The Garden(er) is IN!!

So we got the garden in the ground last week.  It was super fun and thank Sweet Baby Jesus (that's for my girl Chelsea!!) that the sun wasn't blazing down on us for the 4 hours.

See here's the thing about gardening that I had failed to remember..... It's. Hard. Fucking. Work.

Seriously, I thought I gave my old butt a hernia digging 4 wheelbarrows worth of our compost. (Mental note: Do NOT compost coconuts as their little coconut fibers grow all willy-nilly and it's hard to break them apart.)

Now I realize why people hire illegal immigrants - I would have gladly paid $4 dollars and watched Pedro do all the work while I drank a Corona and read a book.

I'm Kidding.  (Sorta.....)

So here's the process:

Wet Newspaper

Peat Moss and Boyfriends

Barn Material
 (ie. Chicken Shit and Chicken Coop Wood Chips)

Actual Bagged Chicken Shit = Smells like SHIT

HEY - there's some HAY

Our own compost. 

Green Material (ie. Sugar Cane)

Soil

HEY - more Hay!!

Peat Moss

Then you cover it with black plastic and let that stuff bake into VEGGIE CRACK for about 6 weeks!!

We have been composting for about 2 years now and the amount of worms and cockroaches in it was INSANE! Seriously - I should be making those guys pay rent!! 

Worm Love.

But my little Gardening Sister still thought we should be spraying some microorganisms to help break all the layers down - I'm glad she had some handy.....

Microorganism Spray Love

So - it looks like it's heating up under there - we will see at the end of July how things pan out.

Until then - Corona drinking and book reading it is!

Gardening Feet = Happy Feet.

This Bud is NOT for you!

Today I got catcalled and whistled at by a car full of teenage boys. It sorta caught me off guard as I had just gotten off work and was feeling tired and hungry and I was thinking about all the shit I had to do when I got home.

And then they started whistling and being all teenage boy-y.  I'm not one of those girls that get all offended at this kind of shit - and I'm also not one of those girls that think they really mean it too. But it was fun to be reminded that I am a woman and that maybe I can still get noticed time and again..... even after 6 or 7 years of marriage. (I really can't remember and when I just asked Z - he can't remember either.... meh?! 6 or 7 whateves.)

Lesson Learned?

Catcalling Rulz!!!!

This reminded me of this one time my friend and I met at our local watering-hole one random afternoon while in college.  We had just gotten done with a day of mid-term testing and just need to DRINK A BEER!!!

So we met at like 4:00. There wasn't  many other people at the bar and we saddled up at one end and each ordered a beer.  So there we were shooting the shit, complaining about how we probably could have studied harder, when a fresh beer magically appeared in front of my friend.  She told the bartender that she hadn't ordered another beer yet and the bartender smiled and told her another person at the end of the bar wanted to buy her a beer because she was cute.

So we look at the other end of the bar and see a half-passed out drunk/homeless man and a woman with  some bad-ass tattoos, whom we had never seen before.

My friend looks at me? I don't know what's going on. And then the woman raises her beer to my friend.

Oh.

My friend kinda shrugs and thanks the lady. 

This Bud is NOT FOR YOU.....

 I look down at my almost empty beer and am COMPLETELY DEVASTATED and CONFUSED.

Let me explain:

A.  Not to toot my own horn, but in my college days, I was cute. Not like - cutest-girl-in-the-bar-cute, but like, hold-my-own-cute; so this not getting a beer bought for me thing was like, total foreign territory.

B.  I don't care if I'm not a lesbian. (And for the record I don't care who is or who isn't - it's all good in my hood!) But that woman still chose to buy my blonde-haired, big-smile, cute and bubbly friend a beer and NOT ME!!!

C.  It was like being picked last at kickball (which NEVER happened to me because I was ATHLETIC and CUTE, remember??!!)

My friend didn't even bat an eye and just drank that beer.  I pretended it didn't bother me all the while trying to figure out what was so great about HER and NOT ME???

Or doesn't get a beer from a gal at the bar.....

Now this is not one of my proud moments; jealousy and envy are distant feelings that are rare to me now that I am in my thirties (Thank Gawd.)

 I see now - 10 years later that:

A.  It's wasn't about me and it wasn't a personal reflection of who I am as a person.  I should have been stoked for my friend that someone thought she was cute and wanted to make her day a little brighter.

