This deeply concerned bouy was parked in front of West Marine in Port Townsend, WA. What worries him so? His cement shoes might have something to do with it.
Spotted on the Roadside: Buoy Oh Buoy
Correction: I don’t like your girly weeds
Our house came with a giant cement slab in the backyard, indicated in the listing as RV parking. As we have no intention of ever purchasing an RV, and it’s actually one of the best areas in the yard in terms of sunlight, I decided the best use of the area would be to set up a container garden. Not the mishmash of pots we had at the rental house, but essentially large raised beds, only on concrete instead of more soil.
I’ve learned a few things during this endeavor:
- Lumber is expensive. Like, really expensive. I thought the saying “grows on trees” was devised to describe something that was plentiful and cheap, as opposed to the things which do NOT grow on trees, but apparently I was mistaken.
- The phrase “dirt cheap” is also a little misleading.
- My spatial visualization skills are poor to nonexistent.
First things first, we needed to buy some lumber. The best stuff to use is untreated cedar. However, when the dude at the lumberyard told us our grand total, I decided that pressure-treated wood probably wouldn’t cause me to sprout a third arm. Once the wood was delivered and assembled to our liking (we decided to go with two taller beds rather than four shorter ones to give plant root systems plenty of space to spread out), it was time to order some dirt and some rocks for drainage.
The company we ordered our dirt from had a split-load fee, but more than that, they required that each item type you order be a minimum of two yards, which was much more than we needed. That’s silly, I thought. There’s a materials yard not far from the house, so I’ll have the dirt delivered, but I’ll haul home the rocks myself.
The soil was set to deliver on Saturday, so I needed to pick up the rocks on Friday so I’d be home for the soil delivery the next day. I drove off to the materials yard in our dainty Saturn SL2 with one of those plastic storage bins, a couple of home depot buckets, and a couple of heftier plant pots, just in case. It wouldn’t be that many rocks, after all.
When I told the woman at the counter that I wanted to buy a yard of rocks, she looked at me, looked at the car, looked at me again, and asked if that’s what I planned to haul it in. “You don’t have a friend with a truck? Home Depot rents trucks, you know.” “I know, but I think it will be fine. Look, I brought a storage bin and some buckets.” “Well….under the circumstances, how about I sell you a half yard for now and you can see if you want more later?”
I said that would be fine, and she sent me down to the rock area to wait for the guy with the loader. When he arrived and scooped an entirely full bucket and asked me to set my bins down in front of it so he could “pour it in” and save me some work, I began to realize I had made a mistake. My buckets filled almost immediately and the rocks kept coming and coming and coming. A half yard of rocks was a lot more than I’d envisioned. Then I discovered that the storage bin was so heavy that I couldn’t budge it so much as an inch, not even pushing against it with all of my body weight. There was simply no way I was going to be able to lift it into the car. The loader operator asked if maybe I’d rather have the rocks delivered instead, and that sounded like a good idea to me, but when I found out that it would cost six times more than what I had paid for the rocks to have them delivered, I decided that I’d made my rocky bed and I needed to lie in it. I rolled up my sleeves, asked if it was ok if I made a few trips, and got to work.
It took me six trips to get all of the rocks home. Six trips. I don’t think they expected me to keep coming back after trip two. By the time trip six rolled around, I was so bright red from my exertions that one of the employees helped me load the last of it into the car because I think he was afraid I might burst a vessel and die on their property. The important part is that I did manage to get it all home so I’d be ready for the dirt delivery the next day.
Ah yes, the dirt delivery. I took measurements and calculated how many yards we needed to order and confirmed these measurements and calculations with the soil company, so I cannot even begin to explain how we ended up with so much extra soil.
From this angle, it doesn’t look like that much.
This angle tells the story better.
We have literally twice as much dirt as we needed to fill the beds. I’ve filled the beds, some containers, spread some out on the landscaping, and we still have an enormous dirt pile covered with a blue tarp in the backyard that sort of looks like we might be hiding a body. Or twenty. Just a big ol’ corpse pile, hanging out. Eventually I plan on building a strawberry tower, which will help use some of the dirt, but it looks like Mellzah’s Folly (yes, the dirt pile has a name) will be around for some time yet. The smaller rock pile, Mellzah’s Folly Jr, will be keeping it company.
The plants are loving it, though, and I’m loving having a happy garden. Plus this third arm is really coming in handy!
Masticating with Mellzah: The Strawberry Shake Ya Booty
In June 2011, I went on a trip to Vegas where I made fast friends with some strangers there on a poker tour and I got hammered with them at the Treasure Island bar across from the pirate show, because that’s the sort of thing I do. Put me in a room with a bunch of strangers and eventually I’ll know their life stories and have made plans to vacation with them by the end of the night. While there, I had one (well, two) of the most delicious drinks I’ve ever had in my life: a strawberry lemon mojito. It was so perfectly summery and refreshing on a hot and sticky night that I hounded the bartender until he told me what was in it, which I wrote down, shoved in my pocket, and never saw again.
…until this week. I don’t know where it went, and I don’t know where it came from. One minute, I was sorting papers and the next minute it was in my hand. I was so excited about finding it again, not only to make for myself, but to share with you. How fortuitous that it’s strawberry season, I thought. I’ll make it and photograph the steps like a food blogger, I thought. This is going to be easy. This is going to be great.
There was only an eensy problem in that the list wasn’t all that specific in terms of proportions or, well, anything. It reads:
- Cruzan strawberry rum
- mint
- strawberry lemon juice
- soda water
- pinch sugar water
- shake ya booty
I was going to have to improvise.
I don’t know whether shake ya booty was the name of the drink or my drunken way of saying that the drink needs to be shaken. The whole “voting liquor into the grocery stores” thing sounded like a great idea until it turns out that nobody stocks this specific strawberry rum on their limited shelf space. Did sugar water mean simple syrup? What kind of strawberry lemon juice? Would strawberry lemonade work? I could feel my confidence waning already. This was starting to sound like something on Pintester: one of those ones where she subs all of the ingredients and the preparation and wonders why it didn’t turn out. But I still had some hope that I could create something that bore some resemblance to the drink I’d enjoyed so much, and could tweak it from there, so I attempted to make it with standard mojito proportions, muddling some lemon, mint, and strawberry, adding white rum, simple syrup, and club soda, with a splash of strawberry lemonade.
…It did not look good. It did not look good at all. The taste was no better. It looked and tasted like nothing so much as what came up after the long night of drinking and room-spinning. That’s right. It looked, smelled, and tasted like liquid vomit. I’ll spare you the picture.
It looks like perhaps food blogging is not in my future.