It’s All Okra-Dokra With Me…

This is a quick veggie tale for a couple of my Twitter buds.  If I’ve told ya’ll this one before….well, I’m old and decrepit and the mind is going so just put up with it… I also need more coffee.

When Devoted Spouse was Active Duty Air Force we lived in this lovely little brick cottage on a base here in Ohio.  We had such nice neighbors – the one on one side always met me at the fence with an extra Mason jar of ‘gawdknowswhat’ for me to share with her….the one on the other side was a Southern Belle and wouldn’t be caught out without her hair and spackle just perfect…. ya’ll.  Diversity…

Anyway.  Devoted Spouse and I decided to put in a little garden in the backyard.  Yay us.  We dug and dug…we composted…we planted…we weeded… I used my target pistol on the squirrels (another story for another day) and and and and… we had a heckuva garden going.

Devoted Spouse picked out all the plants and seeds that year — we had tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, zucchini (how da heck u spell zucchini anyway?) and he found something called okra.  Now I grew up in Virginia but I didn’t know what okra was.  Devoted Spouse said it was something you grew, picked, washed, dried, battered, fried, & ate.

I can do that.

Our okra thrived — the squirrels went after the cucumbers instead (having tasted okra I’m with the squirrels).

One day my front doorbell rang.  I went to the door in my ratty chenille robe and bunny slippers.  There stood Miss Texas 19oughtsomething all decked out in her purty outfit w/matching shoes.  I invited her in.  She daintily stepped over my threshold, looked around, got a look on her face and said:

“Hunny I caaaaaan’t (that has 3 syllables btw) stay loooooonnnnng but tha ladies and I have (have has 2 syllables in this drawl…keep up please) been discussin’ ya’ll’s okra and tha ladies thought I should be tha one ta tell ya hunny.  Okra is s’posed ta be picked when it’s smalllllll, not when it’s tha size of a cucumbah.”

Then she had the audacity to grin at me, tell me she had to run and out the door she went leaving me standing there pretty much with okra on my face.

Crap – and here I thought I was growing the best and largest okra in the neighborhood and I would win a garden prize. 

From that day….I have detested okra.  Oh yeah, I finally tasted it.  What a waste…right up there with brussel sprouts.  Future topic for my meeting in heaven… “What Was Jesus Thinking?”  Yeah… add okra to the list.  Blechhhhh….sigh

Theme Thursday – Green

photo by Dusan Bicanski - http://www.public-domain-image.com

When I decided to accept this week’s Theme Thursday: Green challenge the first idea in my twisted head was it’s March and time for St. Patrick’s day, green beer (blechh) and leprechauns.  But that would be so obvious that I simply cannot do it – not even the little guy on the Lucky Charms box.  Did I ever mention I love Lucky Charms?  Okay I just like to pick out the yummy marshmallows and throw the rest away, but I’m getting a bit off the subject.

Anyway – whilst browsing the web for public domain photos I came across the lovely pic above of a sunflower bud and I knew that would be my Theme Thursday muse:  Greenery.

You see – I’m so sick of Winter I could scream but I imagine I have also mentioned that a few thousand times in the last few months.  White, white, white, every where snowy white.  Yes, the first snow of winter was lovely.  By this point in the Season I am sawing at my wrists with my plastic Wendy’s knife (j/k) and eagerly awaiting the first hint of green anywhere on my property.

It will be a long time before I see any of my favorite sunflowers pop up — they need to be planted first.  But there are tons of crocus (croci?),  jonquils, daffodils, and other little early-blooming spring delights just waiting around the corner.  I look out my kitchen window each morning hoping I will see the new green shoots cropping up for my lovely irises in the back yard.  I know it is too soon, but I peek out any way.  A girl can hope.

