house. Things were coming along pretty well until I took off this one branch.

                                                               

This was the good side.

I really don't know what happened. It was just one branch. Who knew one branch could cover so much space and then not? It was seriously dumbfounding. One branch undid all of the work I had accomplished. Now, my out of control Evergreen had become a middle aged man tree who had lost his comb over. It was so downhill from there.

When we moved in, the tree stood at a 90 degree angle. As I cut back the branches I realized it was now leaning at a more acute angle. So no matter how well I managed to trim it up (not that that was going to happen) nothing was going to cover the fact that it leaned. Try as I might to clean it up, in the end it just looked like a five year old had taken a pair of scissors to his sisters Barbie. After which, Barbie went to a bar and got sloshed so now she's leaning on the bar wearing one shoe and asking the guy next to her if he thinks she looks pretty.

It wasn't going well is what I'm saying.

The right next door, next door neighbor and his wife came home after I had brutalized the tree, and he choke/snorted, "Good job!" to which I replied, "Don't lie to me!"

Eenie had a good laugh when she got home. We then noticed (because we're observant like that) the branches from the trunk out were dead and/or dying so mayhaps the tree should just be put down. Also, the whole thing rocked like a nineties boy band.

                                                                   

Who Runs the World...Eenie!

Eenie volunteered to try taking it down. She huffed and puffed, but the tree refused to budge. Even our neighbor from the other side made an attempt (we have super helpful neighbors). I heard him mutter, "por que?" as he pulled from one side while Eenie pushed from the other. So much fun. I was rethinking cutting it down until I saw it in the light of day the next morning. It looked so much worse.

I cut it down.

Mistakes Were Made...

Sometimes you just have to recognize it's too broken to fix. 

Here, There Be Monsters...

We have three animals in our home. Some would call them pets. Here we call them Gus and the Idiot Twins.

Gus

Gus and the twins

Then, there's Luna. The female idiot twin is stupid and will constantly eat things that will eventually kill her, but until then only cause diarrhea and occasional vomiting. But always diarrhea. We make efforts to find the mushrooms that pop up after rain, but she'll find them in that knothole in the southeast corner of the backyard just behind the fence pole at the outer edge. You know, the one you have to wedge your fat little snout in to reach, but it's worth it because you're a fat little turd who enjoys burning butthole.

Apollo is the second half of the Idiot twins and he's the one with an empty skull cavity. He has no original thoughts therefore does not cause mischief on his own, but will stupidly follow what the other two are doing. The three of them together have created such havoc that three sets of friends have refused to watch them ever again. So we were scrambling to find anyone to care for them when we went out of town last week, because when I tell you these friends will not watch our dogs ever again, they mean it. These people who love us, who will (and have) drop anything at a moments notice to help us, are not willing to come to our house twice a day to feed and water our dogs and let them out to potty because it's never that easy. Let me be clear, I don't blame them. I am so over the half-wit and her diarrhea as well as Gus' incessant destructive behavior.

We managed to find a young man we go to church with willing to tend the monsters for three days until my Kid sister could take over. I had such hopes. Being that the animals behave like...animals, they destroyed the bottom of the crate a few weeks ago and had been sleeping on the wire and floor when I finally took pity on them and put one of the beds we've managed to keep in one piece for almost six months (!) in the crate to create a more comfortable environment. They left it alone (!) and like a fool, I  thought we had broken a destructive habit. I repeat, I'm such a fool.

Everything was rolling smoothly along, padding that false sense of security, when the mother of my pet minder texted me to tell me Luna had refused to go out to use the potty that morning.

Aaargh.

I texted her back and told her that Luna needed to be made to go or she would crap in the crate. She said they'd go back after church. 

