Gone Fishin'

There are 12.5 hours of work between me and vacation.

Normally this would be a really good time, and I would be cheerily counting down yadda yadda, but this time my vacation is long overdue and I have no cheer left. My brain shut off a month ago. I am killing those hours between me and my vacation dead.

I will be away two weeks. Part of me feels that it's too early in the summer to take my vacation, that I shouldn't be blowing my proverbial wad when July and August still stretch before me, but the secret is this: I have more time to take, and I'm gonna take it. I'm going to take a week in July. Maybe a week in August. I'm going to distrubute it so that it counts. I'm going to take lots of long weekends.

And of course, because I am who I am and who I am is a serious list-maker, I have drawn up a list of things to do during my vacation:

1. Remove the siding from 2 sides of my house, and start putting up styrofoam.
2. Go to the spa with my sister-in-sort-of-law for a massage and pedicure.
3. Plant more perennials in my two-year-old terraced beds, which are not looking so hot.
4. Clean up the pile of dirt and tarps in the laneway.
5. Sell the old chimney behind the house.
6. Get pregnant.
7. Go camping for Canada Day weekend.
8. Visit a friend who has a new baby.
9. Take lots of photos of bugs doing it. Have them printed and blown up because I'm a pervert.
10. Finish up pottery class - make something for the potluck dinner, and bring home my stuff.
11. Go shopping with my mom, get her to buy herself a new dress (I am her own personal Stacey London).
12. Learn to make vietnamese salad rolls properly.
13. Finish the sweater I am knitting. Think seriously about the next one.
14. Read a book. Perhaps A Confederacy of Dunces ?
15. Hope my friend gets her driver's license so she can come to my house and shoot my bb gun.
16. Finish weeding and rehabilitating my 'boomerang' garden. Add dirt and plants.
17. Get a tan.
18. Download and make a CD of all the old-school rap music I loved in high school.
19. Install the new light fixture in the basement.
20. Go fishing.
21. Think about mulch for the terraced garden.
22. Possibly scam some free flagstone with my truck, so I can build that patio that I want around my firepit. Then I want those side-by-side muskoka chairs from Costco with the little drink table in the middle. I am woman of simple needs.
23. Move the furniture in the bedroom around.
24. Catch up on laundry and ironing.
25. Stain my staircase.

So not too lofty, right? I think that's a reasonable list. If I break it into time fragments, some of those are pretty tiny fragments. Some are evening activities, some are not. The trick will be to wake up at the same time as hubby and stay up, and not let myself get droopy during the day. I will of course keep you apprised of my progress when I return.

If I keep writing I will kill more of that pesky time. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Tonight I'm going to the Reno Depot to look at two things: Styrofoam and plants. I realize that I have one big galvanized tub on my deck that I filled with soil and then forgot about, so it needs something. Also I need to get some sunflower seeds because mine didn't come up, and if they still have some scraggly cucumber seedlings I may as well pick those up too because mine haven't shown their faces yet. I also want to look at shorty perennials for the terraced bed.

And here is a pic of my veggie garden taken this very morning. My garden is 30% weeds, 30% stuff I planted on purpose, and 30% cilantro, which re-seeds itself each year.

So it's very green, mostly because the entry is infested with a mix of clover (not the nice stuff, the tall gangly stuff), quack grass, and cilantro. Literally there is cilantro everywhere. I need to control that a bit better this year, nip those seeds and scatter them myself. Flagstones would look super nice there.

This is my favourite time of the year in the garden. Well, I guess this and early September, when everything's being harvested. But check out the colours going on right now: the bright fuschia of the spiderwort, the gray-green of the iris leaves, the dark blue-purple of the irises, I have the emerging electric-red of a poppy coming up, the bright orange nasturtiums and marigolds, and soon some yellow lilies, pink anemones, hot pink geraniums, red bergamot, purple bergamot, and yellow something-or-other-that-I-don't know. I am trying to work on leaf texture too - I am going to plant some colocasia that I grew in a pot into the ground, which makes huge leaves. I think I'll put them in that gap in front of the veggie garden on the right, between the marigolds and the irises. There were strawberries there, but they preferred the veggie garden so they migrated to the far right, about 10 feet away, and now stay there full-time. I let them choose - I am very relaxed about such things (see: cilantro).

Ack! There's a man in my garden! In this photo, L to R: rhubarb, pumpkins, catnip, turnips that need to be thinned, emerging basil, marigolds, beans, and a whole lotta quackgrass.

My baby boy. Man do I ever need kids. Oops I mean - more kids! Sorry Loki! This cat is the best cat ever. He's smarter than any animal I've known, and he's enormous - he weighs about 18 lbs, but I believe he's slimming down during summer - so he's substantial to cuddle when he lets me. He's just dense - he has big bones. When he smacks you, you feel it. But he also has a good sense of humour and a pretty face. And he's got great manners and knows the rules and comes when he's called, right at dinner time. Our other cat, Sasha, is adorable and cute and everything Loki isn't. They fill in each others' gaps. Sasha is affectionate and cuddly and a little bit dumb but sweet as heck. Loki is a party cat, he loves strangers and especially those wearing men's cologne, but Sasha hides under the bed. Loki doesn't fear from water - Sasha fears from lots of stuff. But Sasha's a lap cat, and chatty, and pure sweet sugar.

Phew! Sorry, got off track there. Hooray I'm at 12 hours now! See? Hang in there people! Nobody can ramble like I can!