In the meantime I will have to live with a half-dead green philodendron and a Christmas Cactus that never bloomed once this past year. I also buy fresh herbs & put them in little glass jelly jars so I can look at their lovely green color and remind myself soon there will be herbs in my garden.   If I’m really desperate for green I can always gaze at the green patch of craft paint on my dining room carpet (which isn’t green unfortunately) courtesy of EmmaLou, Golden Destroyer.  And I can always put on my Green Bay Packers tee-shirt for a shot of green.

But I truly long for the green only Spring can deliver.  Sadly what I don’t have is a Green Thumb — but I always plant a garden in the hopes something lovely will get past my gardening goofs.  sigh…

Oh No! He Bought the Farm!

I am a newbie to Facebook; I’ve been there for a couple of months now at best.  The other day I checked my FB account and was met with the news that a friend of mine had bought the farm.  What??  Oh no – he can’t be…he’s so young!  Then I realized the little blurb was accompanied by a picture of a farm – he had bought A farm, not THE farm.  Big difference.

It’s a game called FarmVille and it’s driving me insane.  Everytime I log onto FB I am inundated with the news of this person finding a lost cow or that person buying a harvester or someone else’s sunflowers coming up.  Good grief.  It’s just out of control.  There is corn everywhere and not an ear to eat.  Every time I turn around someone is inviting me to join them in FarmVille.  If I want a tractor, I’ll go buy one, thank you very much.  I’m a bad enough gardener; I don’t need to fail at FarmVille, too.

FB is full of these types of games; there’s one on Mafia Wars and a friend of mine has reached something like level 225 or some ridiculous number — how many hours did she have to play to get there?  And just what is the point?  Is she wiling away the hours whacking people?  No thanks.  I’ll re-read The Godfather if I want to learn of any people whacking.  The other day I checked into FB to announce how I had done on my quiz and what I thought my final grade was going to be and discovered that now there is treasure to be had in Island Paradise.  Oh no…another invite to another cheesy game.

I may deactivate my FB account — it bores me to tears to actually break down and tell people what I’m doing.  It bores them to tears, too, by the looks of the comments I receive.  My FB status is pitiful.  I think I put one pic of me up and two of EmmaLou and that’s it.

I’m just not a FB person — I’m more of a Twitterer.  Some of we bloggy folks get together occasionally on Twitter and play a rousing game of SmartAss (trivia) which I guess makes me no better than the FB people playing FarmVille or Mafia Wars, but there is no record kept for people to go through to see how I did at SmartAss.  Twitter doesn’t keep these games where you can view them over and over and over to see your progression.

Besides that…not just anyone can play SmartAss – it’s true…we’re a special group.  You have to ASK to play.  And you have to know WHO to ask.  Yeah…it’s like having a secret password in bloggyland.  Over on FB anyone will invite you to play at herding pink cows; now where’s the fun in that?

What Would You Do for a Klondike Bar?

I didn't do it Mom

The last few days around here have been filled with young men and mulch.  Now before you get some strange ideas from that sentence let me remind you it is that time of year when gardens and flower beds have to have some mulch put on them to protect and nourish all the flowers and shrubbery and, most importantly, allow Devoted Spouse some free time from weeding.

Remember the other day I told ya’ll how there’s that stinky product called Liquid Fence that is designed to keep rabbits away from your plants?  Remember the other day I told ya’ll how EmmaLou, the Golden Destroyer went bonkers for the Liquid Fence and thought she had found a new doggie perfume?

Calvin Klein Canine?

Last night EmmaLou received her normal dinner of what Devoted Spouse calls Fish and Chips (a special brand of vet-provided dog food containing fish and potatoes for dogs with skin allergy problems).  She chowed down greedily as if it wasn’t the same old kibble she has received twice a day for the last five years.  Then it was time for the “constitutional”.  Devoted Spouse opened the sliding glass door to the back yard and out went EmmaLou in search of that perfect spot (can you imagine how inconvenient it would be for us if we had to search for that perfect spot every time we had to pee?  Hmmmm….) Anyway, she stopped dead in her tracks on the deck, slowly turned her puppy head towards the right and noticed the first spot of newly laid mulch right under my kitchen window.  Suddenly EmmaLou turned into Super Dog and made a beeline straight for the mulch.  It was like Emeril in a Farmer’s Market searching for just the perfect pepper.  She sniffed, she moved an inch or two, she sniffed, she moved an inch or two, and then she found just the right piece of mulch, gingerly picked it up and took it over to the grass where she plopped down and commenced to slowly chew and savor that piece of mulch like it was part of a gourmet meal.