B.  My self-worth is not measured by beer bought for me at a danky-ass pub.  

And most of all:

C.  That lady just obviously preferred blondes.

Meh?!

A Mother F-ing G.A.R.D.E.N.

So I've decided to grow a garden.

And not a "I have some herbs in a pot so oooh come and look at my garden" kinda garden - but a mother f-in' G.A.R.D.E.N.

A mother f-ing G.A.R.D.E.N. 
(Not MY mother f-ing G.A.R.D.E.N. but S.O.O.N.!!)

I sorta have a little OCD so these perfectly straight rows make me jizz a little in my gardening gloves.

So anywho - my good friend who does gardening for a living (How cool is that? And she's just cute as a button and I love her.) came over and we ran into town to get stuff to make a "Lasagna Garden". Basically it's like 6 layers of a whole bunch of shit that you put on top of the ground and then cover it up with some black garbage bags for about 6 weeks and - WALLAH - it magically turns into veggie growing crack!!

Lasagna Garden Drug Addicts Meeting
"Hello, my name is Orange..."
"Hi Orange."

So I'm kinda excited but kinda nervous because my green thumb has never been green, more like brown.    Kinda like the color of most of my plants. They all start out so good and then end up dying on me somehow. This is a constant reminder that if I can't have a plant, than may I never have children..... Right? 


It's crazy because my mother has the greenist thumb I know!!  If there was ever a house with more oxygen than others - it was mine!!  I grew up in a jungle of plants!  (Would that make her like "Jungle Woman"?)

Maybe. But my mom's totally hotter - right Ma?  

We had big plants, small plants, ferny plants and prickly plants. We had long dangly plants that my mom would wrap around assorted house-hold things and then we had plants that grew so tall they would slowly start to lean over in this drunken-frat boy sort of way.  We had plants that would bloom flowers around Christmas time and plants that would have killed out miniature Poodle (R.I.P. Mini) if she would have eaten them. We had purple plants and red plants, plants in the kitchen and plants in the bathrooms.

And now she has all that AND a kick-ass garden plus an amazing backyard full of flowers to boot.

Here's hoping that there is some sort of green gene-thing deep rooted in me. That or if I can't grow veggies in a TROPICAL RAINFOREST than there is seriously something wrong with me.

It claims "No Digging! No Tilling! No Weeding! No Kidding!"
This better be true or Imma cut a bitch.

Lost Solez II

Hey! 

Welcome to the second installment of Lost Solez!!! (If you missed the first one click here.) 

I've been getting lots of help from my REAL friends - so to all you ELSE out there who haven't sent me anything but have seen a lost sole and didn't take action - that was meant for YOU and it was meant to HURT YOUR FEELINGS so next time you will HAVE to turn around and take the FRICKING picture because you will be thinking about how much we are friends - even if we are just blog friends - and about how much you want to be a part of this really cool project and about how cool I am and how pretty I am and about how.........

Maliko Gulch, Hawaii                                   Sam Howard

Haiku, Hawaii                         Melea M  

Hana Highway, Hawaii                     T-Dubya

Kahului, Hawaii                                    T-Dubya

Lewistown, Montana           Stacy & Tayler 

 *Bonus Picture*

Great Falls, Montana                    T-Dubya

There are plenty more where these came from. so if your lost sole isn't up here yet - not to worry - it will be!! But I would love more from all of you. My goal with this is to beg/plead/sell my soul/whore myself out to my editor to make a coffee table book..... So if you want to be a part of this awesomeness than keep your eyes peeled and take the picture!!

But let me refresh you with the rules just one more time......

#1.  You can't rig up some fake-ass picture, like throwing your old-balls shoe out the door and snapping a picture. (Where's the fun in that?) Which leads me to rule #2.

#2.  So no touching, moving, positioning, spit shining of the lost sole is allowed - you gotta take the pictures organically, as it is, some pictures are just going to be boring and some will be fantastic - this is life.
#3. If you see something really picture worthy that's not a lost sole but just as funny and random then I will accept those as well for the *Bonus Picture* portion of our program - maybe it's a sock, maybe it's a funny sign, whatever - let's keep shit spicy - this is life.

Please email me your pictures to lostsolezpix@gmail.com or send me a text if you know my phone number and your name or alias and the town/state/country they came from! 

And if this book really happens and I become a millionaire - I will fly you out to see me....... maybe...... but only if you think I'm pretty.