Of Dreams and Realities

Mother Nature is pretending it's spring!

The fact that I was excited by that statement is a real testament to how icy and bitter-cold the past couple weeks have been.  I'm a winter person.  Always have been.  My favorite vacations from my childhood were snow skiing trips.  I tend to hibernate in the summer.  But it's been witch's-titty cold lately and instead of snow we've had ice and I'm sick of it!  It got up to 60 yesterday, my garage is finally ice-free, and I've never been happier to see mud. 

No, wait, not that one.  I hate mud.  That is the biggest reason I hate spring.  I grew up on a farm, we raised cattle, mud is bad.  There are few things on earth that are more unpleasant than stepping right out of your rubber boot and sticking your sock-clad foot into sloppy wet cow-crap-and-mud.  It doesn't happen on purpose, but the mud suctions to the boot and the boot slides off your foot.  You can't help it.  It's awful.  And calves don't like to be born into mud.  You know those nice sterile hospitals where human babies are born?  Yeah, imagine instead having the baby come out of it's nice comfortable womb and being dropped into a swamp of slimy stinky sludge.  And then their navels get infected. 

I hate mud.  That was also possibly the most disgusting digression I've ever made.  I sure hope the sleep number bed guy is still reading my blog. 

Here's the thing though: spring makes me think I'm someone I'm not.  Spring makes me fantasize about gardening.  I dream about tomatoes and peppers and peas and beans and cucumbers and a million herbs and strawberries and carrots (I don't even like carrots much) and radishes (I hate radishes but Hitter loves them and I love to do things for Hitter... when it's spring and I'm dreaming) and blueberries and rhubarb (oh I love rhubarb, I've tried like 5 times to grow it here and I've failed just as many times) and flowers of every shape, size and color. 

And I dream... and I dream... and I see me in a floppy straw hat and flowerdy gloves out in my garden, lovingly tending to it, watering, fertilizing, weeding.  And I see me in the kitchen in my yellow apron (I already have the apron, I don't have the hat and gloves) putting up all my glorious produce.  I see jars of green beans and salsa and jams and jellies and pickles and pie fillings, I see dried fruits and vegetables, I see frozen bags of easy recipe fixins (hee hee I just said fixins) and I see myself with a giant smile on my face, loving it all.  And when it's winter I wish I had those jars and bags of foods.

But when reality hits, I'm lazy and I don't care. 

There are lots of things I could blame.  For starters, it's hard to garden in this little corner of Hillbilly Hell.  Our soil is nasty damned clay, solid packed crap that a little baby plant has no chance of pushing root fibers through, and even if it does make roots they either rot because the clay holds so much moisture or they shrivel up because the clay won't absorb moisture.  Trust me, this would make sense if you lived with clay.  Actually, no.  I live with it and it makes no sense.  But you would understand that what I said is true, somehow, oddly enough.  Also, summers are so miserable here with the heat and excessive humidity that when it comes time to go out and lovingly tend to the garden, I just want to hibernate in the basement.  I'd never see the summer sun if Hitter hadn't let me get a pool. 

Also, bending over a garden makes my back hurt so bad.  It takes me forever to get anything done because I'll do something for approximately 27 seconds and then I have to stand up and stretch for 4 minutes.  My garden space is a little claustrophobic too because we have so many deer around here that we had to put up an 8' high fence around it and we didn't want to fence in too much real estate so it's just a little box. 

So my spring dreams of gardening bliss end up being a weedy mess of untended wild plants so out of control that I can't even get in to reach the tomatoes that have miraculously turned red. 

Of course I also have dreams of having a clean house, and being a dancer, and doing all sorts of crafts.  Mostly I'm really good at playing computer games.  I think I should shut this damned thing off.  Except I've done that before too and I just find other stupid things to occupy my time and the productive things still get ignored.  I wish I could get a job being lazy, I'd be the best damned employee ever.