Apologies to everyone I…

Apologies to everyone I owe phone calls to (esp. Jed -- sorry, sweetie!). I haven't even picked up what are probably a week's worth of messages on my cell phone yet. Somehow, by the end of last week, I was just burned out on talking to people. This includes Kevin, who's had to put up with me either working, reading, or playing Caesar III every time he sees me in the last few days. He tries to talk to me and I just grunt. I think I got overwhelmed with all the people I've had to talk to, at great length, lately, including a bunch of volunteer meetings. (Another to come on Thursday night, sadly.) I'm also not doing so well with personal e-mails, though I'm doing a decent job of churning through the work-related ones, thankfully.

It's really lovely to be on spring break, because it means I don't have to talk to anyone during the days for a change! Instead, I can put my head down, try to get through the piles and piles of to-do list items I have, and garden my little heart out the rest of the time. And the gods must be smiling, because after a winter that has gone on much, much too long, they've blessed me with fabulous spring weather for the holiday. Today's supposed to be a high of 71, which is just astonishing. Tomorrow is still warm at 63, and then it drops back to 35-40 for next few weeks, but starting that trend with a massive thunderstorm Wednesday night, which is a present in itself. I love thunderstorms! (Puppy is scared of them, though.)

Plan for today -- do my long-overdue emissions test before they take my license away. Stop at garden store and pick up supplies: labels, trellis, bird seed and bird feeder, soil, seeds (Kev's put in a request for arugula), etc. and so on. Come back here, write and garden vigorously (trying to clear away as much of the dead annual and trimmed back perennial matter as possible before the rains come and make it impossible to work). Around 3-ish, go to Home Depot with Kev for a bunch of errands, including supplies to try to create a little doggy...um....relief spot, we'll call it, up on the roof, so she doesn't end up making a mess in the rest of the garden. We're not entirely sure how we'll go about this, esp. since just planting grass in a planter bed will end up with dead grass everywhere she pees. (Apparently, girl dog pee kills green grass, but boy dog pee doesn't. I had no idea.) But it'll be interesting to take a stab at, anyway...

The roof is covered in wood decking, that shouldn't just have wet soil sitting on it, or it'll rot. We have vague ideas of lining an area with plastic, punching holes in the plastic for drainage, covering that with soil. Blocking off the perimeter of the area with bricks or stones or pavers of some kind. Then maybe sowing -- what? wildflower seeds and grasses? moss? just mulch, and not worry about growing anything there at all? Not sure. Advice welcome!