Okay – no big deal – the dog ate a piece of mulch.  But the mulch stinks much like the Liquid Fence — I imagine there’s a tad bit of manure thrown in for good measure and well, you just don’t have to lead EmmaLou to anything resembling the fragrance of manure – she’s got “stink” radar all her own.  So after she had her appetizer she ran to the closest flower garden and jumped into the middle of a pile of mulch, rolled around on her back, put her head and face into it to fully appreciate it’s “bouquet” and just rutted around like she was in hog heaven.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'

That’s my little puppy girl – give her an opportunity to roll in or eat something that stinks and she’s a happy dog.  I could save alot of money on dog toys this way, but may have to run to Sam’s to stock up on doggie shampoo.

More mulch arrives today — shhhhh, don’t tell EmmaLou please.

I Hate to Beat a Dead Horse….but…

absolutely adorable no doubt

Ya’ll remember the other day I posted about how cute this little puppy was when I brought her home and how I just fell in love with her and yet she has given me over 5 years of pure heck with her antics?

Apparently, I am to get no peace in this house from this dog from Hades.  No peace whatsoever.

Wednesday Devoted Spouse (even though his back was bothering him) put a lawn chair by the dressed up garden and sat my precious butt in it to supervise his planting of the Swiss Chard.  My job was to water and put on that nasty Liquid Fence stuff (plus I put a tomato cage around it just in case).  He spent a lot of his time fixing the stonework – and those stones are very heavy.  Bless his heart.  Then he took his precious self over to another section of the yard where my lavender plants (every last one of them) had died a horrible death and he planted two perennials.  Again, I watered and put the smelly stuff on.  We repeated this one more time in another part of the yard with more perennials.   The point is this is hard work and Devoted Spouse was tired.  I was tired, too, but just because my back was bothering me.  Here is a shot of the cleaned up and planted (okay only 2 tomato plants and a Swiss Chard so far) garden and a shot of my irises (and Devoted Spouse’s cute little civil war soldier) which is right next to the perennials – but there were too many weeds I don’t want you to see at the perennials so you’ll just have to take my word for it; they are there.

So, what is the point to this story?  The Golden Destroyer had her precious special vet-buy-only dinner at 5pm.  At 5:01 she went outside for her constitutional and what do you think she did?  She made a beeline for the perennials and started to chomp and roll.

Devoted Spouse saved everything and got her out of there and I used my best mommy voice to get her golden butt back inside.  Then it was the toothpaste and dishrag/soap routine again.

I can’t take it anymore.  I am the only person in the world who has the most challenged dog who would actually like this stuff, but she won’t eat a piece of an onion and she won’t get close to the mist that comes off an orange when you peel it.  Maybe I need to put onions around the plants – but then the rabbits would eat the onions.

As if that isn’t bad enough, not an hour later I’m in the living room working on school and Devoted Spouse and stinky dog are in the family room watching tv and I hear this yell, “Honey come help, Emma just threw up.”   On top of everything else she did that day, she went and yakked up the total contents of her stomach and it just missed my new couch by a hair, or I would be printing her obituary instead of this posting.  Sweet merciful heavens give me patience and I want it right now!

I think my brain may be leaking out of my ears at the moment so I am going to calm down and go take a much needed nap and a little doggie distance.  Gah….  I need to move to the country and buy about a 5 acre piece of land where we can build a little house for us and the dog has room to run and cavort and stink up herself so bad she doesn’t have time to mess with my lil ole pitiful garden and then have the audacity to yak all over my white berber carpet.  Sigh…