Hidden Treasures/Broken Bricks

Morning Archie! What’s going on in there? Can I whuffle up some of your grain? k, thanks!

I have a deep, abiding love for glossy magazines. Books too, obviously, but, I have always loved subscribing to magazines ever since the days of Ranger Rick! It’s like having super-glamorous pen pals. This month has been a stretch, I must admit. We all know they plan magazines months in advance (as we are all well educated via “The Devil Wears Prada” yes?) Shooting Thanksgiving scenes in the heat of May, etc, etc BUT all the rambling about resort wear, the cruise line ads and the concert ticket giveaways has set my teeth on edge! I mean, I like escapism as much as anybody (well not escape rooms-those terrify me) BUT it’s really weird reading these magazines that are so completely out of step with the current everything! Anyway, my point is, in one of my magazines there was an article about this woman and the list of mundane tasks she repeatedly avoided and GUESS WHAT, it’s actually a syndrome, so now she feels validated and inspired. UM NO. You just let a grad school intern play fast and loose with shrink terms and you are totally normal like the rest of the world and DON’T WANT TO VACUUM BEHIND YOUR FRIDGE. (Speaking of which, if I had Marie Kondoe-d all my stuff and was now trapped in my apartment for 6 weeks with no old photos or 1000 extra books to read I would be HOT! Hoarding can be healthy.)

So once I had rolled my eyeballs back in from the back of my skull, I continued blithely through my stack of May magazines and then set to my list for the day. Today I had to time to indulge myself in a completely pointless task that had no use to anyone in my family, nothing to do with work or growing food, and everything to do with years of obsession with 2 spectacular books!

“The Shades” is about a magic fountain, I won’t spoil the rest because you need to buy it immediately. “Mandy” is full of wonderful, impossible adventures INCLUDING finding a hidden cottage and making it her own. I have never outgrown the thrill of setting up houses, each house is so distinctly it’s own creature! And in the spirit of hidden houses and treasures, one of the Diane Chamberlain books I just finished has a little girl that finds random bits and buries it as mysterious treasure-type hints!

That being said, our current house has a crazy fountain with a custom-made top piece signed by a long-deceased artist (yes it came with the house). I have on occasion, coaxed it into working for brief spells but had never excavated the bottom to clean out the monkey grass that had taken over. (I loathe monkey grass. And monkeys. This extends even to Curious George and Coco. I don’t care. I have had night terrors about monkeys on ceiling fans since childhood-still do. I am unsure what this means in dream-speak, but in day-to-day it translates into NO MONKEYS, NO MONKEY GRASS.)

So, I weeded and dug and hoed and found broken hay bricks, broken slate, a paintbrush and an old horse bit which was fun, all of which is installed now in my rock garden. I replaced the grass of evil dreams with Mojito Mint and Lemon Thyme, which the pig promptly came over and ate one of the mint and we had a long and serious conversation about respecting each other’s boundaries and overt piggery. Maggie was not impressed.

Pig parenting aside, it was wonderfully frivolous and lots of fun to root around in the dirt and reread those stories in my head. The first time I read “Mandy” I was 8ish and had a perfect Granny Smith apple to crunch as I read through it, and it makes for such a strong combined memory! I hope you have had time to read during the down time, instead of being overrun by worry and speculations and what-ifs. Below are some of my other favorite gardening books that I have read as an adult (Mom has 100 stories for you about Elizabeth Lawrence!)

Because MAY DAY is coming! And in honor of May Day we will have a rainbows worth of flowers all locally grown (even some from our farm!) up on the website tomorrow! Flowers make me so happy.

So the fountain is finished, we did another week of Quarantine Theatre. (Someone emailed and tried to buy the cake topper from the “Days of our Bridezz” episode. Hahhahhaa!) And we are getting ready to load a lot of delicious meats and veggies onto the website. I am so very proud of everyone buying all these local ingredients and turning them into delicious foods! I have also enjoyed getting everyone’s #virusgarden photos and dinner photos and cheese plate photos! Keep ’em coming!