Sometimes I feel like my day-to-day life is defined by a series of run-ins with shit—I mean like literal shit! If I'm not frantically trying to discourage my dog from dropping a pile in the neighbor's yard, I'm wrangling cat turds back into the litterbox. If I'm not scraping the bird crap off the car door handle, I'm digging the dog shit out of my shoe. I write this as I've just finished unclogging the Poover Dam from the toilet for the third time in a week.... I wonder when was the last time Martha Stewart ever picked up a plunger? Though I imagine she may have had plenty of opportunity for such activity during her stint in The Big House.
While Martha spent last week enjoying the Westminster Kennel Club Show and attending to anal-retentive chores like "Clean window shades and blinds," "Groom cats," "Organize pots-and-pans cupboards," "Season wooden cutting boards," and "Harvest kumquats from the greenhouse," I managed to walk and bathe the dog, measure my south-facing windows for seed-starter shelves (which Charles promised to build as a Valentine's present), buy cat food, clear out a garden bed for early planting, and make some headway on my ant problem (finally broke down & set out poisoned bait to be carried back to their secret lair). And while Martha made a dogfood cake for her pooch Sharkey's birthday, I made a birthday cake for my pal Kenneth. It was intended to be classic yellow with a rich chocolate icing, but I've still not come across the perfect frosting recipe. This one was still runny after cooling all afternoon, so I opted to whip up a pastry cream filling & poured the icing over the top to transform it into an "eclair cake"—it was actually a big hit!
I did follow Martha's lead and hosted something of a Mardi Gras dinner—I boiled up a pot of gumbo (a regular late summer meal when the garden is bustin' with tomatoes, peppers, & okra) and a quickie chocolate-chip bread pudding sprinkled with what's left of this fall's yard-gathered pecans. A couple girlfriends stopped by for a quick nosh before we hit the town to checkout our buddies' bluegrass band, The Mudflapjacks. And despite the fact that I managed to keep my top on, I still came home strewn with several strands of plastic beads that are likely to find their way to the landfill any day now.
Tolerable temperatures settled in by midweek, allowing me to catch up on the previous week's command to "Pick-up winter debris from garden" as I hauled a month-old pile of privet & holly branches to the curb less than 24 hours before the city trucks came by for monthly pickup. By the time my dad blew into town, using the excuse of dropping-off a few things I inherited from my dear departed Grannie's Brooklyn brownstone to escape the snow mess up North, the weather was sunny & balmy and more akin to what we're used to for winter in the South.
It was a perfect weekend to get busy in the garden. Ironically though, I managed to score a press pass to an organic farming conference that came to town & I spent a sun-soaked Friday afternoon befriending a llama & alpaca while exploring greenhouses & fallow fields on a farm tour & most of Saturday in dimly lit conference rooms learning about herbal medicine & seed saving—skills I can put to use for many sunny days to come, and which are sure to prove absolutely necessary when the shit goes down. I've been to a handful of conferences & expos in my day, and usually end up walking out of them with a bag full of worthless schwag—crappy pens, magnets, keychains, etc.—I came away from this one with a stack of seed catalogs and a bag of compost.... Now that's the kind of shit I can actually put to good use!
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