I meant to do my work today…

I meant to do my work today,

But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,

And a butterfly flitted across the field,

And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,

Tossing the grasses to and fro,

And a rainbow held out its shining hand,

So what could I do but laugh and go? -- Richard LeGallienne

Which would be awesome. But I’m not getting anything done because, sensing that I had the day off work today so I could get OTHER things done, my stomach immediately decided to pull the ‘every time you stand up, I am going to threaten to purge everything you’ve eaten for the last three months!’ gag.

(Actually, I suspect it is either a protest against the higher dose of Motrin my doc has me on lately, or possibly that I should not have eaten dim sum for lunch yesterday. Or both.)

I’m really starting to suspect a conspiracy, though. It’s becoming highly suspicious to me, the way that whenever I plan a day off work-work so I can finally!!! get around to {task list items}, some part of my body will immediately kick up the complaints. My back goes out, or my sinuses get infected, my stomach starts roiling around or my hip does that thing where when I walk it’s all like, “{pop!} CRACK! hobble-hobble numb leg! tingling toes! {pop-pop-pop!}” until I’m forced to sit down and kvetch about it – with many obscenities – for, like, three solid hours or something.

This seldom happens on regular work days, you know? (Possibly because by the nature of my work, sitting down for three solid hours is kind of, um, well, what I do.)

I could understand it if I didn’t really wanna do {task list items}; if it was all like, “Oh, MAN! {heavy, long-suffering sigh!} {dragging of feet} why me, why me, OH ALAS, my life is haaaaaaard…{gnashing of teeth}!”

Because then, well, my body is just helping me out, right? It gets that on the whole, I would rather be playing video games or writing long-winded rants about nothing in particular (what?), or reading long-winded rants about nothing in particular, or giggling at silly cat pictures, or watching anime while finishing something that has been languishing in the ‘too complicated / big / whatever for train knitting’ bucket for six hundred years or whatever.

But these are things I’ve been looking forward to doing. Things that are, to me, either themselves pleasant and peaceful tasks (like being outside in the lovely children-are-in-school quiet tending my garden), or are things that I really-really want to do in spite of their not-so-much-fun-ness because the result of having gotten them done means that the rest of my life is made easier and more pleasant.

So it rather irks me when the long-awaited Day of Not Work-Working arrives, only to be bogarted by something random like a wickedly upset stomach, or back muscles that have chosen this of all days to act out, or Flu of the Gods +10 now with more sinus infection, or what-have-you.

Meh.

NEW SUBJECT!! Have you ever seen a sweet potato blossom?

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet managed to get a shot of one when it’s all the way open – they’re beautifully showy, like morning glories.

Also, you want to see something crazy? Remember this? My ‘found object’ teepee thing?

Um…it worked pretty well.

…I got two small but beautiful pumpkins (still waiting for my bumper-pumpkin year, I guess), and some lovely sunflowers from this patch…

…but the vast majority of all that is Christmas lima beans. They kind of like to hide under all that greenery, so when you’re just looking at the vines you’re thinking, …meh, they aren’t producing much, are they… but then you lift up their skirts a bit and OH. There they are!

Something I really appreciate – as a crazy person with a crazy commute who keeps working crazy-long days because she is crazy – about growing shell beans is…you can pretty much ignore them. Just make sure they’ve got water and let’em go. They are ready when their pods are brown and they rattle when you shake them...as long as conditions aren’t getting too damp, you can leave every last one of them out there on the bushes until you’re good and ready to deal with them.

Which is a nice change from zucchinis and tomatoes, which go from ‘perfect size’ to ‘HAHAHAHA, I DOUBLE-DOG-DARE-YOU TO DEAL WITH ME NOW!!!’ overnight for the former, or end up eaten by Something for the latter.

This wild tangle is all kidney beans. Same thing – just keep them happy until their pods are all browned up and the beans inside rattle, then pick a day to deal with them.

The tomatoes are going nuts with the ripening thing. Finally. I was starting to think they were simply not going to get there, and that I was going to end up either having to do that thing where you pull the entire bush out and hang it upside down in your garage to let them finish reddening or something. But instead, I’m getting to deal with the sudden onslaught of tomatoes, right when I have the least time possible to actually deal with them. (Um, yay?)

This is the new bed the husband built for me a couple weekends ago. I loaded it up with spinach, which is sprouting nicely – and the groovy thing about this kind of bed is, I can easily tent it with some clear plastic in the entirely-likely event that our temperatures start dropping too low even for spinach all of a sudden, creating a kind of greenhouse for the plants in it.

I am contemplating turning this into a small wheat field over the winter; I wouldn’t expect to have massive quantities of wheat from it, but I’d kind of like to try growing the stuff, just to see what happens.

I think that’s about it right now; I just planted some brussel sprouts in the front box, because they are all weird and alien looking and I love to keep the neighbors on their toes, but for the most part the garden is starting to get sleepy as the nights are getting colder and colder. I haven’t gotten around to planting the colder-weather stuff yet, or winterizing the beds that are going to just sit there all winter, waiting for the return of the warmth.

There’s a lot I haven’t gotten around to yet.

There always is.

But I suppose when you’re a person who is going to become enamored by everything, you’re just going to have to get used to the idea that you are never, ever going to get everything you wanted to do, done. The best I’ll ever be able to do is to keep plugging at it, one task at a time, and enjoy the heck out of whatever I’m doing right now.

Which is OK. Because I do enjoy the heck out of whatever I’m doing, most of the time. Plus also I think the tummy-settlers I took a while ago are starting to actually do something.

Woo hoo! I might actually do something today, instead of spending the whole day complaining about what I wanted to do and rambling about what I already did for a while before swerving back to complaining about what-all I didn’t did.

Which is terrible grammar, but I don’t really care. Because when you suddenly realize that your stomach has stopped threatening to kill you if you dare get up from your chair has a way of making you all giddy and daredevil like that. GO AHEAD, JUDGE MY GRAMMAR, I DON’T CARE – BECAUSE I AM (PROBABLY) NOT GOING TO THROW UP TODAY! WOOT!!!