Those of us in the Pacific Northwest are known to rush outside on the first sunny day and lose our minds as we "frolic and detour" out the front door (not in the legal sense, mind you, but in the "it's been raining since October and we've got to get out of the house and put our hands in dirt" sense.) It's true, I've made the mistake of planting basil in April or hurrying to get my starts in the ground. Yup, we're overly enthusiastic about the prospect of warmer days ahead.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to my friend Zen about how ghastly my blog photos looked when I really looked at them. I believe I said ~ Did you like all the moss and black slime covering my pots, bench, and limestone? I like to think it's atmospheric and not a filthy disgusting mess. He responded with his very generous characterization ~ I prefer to think of it as having a rich yet bohemian-like earthiness........much like the patina on the bronze bells of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, or the rich sediment at the bottom of a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.....I'm thinking a '61........
I decided rich yet Bohemian-like earthiness had to go. Here's the rub: my late husband was Mr. Tool and, because he was a fighter pilot, he was also Mr. Redundant Systems. Unfortunately, after his death, one-by-one all of his small engine equipment died as well. The worst was the pressure washer.
Pressure washing the stone around my house is a completely contemplative thing. Utterly Zen. Struggling with a dead pressure washer is entirely not Zen.
Surprise! To the rescue! My friend Karen and her husband Ron arrived yesterday morning via a big honking truck with the most amazing pressure washer I've ever seen.
We all got to work. Pressure washing the stone and the benches, scrubbing the black slime off the pots, planting the pots with optimistic bright pansies and primroses, cleaning out the scruffy dead stragglers in my little kitchen garden and getting it ready for planting basil and tomatoes in May, raking up the mulch in the perennial beds, filling the bags with yard waste ready for pick-up on Monday morning, scrubbing off the awning.
Heaven! We worked all afternoon. Then, we made a veggie pizza, opened a bottle of wine and basked in our success.
After they left, I went out and walked around the yard. I love the look of "cared for." Cared for doesn't have to be expensive or chichi. It really is often small.
I slept the Sleep of the Righteous, the Contented. Of course, this morning, I can hardly walk, but, that is another story.
