Gnomed

My Weekend Date

Yesterday while I was waxing eloquent about the thirty five years of wedded semi-bliss I decided to follow through on one of my absent wife’s directives. She’d sent a laundry list of plants she wanted to get from her “go to” source - Michigan Bulb. This was part of her plan to fill the gardens I created for her last year, so I was at least partly to blame. Part of our thirty five years together has involved her concerted effort to convert me into her on personal garden gnome. She provides the expertise and green thumb, I provide the hard labor, it’s a symbiosis that works (with a little grumbling).

I figured I would delay the ordering to insure the plants didn’t arrive before she did. This is a critical part of my plan because as it is I struggle mightily to keep her vast array of house plants alive during her absence. I should not be trusted with new plants without her direct and undivided supervision. I thought I was safe and since the sale offer was due to run out I made the plunge yesterday. I totally screwed myself.

A great number of the plants are scheduled to arrive around March 16^th, fully two weeks before she returns! Anybody driving by Worcester on those days should close your windows because there will be a significant amount of foul language emissions coming from the Indian Hill neighborhood. My wife left a lot of large planters, filled with dirt in the backyard. My plan is to put whatever arrives in those, keep them watered, and pray.

Speaking of praying, our country could certainly use some. Words matter and when they’re coming from the Oval Office they carry (or least should) a lot of weight. Many people are dumbfounded and railing against the latest piece of  flotsam to flow down the presidential twitter river besmirching the last days of the Obama presidency. I’m starting to believe Trump’s a lot smarter than people are crediting him with. With his outlandish outbursts he successfully diverts attention away from more cogent issues that we really should be focusing on. He’s a lot like me when I’m driving with my wife by a roadside plant store. I always tell her to look at something fascinating on the opposite side of the road before she notices (and demands we stop at) the plant store. She’s wised up to my game and always looks in the opposite direction that I point towards. We all should start looking it the opposite direction Trump is trying to point us.

I’m getting excited about the weekend even though it’s only Tuesday. I’ll be making a short road trip down to New Jersey to hang out with those wonderful people for a little bit. I broached the subject last night with my granddaughter but she was non-committal in the excitement department. She was more interested in playing peekaboo. I was, of course, totally incapable of resisting. The east coast move is already paying dividends.