Garden

I have a garden again.

Plants were buy-one, get-one at the nursery, so I got a six pack of each of heirloom tomatoes (some cultivar prized by the Amish, apparently), jalapenos, habaneros, and thai hot peppers (which look remarkably like tobasco peppers to me). Also got three healthy basil plants and a blue hydrangea, which is planted in my cess pit. I’ll be interested to see what color it turns. Put in about 6 cubic feet of peat moss in a 4 inch layer under around 300 pounds of cheap-o topsoil, and presto, a 4 foot by 8 foot garden with a bunch of plants.

I got a sense of real peace and happiness from pressing the soil down around the tiny root balls of my tiny plants.

Discovered (in the back of the garage) that I own a weed-wacker. At first I was hesitant. I’m something of a traditionalist, and I like to do things with my hands. It’s quieter and more personal. Besides, the reason that I work in the yard is to get in touch with reality. I don’t (at least early in the summer) view the yard as a lot of people seem to: A hateful chore to be mechanized and optimized as much as possible. Still, as I got into the weed-wacker, it was very satisfying: Die weeds! Whackwhackwhackwhackwhack!

Which led to an observation: I have electrical power in my garage. There is no above ground wire leading to the garage (it’s free standing). There is no breaker box in view on the garage. I suspect that, once upon a time, the owners buried a cable from the house to the garage, and sometime later they put up the vinyl siding. This means that I have no clue whatsoever where this buried cable might be.

Great. So much for the plan to rent a bobcat and tear things up at random.

Also explored the bike path near my house: It’s cool. Goes all the way south to Newport (about 20 miles) and North about 6 miles to the bridge into Providence. Turns out that it’s possible to get all the way downtown on bike. I may try this later in the day. Pack up the laptop and bike in to my favorite wireless hot spot. Since today is the first experiment with working from home all day, I have this liberty. Along the path during just one ride we saw Egrets, Herons, Swans (doing their ‘wings up’ thing), mergansers, goldfinches, and a big freaking hawk sitting in a tree maybe 10′ from me. The trail goes right along the water, and has only a little exposure to the road.

On Saturday, we happened to be near the Newport Vinyards when they were doing a tour. It was fun and civilized. I found myself understanding the process and equipment a lot better, having brewed beer. It’s clear to me that wine is *much* more difficult than beer. With beer, I start with a quality-controlled pair of ingredients (malt and hops) and I can taste as I go along, correcting as needed. With wine, until you hit the point of a vineyard wilt multiple barrels and batches to combine for a good flavor, you pretty much hope you get lucky in terms of grapes, barrels, and process.

I can smell the ocean this morning.