Hey trim, hey lovin! Great to hear from yall again! Im so happy to be back online that i could virtually dance! The garden is looking great today, albeit a bit dry. So here we go again with more from where i left off:
A very frustrating week is in progress, that is if we define progress as being one step forward, and several steps back, a trip, a fall, a skint knee and some barbed wire hooked all-the-way into my finger, the one ive been using the most lately- the middle one. Only two people showed up for the plant sale on saterday; but that's the way the cornbread crumbles. It's no skin off my teeth, at least the ones i still got. And at least i sold some plants, enough to get the groceries i needed, some food for the cats. But the real kicker is driving all the way across the parish, using the last of my gas money, and having my customer not be home. Even the cell phone's mail-box is full and "can not accept messages at this time". Probabaly a GOOD thing that i can not reach this particular customer today. I feel like my whole day was wasted. I'm trying to save up money for a new computer. I cant afford to drive across town for nothing. This is the time of year i need to be planting my food for the summer and fall. I can't afford to be jacking around with odd jobs, fifty bucks here and there. If the job doesn't pay enough for a new computer, then it simply isn't worth my time. I would do better at home, spending time with Moneygirl and The Fatman, living off the land and enjoying my time, rather than stuck in traffic, waiting for a new bridge to get built. I'm ready to stop answering my phone forever, to chuck it off a cliff as hard as i can throw it, or even better- smash it with a sledge hammer like i'm trying to ring the bell at the countyfair. I feel like i did during the trip to Arkansas, when i stopped to get my ex-wife some hot peanuts. We were somewhere near Hamburg, and the old gas station was right out of a Rockwell painting. They even still had the old pull-a-bottle type soda machine with a glass door. The back door was open to a junkyard of old tires and rusted carcasses of automobiles, tall grass and some deep, dark-looking woods. 'I could just take off running.' I thought. 'By the time she came inside to see what was taking me so long, i would be nearly a mile away. I would dumpster-dive for food. I would assume a new identity, a new life. No one would ever know what happened to me or why i disappeared, just a way of escaping my life, everything, and become some one else.
Well, i won't do that. But this will be my last post until i get a computer. I don't have the time or money to come to the library every time i want to rant about something. I would love to spend more time on here, especially at the end of the day, but this rural library closes so early! I have to go. It might be a week or more, but when i come back, i plan to have my own computer in my own garden. No more wasting time to suffer fools lightly. Adios, amigos! Buenos notches!
It's so good to be home again! Home, in my secretgarden of fruits and flowering delights, so sweet and fragrant that even the nats buzzing and bugging about seem more like tiny angels worthy of a live and let them make honey attitude. Whenever i see someone duck and cover because of a tiny bee, i first ask them if they are allergic. Most people will lie and say, "I think so!" To which i always just laugh and say, "you're bigger than he is!" Hee Haw, George Bailey! See, you had a pretty wonderful life after all, til that little ole bee took you out, huh? Wasn't that an episode of CSI Miami? Ha ha, LOL, it is to laugh! When a bee is working a flower, he is so into what he is doing, that he is oblivious of cowlike creatures walking around on our hind legs. I used to come out in the morning with a nice, hot cup of green tea, and park my face above the entrance to a yellow jacketed hornet's nest. If had walked onto the nest like a clumbsy oaf, i would have been covered in stingers like a prime rib tossed into a tank of pirahnas; but as i was sneaking up on them, i was able to park my eyes in front air terminal central. It was like standing in the middle of a runway at Chicago's O'Haire International Airport. It's nice sometimes, after working hard, to just sit and smell the jasamine, munch out blueberries. Blueberries already? Thats wierd!
Global warming, mars in phase with venus, the supermoon we just had, a change in the orbit of the Earth around the sun; whatever the cause, my blueberries are ripening way too early. Most of the blackberries are not even fully red, yet i'm not curious enough to dwell on the reasons why, fossil fuels, the follies of man's greed. Ive grown accustomed to extreme weather where freak events and tornado warnings are the norm and average temps are rare. It's above normal today, beautiful in spite of it, and The Fat Man is cuddled up beside me being loveydovey. Most of the time he is grumpy and aloof, just like his character's namesake from the classic film, The Maltese Falcon. Monkeygirl is likely being a cat on a cool, tin roof, her favorite new sleeping area away from the flies, fleas, mosquitos, and other blood-suckers from the Planet of The Vampires, an under-rated "B" sci-fi movie from the early sixties. I have been up since 6am, have already watered the plants in the nursury area (the sun garden), and i now have time to write and relax, think and plan my daily "to-do" list, or just sip coffe and mosey around the grounds. I'm often surprised at just how big one acre of woods can feel when walking around it, and it never fails to surprise my visitors and i alike that a few moster trees can drop enough dead wood to fill my daily fuel requirements for cooking (with the exception of a long stew, pot roast, or my signature Catholic school style, Italian spaghetti and meatballs. A quick fire can heat some left-overs, cook pasta to toss with some fresh herbs and olive oil, or scorch a quesodilla made with sharp Vermont cheddar and tobasco peppers. A zip stove made from a coffee can makes cooking possible with even less wood, twigs and even pinestraw which abounds. Im so happy that i made the transition to off-grid living, even though it was a difficult and often frustrating process of camping out in my own home at first. I now walk in and turn on the lights without a thought, unless the weather has been cloudy for a few days. There are times when i do have to conserve my solarpower; but for the most part, i take my electricity for granted even more so than when i was on the grid. Sooner or later, spaceweather will strike. A small meteor or a massive coronal ejection from the sun. A gamma ray blast from a slightly too nearby supernova. Whatever it will be, it will happen again sooner or later. If everyone lived as i do, we'd all miss the internet for however long it took to get the grid back up. Other than being socially isolated and pissed-off about missing the season finale' of Person of Interest, we would still have lights and electricity. I am reminded of that movie from the 80's called "Red Dawn". The Soviets invade, but find that nearly every one of us red-necked hillbillies from Louisiana owns a high-powered rifle and have good aim. Toss in a non-dependance on the grid, solar panels on every rooftop, and it would make for a well armed and self-reliant nation with a great sense of non-invadable national security.
Giant blackberry + giant red bird (a cardinal, also known to persons with hangovers as "alarmclock birds") + lazy cat, twenty feet away and not even flinching, yet staring right at the poacher; equal one irritated Sunsaver! "That big red bird right there Monkey! What the hell kind of cat are you anyways!" This is an actual quote of me talking to my cats in my garden, as family, bad kids in need of a time out, and my accent is more "hey yall," like tv parody, though not as exagerated, and less like the cajuns down south or them cityfolk in Nawlens. "Do i have to put down this computer and chase him off myself?!" The bigbird suddenly dropped down to the clothesline, a mere three feet away from the Frankenberry, for realz? "Holy ****!" I exclaimed. I dropped the laptop on top of a seed tray, crushing seedlings, and grabbed a stick. "Get out of here!" I yelled. I flung the limb with good aim, but missed as he flew away, only just in time, as if to laugh at my pathetic arm. "You're no Drew Brees!" The redbird crowed back, "better keep your day job, BOY!" He cackled off into the distant hieghts of the tree canopy and started tweeting the alarm, over and over with that annoying whistle, like a phys-ed coach with OCD. I turned around and looked at a yawning catmouth returning a blank stare. "Your fired!" i told her, in my best impression of the Trumpster.
Glad to hear you're doing well.
Good to see you here old friend. 
