Hello, garden. I've missed you so.

I've been out.  I've been busy.  I'd love to say that it was all gardening, but that would be rather inaccurate.  The first gardening that I've been able to do was this evening.  I'll be continuing to free the beds of what plant death left behind from the fall.  The broken foot kind of prevented some garden clean-up. 

This is where you expect photos and I fail to deliver.  Why do I fail you so?  Well, I had precious little time from the time that I got home until sunset.  Mosquitoes are out.  Yes, you read that right.  In northeast Ohio, where mosquitoes usually start in June, we're rockin' here in March (mid-March as it was) and I didn't want chewed. 

I freed the vegetable garden bed, flipped, twirled and fed it with my organic food.  I pulled the dried up ground cherry plant and the accompanying carcass', tossed the cages for those (I hold them up on tomato cages) behind the shed and kept clearing.  It isn't going to be a perfect job, but the perennials are at least a few inches up, a couple of months ahead, and I don't want to choke the perennials out with all of the garden debris left behind. 

I placed my seed order this evening.  Mmmmm.  How I love Baker Creek! 

I'll rewind now to tell you where I've been.

Friday- Canned food drive for school.  It was the end day, and the day that required us to cruise around to gather up the offerings that each class collected.  The fabulous news is that we collected 1192 food products for the local food bank.  The yucky news is that we had to toss 72 expired items.  The expired-s involved Jello pudding and gelatin from 2005 and 2006.  We had a few cans that were bulged on the top and bottom.  (Botulism, anyone?)  The winning expy item was a can of Campbell's soup that expired in August, 2000.  How's that for offering the first fruits for those in need?  What was exciting is that while we did receive a disheartening number of items that had to be disposed of, we also received case after case of veggies that were brand new.  The generosity of the families and children in the school truly warmed my heart.  How wonderful to know that those 1192 cans hat we collected will be going off to the families of our community to be certain that they have food in their cupboards. 

Saturday and Sunday sent me off to Columbus for a buying trip weekend.  No, I didn't go crazy spending tons of money we don't have.  I went as a buyer for the gallery that I work at and was paid to spend their money. 

Y'all, it is exhausting to spend money like that.

Normally, they have my coworker join them, but she is in Rome with her husband and the school Latin club, so I was asked to consider coming along.  While their full trip wasn't a possibility for me, I proposed a weekend (when I could place K- with the in-law's while Hubs worked and I was out) and it seemed good for them.  We banged out a ton of Christmas buying and got tree themes nailed down.  They'll be back tomorrow, but I had to return last night.  I made the fly trip back, while keeping an eye toward the sky, as there had been a tornado warning for the city that I was in while we were out at dinner.  I'm thinking that it was a funnel cloud, as we didn't see anything, but my coworker reported noticing a green haze that somehow I missed.  I arrived home safe and at warp speed, since I just wanted to be home.  The trip was nice, we all had a great time and got a lot accomplished.  There's something to be said for snuggling up in my own bed, though.

Today I worked and it was the slowest day.  The great weather that we are having has something to do with that, I'm sure.  We're in the latter 70's and early 80's.  That is weather unheard of for here until about late May. 

So again I say, I was able to dig in the dirt.  It was a good thing.  I'll have a nightly date with the dirt until I get the gardens ship-shape again.  Until then, I'm still tuckered from the weekend and from my gardening exercise.  Pardon me as I now take a date with my pillow.  Zzzz.