I totally expected yesterday that I would paint our picket fence and go into work about 2 hours late.  Well, five hours later, I finish---covered in white paint, sweaty, and pretty psyched.  I will be completely honest with you:  I would give up the professorship in a heartbeat and become a farmer, laborer, outdoor job doer with joy if I ever had to.  I love the zen experience of having your body do something a bit taxing and your mind able to ponder the world's problems (or, at least, sort through all the gossip and events). 

I'll be honest with you about something else, too:  our fence is so cute!!!!  We've had the picket fence to the side of the house since we moved in, but no one has noticed it.  (The unnatural shade of green has helped camouflage it)  After painting it white, a couple of neighbors have stopped by to ask if it's new!  I realized that before, when people arrived at the house, all they would notice is the front of the house, which looks quite small.  Now, there's a way to "draw the eye" down the side of the house and yard making it all appear a bit larger.  And it's just so darn cute to live in a house with a white picket fence!

I have to do another light coat of paint, but that will have to wait until next week because it's RAINING EVERY MF'ING DAY THIS WEEK. 

A quick update on the garden:  the garden peas are dead. Dead dead dead.  There were only three plants to survive.  Each produced one pea pod and gave up the ghost.  They are now completely yellow.  I'm going to pull them up (pea pod intact) before we leave for the Cape and compost them.  They can donate their pea souls to the garden future.  We have one tomato plant that Dave is calling a tomato tree.  The squash plants are gorgeous, but they are HUGE.  I have to dive in under the leaves to see what's going on down there.  We have swiss chard!  I'm keeping the cantalope plant who finally decided to do something from overtaking the chard.  (note to self:  keep crawly vines away from things growing  straight up)  It was spinach growing in that spot and apparently we did pull up half the plants before we realized it.  The peppers and eggplants are making a break for it (fertilizer is a good thing.)  Sage likes water every single day.  The mutant sunflower is still hanging in there (literally) and has grown.

Have I mentioned the butterfly bushes?  I don't think so.  They are humongous.  One is over 10 feet tall.  It has grown straight up and is taller than the garage.  When it finally has flowers all over, I think it is going to be stunning.  We pruned it this year (because that's what we read we were supposed to do), and I didn't even prune that aggressively.  I can't imagine how gorgeous it would look if I really worked at shaping it.  A plant, that sprang from cut back nubs, 10 freakin' feet tall.  HUGE.  I need a digital camera to show what's going on!

Off to do some mental work today.

8:49:18 AM