The hazy glow of Sunday

Today, for most of the day, I still felt wrapped in the hazy, beautiful glow of Sunday. A day of lazing around in bed, homemade tortillas and blood orange mimosas for breakfast, from-scratch vegan pizza and lots of gardening.

It's true! We accomplished more in the garden today than perhaps at any other time, unless you count planting the tomatoes which may have actually taken longer, but planting seven tomato plants doesn't really seem as productive as doing a variety of different thing which INCLUDE harvesting vegetables.

Harvesting tomatoes and actually getting a second small crop of strawberries out of the season just seems so thrilling. It's a little deceptive to have so many things become ripe at once...it makes one feel as if one's garden was a BIG HUGE SUCCESS and makes one forget mistakes and neglect that made yields smaller, or all the expense that went into the garden from building the raised beds, to all the water used (we never did get the well hooked up) to the money spent on seeds (many, many of which never got used), garlic and potatoes that never got planted and eventually mummified, herbs that died...

We like to call our carrots "$10 carrots" because that's probably about how much each one cost us...although now the tomatoes are bringing down the average.

Sunday, besides watering the garden (somebody's mom is out of town for a while, so we have to *gasp* do that ourselves now, although you can get a timer for $40 that can do the same thing for you...not that I'm saying somebody's mom can be REPLACED for $40 mind you...) we took some more steps towards our winter garden.

For some reason we (oops?) forgot to plant the garlic and shallots, but the winter carrots are in (and hopefully we are remembering correctly how to sprout them under sheets of newspaper) along with some radishes.

Some thai cucumbers that I started under grow lights at my place are thriving (not sure how "wintery" those are but so far they are quite vigorous).

We installed a self-watering window-box that goes on a deck railing (ermmm....okay...a railing-box?) and, to my leafy-greens-challenged bf's dismay planted lettuce in it (LETTUCE? I charged up the drill and did all that just for LETTUCE??!?)

We also put up some blue solar powered string lights, which took quite a while and now it seems like they don't work. Quite frustrating. I hav some I got a few years ago on eBay that faithfully come on every night at dusk and stay lit until dawn for most of the year and my bf liked them very much so I thought I'd get him some and although they looked just the same in the picture, seen in person the quality isn't nearly as good and the solar panel is smaller and seems like just some cheap thing stickied onto a square battery box instead of being built into the box. I guess that would be okay if they worked, but they don't.


********

So then today, as I said I was still basking in the glow of a wonderful Sunday and I still had momentum going on the whole garden thang, so I started a whole flat of Fava beans after inoculating them in rhizobium, which is some sort of bacteria which helps the fava beans not only thrive but add loads of nitrogen to the soil, which is perfect after something intense like tomatoes has been planted there...plus they can grow right up the same cages the tomatoes have been on. Then in the spring, after feasting on tasty fava beans, we can cut them down and turn them into the soil and plant right over the top of them. I'm starting lady peas, too, as soon as I find the pea pack.

Also today I was soooo excited because I was expecting my new camera and the DOORBELL RANG and there was THE CAMERA SIZED BOX being held by the UPS guy....WOOT WOOT! I tore that box open and I was like, "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?!?" and I was completely mystified by this weird box that did NOT contain my camera until I realized that it contained my DSL install package from AT&T. I've only had one measly computer connected to the Internet for over a month now, ever since I told Comcast they can go to hell (the aren't the original ones who can go to hell, though) and have been using just my tablet pc with my bf's broadband wireless card...which is mostly great but likes to hang and/or disconnect and only connects one (laptop) computer at a time unless you are some sort of super hacker geek person, which I was about to turn into if I didn't get a better connection soon.

Supposedly my install date wasn't for another three days, but I tried it and it was really quick to set up and I have Internet through my phone jack! Finally my damn phone jack is good for something. AND I don't need a home phone to get DSL, which is very cool...I remember was NOT the case 8 years ago.

The connection seems pretty zippy, too.

Comcast = 0, AT&T = 1

Now if my new camera would just arrive.....