The Gardening Neophyte....
The Burpee catalog showed up in the mail today!!!!
I have to say; when I opened this catalog for the first time it felt as if I had been introduced a wonderfully strange new world. The colors flew off the page in a wide range of shapes and sizes; a presentation made by mother nature at her artistic best.
And the names of all the plants, fruits, and vegetables just had a way of getting me totally amped up for spring:
Honey Delight Hybrid -- yellow tomato
Diablito -- Hot pepper (For Toby, the salsa freak)
Porcelain Doll -- a pink pumpkin -- will probably skip on it....But the name and the picture were really cool.
Moulin Rouge Hybrid -- Not a freaking clue.....A beet maybe? It was purple (I bet it will stain your clothes something awful)
I have to be careful, though. The last time I was this excited about something new I went to the Bass Pro Shop and bought a tackle box the size of a small foot locker and filled it with all sorts of fishing gear; ninety percent of it I never even needed.
It was as if my logic was "Hey, I don't have a clue......I better just buy everything!!!!!"
Not this time.....I will remember the old K.I.S.S acronym.
Keep
It
Simple
Stupid
Yes....Simple.....The garden has to be small this year. I have a lot to learn and the worst thing I can do is to get carried away and create a monster that I will not be able to control.
Still....I can hardly contain my excitement. It, quite frankly, has been a huge help getting me through a long, dreary winter.
Speaking of winter........
Jack Frost is an A-hole.....
For those of you that keep up with me either here or on FaceBook; it is no secret how much I have grown to despise old man winter.
I blame it on my Filipino genes.....I believe that, deep down, there is a part of me that feels that it has somehow, mistakenly, gotten lost in the snowy domain of the Eskimo when it should be walking on the beach of a tropical island.
Don't get me wrong.....I love to sled and build snowmen; and I love hiking in the ice and the wind for some odd reason. But I only love it for about a month. If cold, snow and ice were to last, say, the entire month of December (gotta have that white Christmas) and then jump right into spring in January; I would be quite all right with that.
One of the biggest reasons I harbor such disdain for winter is that I do nothing but get sick throughout the entire miserable season. Shot or no, I usually have at least one bout with the flu and I always seems to have a cold that just never really goes away....A scratchy throat one week, a dull throbbing headache the next.......A runny or stuffy nose the week after that....Joy.
I think I will have to do some research before next winter and see if there is anything I can do in the way of preventative maintenance....Well, aside from buying a winter home in Belize or Playa Del Carmen.
But, by far the biggest reason I hate the winter is because driving on the snow and ice turns me into an absolute basket case. At one of my full time jobs I used to watch the weather channel and plan vacation days around up coming storms....I didn't want any part of having to get into the car and putter through the ice and snow.
Then, for reasons I can't explain, I volunteered to be part of the snow crew at my last full time job. Maybe it was because I was new and wanted to make a good impression? I actually heard the small voice inside my head asking me in a shrill, panic stricken voice just what in the hell I thought I was doing as I agreed to help out with snow removal and salting down the sidewalks.
And, oh boy, what a joyous drive into work it was the first time the ice and snow came in for a visit........
I'm not ashamed to admit that I was the guy driving 35 and backing up traffic. I had a death grip on the steering wheel and my ass was so puckered you couldn't have gotten a BB up it with copious amounts of grease and a sledge hammer.
Every little slip and slide would send my heart into my throat. My whole body was in a permanent state of flex. It's no wonder that I was tired, sore, and had a headache at the end of the trip.
Maybe I should buy a snow mobile.....
Especially now since I'm working part time....I don't have any vacation that I can use to get out of driving across the frozen tundra.
Or maybe a dog sled.....Yeah, I could handle that.
Two kids, two personalities.....
I have always known that, from a personality standpoint, Toby and Tera are about as opposite of one another as is possible. But, even after all of these years, I still find it fascinating to observe.
The kids have missed three days of school because of bad weather; each one killing their time inside the house is totally different ways.
Both kids spent a lot of time in their rooms but Toby would seemingly always be on the phone talking to someone. When he wasn't on the phone he was lifting weights and scuttling about the house, engaging in conversation with me occasionally. In short, he never went too long without socializing with someone in some way shape or form. Toby most definitely takes after Karla.......A social butterfly.
Tera, on the other hand, closed the door to her bedroom and only came out to eat and to go to the bathroom. She may come over and talk for a little bit, she may not. And while Toby had the stereo cranked in his bedroom; Tera's room was like a library, or maybe more like a graveyard. Eerily silent.
It's not that Tera can't be social....There are times when she just chooses not to be. She is quite content with laying in her bed and reading, drawing, or playing on her iPod. I just find it strange that someone who can be so loud and cantankerous one minute can be silent and withdrawn the next.
I really don't know why I should find this behavior strange....After all she acts just like me. Perhaps I find it strange because I simply can't explain why we are the way we are.
When you ask Toby about the future, he will say that he wants to be a nuclear engineer, is looking at colleges, and is getting a feel for the needed requirements in his field of choice. When he talks, you get a good feel for how outgoing he is; how driven he is. He is ready to tackle the world and make it work for him.
Tera could care less about the world. She wants to be a veterinarian because she wants to work with animals and "I don't have to talk to a lot of people that way."
I get it.....It may seem stand offish but, trust me, it's not. There are those individuals, like Tera and myself, who enjoy and need time alone. We are individuals that enjoy silence and have no problem getting submersed for hours in a good book or an art project. Or maybe we can just sit and watch the world go by while listening to the music playing on the radio.
It's not that we don't like to talk......We just don't feel the need to do it all the time.
I'm in no hurry to watch the kids grow up......But I can hardly wait to see what direction they will take when they are on their own......and while I'm quite certain that the two of them will go in completely opposite directions; I am also quite certain that they will each be successful in their own unique way....
No comments:
Post a Comment