But I'm looking forward to this class. If it goes at all well, then I'll probably be teaching it again.
Saturday morning, Matt and I got up bright and early (well, early for a weekend - 8am) and while Matt mowed the lawn, I delved into the more-or-less rectangular plot I'll be using for my garden next year. I was surprised at how dark the earth was in the plot I'd chosen - almost like real dirt. Not richly dark, but not the yellow-brown clay we have under most of our lawn, either. I picked about four thousand fist-sized rocks out of the ground, turned all the ground over, and broke up the grass. In the spring, I'll spray weedkiller on the bed to take care of any remaining living grass (and the stuff up close to the house that I couldn't get with my shovel) and then turn some fertilizer into it. I'm excited already, just thinking about it.
At about 10, my parents showed up with a truckload of compost, and we got busy. Mom mostly walked around and kept me company, while Matt and Dad shovelled compost into Dad's wheelbarrow and dumped it on the yard. I raked the piles smooth. When the truck was emptied, Matt pushed the grass seed spreader around, thickly layering the compost with seed while Dad and I went behind him, raking the seed into the compost. (Part of the reason our lawn is mostly weeds is that the last few times we seeded, birds came along and ate the actual grass seed, leaving the weed seeds behind. If only they could be trained just to eat the weed seeds!)
By the time we finished, Matt and I had a matched set of broken blisters on our thumbs, and vague hopes that we might actually eventually have some grass. We set up the sprinkler and began to soak the ground.
Matt was helping my Dad pack up the tools he'd brought and Mom was picking out some CDs to take home with her when the phone rang. It was K.T., calling to cancel that evening's AD&D game. She and Kevin had had a much rougher morning: They'd taken their older cat, Bear, to the vet, discovered the extent of his illness, and without any other choices available to them, really, had him put to sleep.
Bear was nineteen, which means K.T. had him for roughly two-thirds of her life. She was devastated. I asked if she wanted Matt and I to come over, to keep them company and such, but she and Kevin were taking Bear's body up her mother's, to bury him next to Puff, who'd died less than a year ago.
I think leaving Bear was one of the things that Matt regretted most when he and K.T. broke up. Bear had always preferred men to women, and he'd firmly adopted Matt as "his" person while Matt and K.T. and Ashby were all living together. Matt, I told K.T., would be crushed. I went outside and handed Matt the phone.
It was all we could do to hold it together until my parents left; to thank them for their help and see them off. As my dad's big truck roared down the street, I turned to look at Matt in time to see a tear roll from his eye. We went inside and mourned for a while. We cuddled Diamond - who isn't exactly a spring chicken - and Matt wrote a little.
Goodbye, Bear.
Word of the Day: delve - to dig or labor with or as if with a spade; to make a careful or detailed search for information
- between books
Current Projects:
-
Diet Progress: 12.5 lbs lost
| Previous Reflection |
Current Reflections Reflect Back |
Next Reflection |