That’s how I roll: slowly

This post was penned by our correspondent somewhere in the airspace between Bozeman, Montana, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It's amazing how much gardening can get done when you're under the gun.

Several weeks back James Alexander-Sinclair (Blogging at Blackpitts Garden) wrote about how everything was suddenly catching up with him at the end of winter, and how it was all his fault. (Ever a slave to logic, he titled that post "Sand On The Toes Of A Wallaby." Go figure.)

I know exactly how he feels, except the part about its being my fault. I don't know whose fault it is, but surely not mine. (Maybe his?)

Take the last post (mine), and the missing final post on soil blocks. The latter was supposed to go before the former, but since it didn't, the latter will have to go after the former. Or, to put it differently, the final potting block post was supposed to go up before the Nature Conservancy post, which was supposed to go up before Earth Day, but, well, not so much. Once I'd fallen behind with the soil blocks posts, the ED post was doomed. Sort of a “for loss of a nail the shoe, the horse, the battle, the kingdom was lost” situation.

Earth Day for me began with the panicked realization that it was Earth Day and that I owed the NC a post. That was on the way to breakfast at our local food co-op, and as my bike hit their driveway I saw the piles of earth in front and realized that those piles contained the compost the co-op gives away—gives away!—on Earth Day and only on Earth Day, and I was about to miss my chance at it again, a day after it had become clear that I was going to have to get some compost even if I had to pay for it; mine just wasn't ready yet.

So even before breakfast began I was feeling seriously behind on two counts. By eleven I'd made some headway on the post and had collected my free (unscreened) compost, but once back home I found a message from my voice teacher who, it turned out, was requesting my help editing the program notes for our choir's concert that weekend. Now, I like this guy, I like this choir, I like editing, I like (oh, bitter admission!) being appealed to in my Professional Capacity, so how could I say no? What with one thing and another, I wasn't done till after five-thirty, so over a rushed dinner (prepared and served by the ever-present, ever-loving spouse) I pounded out the NC post, then hightailed it for our pen-penultimate choir rehearsal. Breathlessly. And late.

That's how I roll.

Yesterday morning was much the same, only more so. More so, because while on Earth Day someone else was at least peripherally involved in the complete derailment of my day, this time it was All My Fault. (I can't even figure out a way to pin this on James, though I'm working on it.)

Now, I'm locally famous for my terrible memory, my chaotic departures for trips (including trips to the grocery store) and my inability to keep track of my belongings, but the 24 hours between Tuesday at 1:00 pm and Wednesday at 1:00 has to count as a personal best in all three categories. I've been planning a trip to see friends in Minneapolis and parents in Toronto, and have gone about town telling people that I was leaving on Friday, only to realize two days ago (Tuesday) that while that was true in a sense, the city I'd be leaving on Friday was Minneapolis (not Bozeman); my flight out of Bozeman left on Wednesday (yesterday,) and if I wanted to be on it, I had to pack into one day what I'd slated for three.

Of course, I'd slated too much even for three, so no, I didn't get everything done. Amongst the victims of my sudden departure may be my soil blocks—a fact that quite breaks my heart, given the time and the expense I've invested. But the transfer of small blocks to larger ones, a project planned for today, did not happen, as I am now in Minneapolis and the blocks are still in Bozeman; nor did the rescue of several large blocks which had been split by emerging squash seedlings, so massive that the term “seedling” is hardly apt.

But as I said at the beginning, it is amazing how much one can do when under the gardening gun: on Tuesday afternoon I prepped and planted not one bed but two, and on Wednesday I planted the last of sixty bare-root ever-bearing strawberry plants, got four Oregon grape plants into larger containers, and filled multiple plastic pots so that, should the Spouse be so inclined, he could easily repot sedlings outgrowing their blocks.

He's already done more than his share, for once again, as on Earth Day, he came to the rescue, making dinner, breakfast, and lunch; he picked up meds at the pharmacy, looked for missing items, promised to water plants, prepared an old computer for my mother's use, and drove me to the airport. Yesterday evening he had to pick up the stuff I left strewn about the house in my flight. One should not impose upon another in this manner. If all the blocks are dead upon their return, it's no more than I deserve. I hope to make it up to him by serving delectable strawberries to him in August as well as June.