April 21, 2013
Earth Day.  Ah, yes, mother nature continues to vex.  After a pleasant, sunny 50 degree day yesterday (downright balmy this year), today we awoke to clouds, damp and flurries again.  Today's directions for the bale are just to water to saturation.  We decide to hold off, thinking this may be provided for us.

So I was thinking, maybe I should discuss the reasons we decided to garden this way.  First and foremost (for me), is that the straw bales will provide a raised bed.  I love my new knees, but squatting just isn't going to happen.  Neck and neck with no squatting is no weeding.  I'm taking this Joel Karsten guy at his word, as that was always the worst part of gardening.  I didn't mind quite as much in the spring when the weather is mild and I'm looking for a reason to be outside, but once full blown heat and humidity and MOSQUITOES hit, my determination wanes.  We did consider building a raised bed, but that's just the problem: we'd have to build it.  I have a wonderful husband, but being "handy" was never one of his finer traits.  So the cost of each straw bale was $4-- That's it, no materials, wood or tools needed.  The bales weighed about 50 lbs, and Scott was able to unload them from the truck without much difficulty (now that they're saturated, they weigh considerably more--so make sure when you unload them that they'll be close to your final destination).  Another plus is that at the end of the season, there's nothing to put away and store for the winter.  The straw will just go to the compost pile. Done. And apparently it will provide great soil for my pots next year.  We've tried putting tomatoes in the yard, but always got some kind of blight that was apparently in the soil.  We moved them to containers the past couple of years with some success.  I'm hoping for better production this year and don't even have to buy any new pots (my big terra cottas cracked over the winter).

So while the weather did not inspire us to do any outside work today, I had a great morning just goofing off.  I read the newspaper, listened to my Spotify music, read a chapter in my book, played my uke, checked in on Facebook, threw in some laundry, cleaned up breakfast dishes, listened to NPR and rode my stationary bike while watching "House Hunters" re-runs.  Scott, on the other hand, is no good at goofing off.  Poor guy was like a caged tiger: pacing, lost, distracted.  I finally told him to think of something he wanted to do when, obviously desperate, he plopped down to watch HGTV with me.  Since the only moisture we'd received so far today was in the form of snow, which has since melted, he decided to go water the bales.  They're only fertilized every other day through day 6, so it only took 5 minutes today.  He finally decided to start planning his "last supper".  His routine colonoscopy (yes, he's late) is Tuesday, so tomorrow he starts his liquid diet.  We stopped downtown at the Food Co-op and found some live music at the Root Note.  We made a couple of other stops.  He decided on "comfort food": Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  I've already forgotten how limited the pre-procedure diet is--no nuts, corn, peas, beans, multi-grain products, fruit or vegetable skins.  He just discovered what I'm writing and wonders how in the world that topic made it to our garden blog.  I digress (but won't delete).  I will stop here for the day, though.