August 25, 2012

Well, I went from welding student to welding teacher. I think I'm really going to enjoy it. The hours are almost perfect for taking care of my grandfather. What a relief. We don't have to make any changes to his nurse's schedule, and I get to work regular hours. Most of my life, I've worked irregular hours, mostly 2nd shift type hours; you know, restaurants and bars. The last five years in Las Vegas, that's ALL I did. Now that I'm working a normal day shift, I've become aware of how much those night hours were negatively affecting me. I'll try to never go back to them.

So, about the garden. As can be seen in the top image, the final wall is almost complete. I've run out of urbanite. Fortunately, my supplier has PLENTY. I'm starting to have problems with the gourd vines, though. They are starting to take over their portion of the yard, as can be seen in the middle left. I can't work around them without damaging them...the jerks.

If you remember, the image below is from when I first moved back.

Apparently, the watermelon vine is in cahoots with the gourd.

But I did find some babies.

Finally got the area to the right of the storage shed cleaned up. I like the look of that little retaining wall. Found a use for the ruined concrete bags, which I mentioned in a previous post. Unfortunately, the concrete in the bags, although hardened, were fragile. They broke in half. No matter. I was still able to use the ends.

 When seen up close, they almost look like pillows. Even in the image below, they still have a deceptively organic shape.

As I was cleaning out the overgrowth, I noticed these plants. I liked the way they looked and didn't bother them. They were growing naturally and had nice flowers. Fits right into my plan, let nature's beauty work for me. Even better, I happened to pass a seed rack several days later and noticed that the flowers on one of the packets were exactly the same. Garlic chives, it turns out. Looks like a chive, tastes like garlic. No one knows how these got here. 

Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville, signing off.