Herbs!

Wow.

Mulch really is magical. I've been ready to plow the herb bed under and plant grass seed the past couple months because it was so ugly. But a few hours and many buckets full of mulch have transformed it. I'm so happy with it!

It's not strictly an herb bed. One section has rhubarb and one has horseradish and there are those volunteer tomatoes in there, too. I sowed fennel and basil in some of the blank spots yesterday.

I've always had trouble growing cilantro, but that section is doing great, better than any other, actually. Which makes me very happy, because I do love me some fresh cilantro. I garnished our curried lentil soup with a generous amount last night. Because I could. Heh.

Here's how the herb bed started.

And here it is now.

The opposite side remains unmulched, because I ran out. I'll get another
truckload as soon as possible, because the OCD part of me has trouble
looking past the unfinished-ness of it all.

A correction from yesterday: The light-colored mulch is cocoa shell, not coconut shell, and I would use it on everything if I could afford it. [A truck bed full (Ford Ranger) was $30. Four 2 cu. ft. bags of cocoa shell was $24.] But it's great mulch, and I like the contrast between the beds and the paths very much.

Still no clue as to how the door shattered. It's the inside pane of glass and the glass expert assured me it will fall out of the frame. It's just a matter of time. Oh, joy. I will, at his suggestion, gently apply masking tape to it and hope for minimal mess when it happens. He can't come to look at it until Friday.

I've been loving your comments. Thanks for taking the time to express yourself. And for letting me do the same.

Monday morning, coming down

I'm not really talking about me, although I'm certainly not quite as high up on that cloud of excitement and empowerment I was on Saturday after scolding a U.S. Senator.

My husband is still shaking his head over that one.

I'll post the photoadayJune picture (how serendipitous is it that today's prompt is "door"?) as soon as I publish this post so you can see what I'm talking about.

I came out into the living room this morning and noticed one of the sliding glass door panels was completely shattered. I looked for a brick or a rock on the patio, but found nothing. Then – of course! – I Googled and learned that spontaneous shattering of tempered glass sometimes just happens.

What a bitch.

As I sit here at my dining room table, the door is behind me and I can hear it. It's literally creaking. The spider-vein cracks are probably still spreading, although I can't see them do so, as when a car windshield cracks.

I've called the hardware store, gotten a couple numbers (an Andersen window representative and an installer) and am waiting for the somewhat civilized hour of 8 a.m. to call the first one, who will need to inspect it and tell us what to order.

Nothing like reality to bring you back to reality.

And nothing like the threat of rain to get you outside, weeding the herb bed and spreading the rest of a truckload of mulch. I got the landscape bed mulched last night after dinner and there truly is something magical about a freshly mulched flower bed. It's just lovely – so neat and tidy and professional-looking. I'm hoping the herb bed will look just as awesome – even though it's filled with quite a hodgepodge of plants, not all of which are herbs – when I finish it.

As both of you already know, the herb bed is circular and sliced into wedges, like a pie. I'm going to use dark mulch on the slices and crushed coconut shell mulch on the paths between the slices. I think it will look pretty enough for a picture.

When I was out there last night working on the weeds, I found four volunteer tomato plants. I'm leaving them there – free food! – and thankful I feel no need to make this herb bed a showpiece. Heh.

Y'all are the BEST!

Not that I needed the validation or anything, but it was lovely to read your supportive and uplifting comments yesterday. It was, indeed, a down day, and those happen every once in a while. I made the best of it, and will continue to do everything I can to eat healthfully, move gracefully and with intention (doesn't that sound all yoga-y?) and shoo those negative thoughts from my mind. With your help, of course. THANK YOU.

After I published yesterday's post I went to the drugstore for generic Claritin and an allergy eye drop, to treat whatEVER the hell happened to my eye on Friday at the garden center. I was standing at the potting bench, moving petunia plugs into larger pots, when suddenly my right eye began swelling. It was quite dramatic, actually, everyone there noticed it. I washed it out with clear, cold water and hoped for the best, but that best wasn't good enough. I needed an anti-allergy arsenal, because whatever it was was quickly spreading to the left eye.

I've had eye "issues" before. A couple of times it has been too-much-sun-related, and I once ended up in an urgent care facility in Florida because of it. My glasses are the transition kind, and I try to wear a visor or a hat when I'm in the sun, but sometimes even that doesn't help.

But it wasn't a sun issue on Friday, it was probably just something in the air that decided to attack me. My eyes are still swollen and red this morning, but the loratidine is helping and I'm not sleeping the day away, as I would if I were taking Benadryl, which is the other thing the pharmacist recommended.

I spent yesterday afternoon crossing things off my long garden work list. I weeded the herb bed and planted lots of stuff in there, both plants and seeds. There's one empty "slice" of the circular pie, which I will fill with lavender and bee balm, I think. It still looks pretty raggedy; definitely not photo-worthy!

After I told a friend about all the straw we've collected lately, she asked, "What are you going to do with it?" Well, here's what I've done so far:

All the onions have been weeded and straw-mulched. What a huge job that was. I got the electric fence up around the vegetable garden Friday morning (and thinned the apples) and fenced the blackberries yesterday afternoon. Now I need to trim around them, add some cardboard and put down a thick layer of straw.

Then it's back to the big garden for more weeding/yoga (downward dog really is the best weeding pose) and, maybe, if the rains stay away, some major planting. In addition to the 48 Amish Paste plants I bought yesterday, I have some other tomato plants and a few peppers, along with cucumber, zucchini, edamame and Italian green been seeds. Oh, and this celery plant, which I hope will grow in the ground as well as it's grown in a dish on the kitchen counter. I'm always willing to try something new in the garden. I've planted celery before, but always new plants, never the root end of a bunch from the grocery.

We shall see … I think it's important to keep trying to grow my own celery, although I haven't had much luck so far. Celery is #2 in the dirty dozen, and Tiny Kroger rarely has organic celery in stock.

Time for breakfast, then time for work. And one last thank you before I go.

THANK YOU!