In the ground

With any luck, I'll actually be able to post this before our DSL goes out again. It's been sporadic since Friday night, so this morning monshu spent over an hour on the phone with AT&T. Their story is they're doing maintenance this weekend and expect to be finished Monday morning. Yeah, thanks for letting us know, guys.

But in some ways that was for the best, because it forced us to get done the gardening we'd intended to do despite being pretty worn out from the weekend. Friday the Old Man was out until the ungodly hour of 10:30 p.m. entertaining some guests in town for his organisation's annual conference. Knowing this, I cast about among my friends in the 'hood for something to do and ended up going out to the Glenwood for drinks with Coleman and a friend of his, a Long Islander transplanted to Oakland.

Yesterday, I wanted to see if staying off my foot for a while would help it heal, and that appears to have worked. So I was a lazy sow while my better half put together a dinner for a select few of his past and present coworkers. One I hadn't met before was a sweet young gayboy from the Twin Cities. Afterwards, I gave him a tour of our nearest watering holes--Parlour, Touché, and Jackhammer. We ran into an ebullient post-lasik lucentnotion at the second of these, which made it a much later night than I'd anticipated.

So I knew this morning that if I didn't make a push to get to the nursery sooner rather than later, it might not happen. Tonight's meatloaf dinner was an hour late, but at least we were able to take pride in the fact that we'd gotten everything planted. monshu did the hanging baskets--begonias and sweet potato vines in only one this year, lobelia in the other--while I mucked about in the herb garden.

I promised coworkers I'd pot up some herbs as prizes for a staff raffle, so I broke up a clump of chives for the purpose and attempted to do the same with one of the French sorrels, likely killing the plant in the process. I didn't want to risk doing that to the sage. We have a lot of volunteer borage, but I figured most people wouldn't have a clue what to do with it, so I only potted up one and it's looking so wilted I don't expect it to see tomorrow.

We're also growing some catmint for the first time. A friend gave me a sprig the other night and--to my surprise--the cat went wild for it. I guess the dried stuff the GWO brought home before just didn't have the same magic. I separated out the smallest seedling to replant separately; the rest are in a terra cotta pot on the back porch. We'll see if it brings all the toms to the yard.

We also got some rosemary for the sunny spot formerly inhabited by the lemon thyme, whereas the woodruff went into the shade in the back. The periwinkle seems to like that spot in the front yard so we bought a bunch more plants; hopefully by the end of the summer it will start to look less like a failed hair transplant and more like a healthy head. And lastly, the hole left by the expired cotoneaster is plugged with a hosta.

Whew! Writing it all up likes that makes it seem I have some justification for feeling as tired as I do after less than two hours' honest work.