Making Life Work

Check it out Dog! Can you tell I have become an American Idol junkie again?




I am looking out my window upon my favorite G rated time filler - my garden and wanted to tell you a very "Making-Life-Work" scenario. Picture my house, a beautifully refurbished Victorian with awesome gardens and busy lives abounding. There is this cute little garage on the property and a stone walkway heading around the side of the house, a stone patio and then the path continues through the garden to the garage and out the alley. LOVE this piece of property and like many of the others I love, have loved it since the moment I saw it. I couldn't park the car when I first saw it I loved it so much. Anyway I always wanted to put Irish Moss throughout this entire walkway, surrounding each stone. This however would have run upwards of $1500 to do it properly as it is a large space. As there are people not eating in this world it's a bit hard for me to justify $1500 on moss; I mean the stuff under the poorest of conditions should grow wild! Not the case at my dream house. Are you starting to follow me?




Anyway throughout the years I have tried MULTIPLE ways to introduce this moss to my landscape finally arriving at what I BELIEVED to be the end all, the answer. I would order the seeds! Not $1500 and an ingenious means to an end. I sat down at my computer, got my credit card out and ordered 10,000 seeds. Sound like a lot to you? Ah to me as well - until I got them. I must have been sleeping that day in science when I learned that moss seeds are spores you %(@*)%*)!(@*%) idiot! 10,000 seeds looks like the smallest bit of something just covering the bottom of a cigarette cellophane packet - you know, how all the "druggies" in high school kept their pot? If I had to guess I would say 1 1/2" long and 1/8" deep. Well for Christ sake. What is this?!?!?!




But alas I am a smart girl, and I come up with a doosey. I am going to make a big trash can full of a mud mixture and mix the seeds in there. I will then use my trusty turkey baster (remind me to someday tell you of the many opportunities a home offers for the use of a turkey baster) and simply baste the seed mud mixture around every single, solitary stone on the pathway and patio. I WILL HAVE IRISH MOSS.




Before beginning the mix I call my sister, (a master gardener by my standards) just to confer that I am indeed on the right track. She thinks so but suggests whipped cream instead of the mud mixture! Her reasoning? That moss thrives in buttermilk and whipped cream is practically buttermilk's biological mother with a more conducive consistency to what I am trying to accomplish. Fine. It's Friday. According to Super Duper Doppler, a beautiful weekend is in store and the love of my life is heading to Northern MN, my kids to Putz's house and I have nothing to do :) except garden:)




I buy all the whipping cream in my town, in the town "down the road a piece" and in the next town way down the road. Instead of the refrigerator looking like one in a fun house with beer and the like, someone may suspect me for a sex fiend should they look in mine that weekend!...packed with whipping cream. I make the "slurry" as my sister referred to it, filling much of a very large garbage can with whipped cream and stirred in the seeds. This portion of the process alone takes an eon and a half. Finally ready to go with my can of seeded cream (hmmmm), turkey baster and large Jack and Diet I set out to accomplish my dream.




Painstakingly, stone by stone I progress throughout the garden. I spend almost 5 hours at this - boy am I getting loaded but I smile each time I think of how this beauteous addition will look. The bad news? The day is almost over. I am out of the slurry, half in the bag with only 15% of the walkway "treated". It is back to the computer with my credit card, this time to purchase much larger quantities.




Somewhere between coming inside and hitting the "complete purchase" button, my friend Laurie calls and wants to know what I have been up to all alone. Have I made good use of my time or frittered it away with a great book? As she is familiar with my previous attempts at bringing in moss, I explain my weekend thus far. Without skipping a beat she says "What if it doesn't work?" "Doesn't work? Laurie WHAT is your problem? Of course it will work! Why wouldn't it." Obviously THIS notion had never occurred to me. Glass half empty or half full? I guess the choice is yours.



Satisfied with a long day's worth of work in the sun and starting to feel trashed out of my mind, I decide that dinner - the quick and easy kind seems appropriate. Hmmmm. Let's heat up some leftovers in the microwave and I will go outside and eat while watching over my domain. Hey it looks kind of dark out there...not the stars and firefly kind of dark but the grean and ickey kind of dark. It looks like it may storm; very hard. That goddamn glass is not 1/2 full or 1/2 empty it just fell off the counter and crashed to little bits all over the kitchen floor. Say it ain't so. There are gigantic rain drops coming down all over out there! Nope I was mistaken. In fact there are SHEETS OF WATER falling from the sky.



This spring we are tearing out that cute little stone pathway in place of concrete. There will be no moss BUT now we are tackling a water feature! Come along for the ride, won't you?

Labels: I'm "Making-Life-Work", Nice to meet you