Long Weekend

 We spent the weekend up at the retirement property, and it felt very nice to unwind. I spent a lot of time in the garden. It will never cease to amaze me how quickly weeds grow. I spent most of my time weeding. 

But weeding the peppers, I noticed that there are peppers on my hot pepper plants. 

And remember how I told you about the pesky woodchucks always chewed off my cabbage plants for the last two years? The roots must have remained because in addition to my volunteer potatoes, I've got volunteer cabbages, which was an exciting discovery. This one was smack dab in the middle of a row of onions. I decided to leave well enough alone. 

The gratuitous cucumber picture. This is week four. The three plants are have a bunch of blossoms in there. I cannot wait to see how they produce. My sister was amazed at the number of blossoms on my plants. The roots have grown even more than the leaves. I love successful experiments.

The avocados trees are holding steady at five. The big news is that I have a snake in the greenhouse. We have an agreement. I open the door and stomp my foot and he politely slithers out. I wasn't always so laid back about snakes. In fact, my screams were the basis of many comical family stories. After 3 years of working in the swamps, I stopped screaming. You can get used to just about anything, I guess. 

Another critter story: we have not had one woodchuck in the garden. It appears that we have reached a detente. I have not had to replant one thing. The fence remains unbreached. We may win this war without the need to fire a shot! win-win!

Walking back up to get a cold drink after working in the sun for several hours, I caught a glimpse of the little cemetery across the road. A man and a woman were returning to their car, holding hands. The woman stopped suddenly and the man turned to her. They leaned together and gathered strength to slowly continue on to their car, I felt as if I had accidently witnessed something that should have been witnessed by the silent stones alone. 

We are back home now. I saw a neighbor woman and said, "So was it a noisy weekend in the neighborhood?" (July 4th nearly guarantees that.) She said, "It wasn't bad. I don't know what your husband was up to though. That got annoying!" I looked at her astonished. I said, "We've been in Grand Valley all weekend. We weren't home." It was her turn to look shocked. I'm not sure what the racket was. She dropped the subject altogether. 

The shopping for lunches is done. So is the laundry. Tomorrow we return to work.