 Gus is a monster who delights in tearing things up. We have bought countless beds, blankets, toys, etc. that he has quickly and completely destroyed. He's chewed up my lawn tools, my trees, an entire fence that I built for the sole purpose of keeping him OUT of my garden (he ATE the fence), the bottom of the pool hose, the spray nozzles from my pesticides and herbicides- by right he should be dead- and he has to really work to get at a lot of these things. They aren't at snout level. They are pull himself up, reach into a bucket, make like a magic claw, accessible.

More Gus 

They were cleaning up poop when they got back to the house, and that's when things went typical. After attempting to clean up Luna's mess, she took the cover off the bed and tossed it in the wash, leaving the bedding uncovered. Guess how the monsters entertained themselves until the the cover was returned...

After returning the cover to what was left of the bed, Luna decided to pull the Diva card and wouldn't allow Gus in the crate. The family brought over a second crate for the Idiot Twins to sleep in, which upped Gus' anxiety so he went to town and finished off what was left of the bed. When we got home, all three mutts found themselves back in the same crate on the bare floor because that Diva garbage doesn't fly with me. Luna tried growling at Gus when we got home and I quickly reminded her who she was dealing with. She shut it up real quick. Homie don't play.

Even though they were disgusting, they were weren't as disgusting as they usually are. Maybe we can call on this kid again. Or maybe we won't go on vacation again until the furry monsters have gone to that big, green farm in the sky.

We Are What We Are...

When Babe and I got married, he vowed that we would leave behind our, erm, more rough edged ways. Hence duct tape and black plastic bags would not be our automatic "go to" for repairs.

Oh such sweet naivete!

His resolve was first tested in about the second year of our marriage when some yahoo broke into our 1990 Geo Metro by way of the rear window to...get a better look at what we didn't have? The car was twelve years old. There was nothing worth stealing so they didn't steal anything. It wasn't worth it to me to fix it, but we had an infant, as Babe pointed out, so we went and paid more than the car was worth to replace that flippin' rear window.

The second opportunity came about ten years later when my kid sister was learning to drive. Actually, let me one second. So, Babe had just bought a brand new car. We hadn't even made the first payment yet when Miney took a lava rock from the garden and used it to scribble flowers and doodles all along the sides and back. It was lovely. Babe was speechless.

Literally.

He just looked at her and silently shook his head. So this came on the heels of that. My kid sister was learning to drive and pulled into our driveway. At my encouragement she pulled into the garage, but I overestimated how much room she had and she took off the driver's side mirror. The poor thing burst into tears while I laughed hysterically. Babe heard the noise and opened the garage door where he stood in silence for a long moment before he shook his head and closed the door.

Shortly thereafter (I'm talking days) we had the side mirror taped up because we haven't yet had a minute to take the car in for repair, Kid sister had to take Eenie to school, and for reasons I will never understand, she decided to roll down the rear window and the whole piece of glass abruptly disappeared into the door. Well we couldn't leave the window open like that so Babe dutifully went to get a plastic bag while I am rolling in laughter because we have become everything he never wanted to be.

We did get those parts fixed. However, I feel it's important to remember where one comes from and priorities. Our van was new when we bought it. It is now fifteen years old. The tops of the arms rests on the doors have broken off. I'm not trying to spend $500 per side to get them fixed. The black piece that holds the antennae flush to the van broke off a couple of years ago. We duct taped that, and we used fancy tape. Covered in Minions.

When the tape became sun worn and crumbled off, we bought a new part on Amazon. It doesn't exactly fit, but it's close enough. Ennie got her purse strap caught in the latch of the glove compartment. Babe broke the door when he tried to get it out. We duct taped it until the tape melted off. After that, we replaced the lock. The lock didn't have a key so once we closed it we couldn't open it again so we haven't used it for a while.

The AC fan will only turn on when the passenger kick the underside of the dashboard so Babe bought a new fan and in the process of attempting to replace it he realized he needed to get into the glove compartment. Well...

The fan didn't fit, we were going on a road trip and he needed to put the glove compartment back together.

I've never been so proud!