Garg, how did it get to be a week later? How? I ask this of you? (Please don’t tell the comments how it happened’ really, I’m just being stupid)
So, um, yeah. Let’s see. Randomness.
I’ve made it to the farmer’s market for the past four weekends. I know! Big shock! I always want to go, because it assuages my inner hippy child, but I usually never get my ducks in a row (not actual ducks, but man, I wish I had me some ducks. You have no idea) and get my butt out the door before all of the good stuff is gone. Normally, I wake up, take a shower, throw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, slip on my Birks, and hit the market while my hair is still making a wet ring on the back of my t-shirt. This is the way of things at the farmer’s market, which is filled with aging hippies and professors and a strange contingent of Pottery Barn yupsters (sadly, I think I know which category I fall into there), all scrabbling for the best and prettiest mushrooms or bags of spinach. However, the yupsters are frowned upon in this venue (and perhaps they never really find a place to fit anywhere) and a few weeks ago, I made the mistake of throwing on a bedazzled DKNY shirt (my one preparatory Vegas purchase) and a light pink pair of J.Lo sunglasses. And my Birks. There was culture shock happening, all on one body. Perhaps somewhere near my navel, the warring fashion factions were preparing to duke it out. Ah well, no one in GB knows who DKNY is, so they won’t realize that it’s snooty. Except, then later, I was choosing which quatrain of still-on-the-vine- best-tomatoes- you’ve-ever- had- in- your- life I wanted when the older gentleman behind the table said ‘Which ones are calling your name out. Which ones are saying ‘Dickny’ pick me, Dickny!&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- Sometimes it is to laugh. And not that one should not wear designer to the damned farmer’s market.
My new addiction is some premade chicken booyah (which is a Belgian chicken vegetable soup that is inexplicably served at parties and church picnics) and someone’s grandmother’s recipe for caramel corn. I also purchased a peck of blueberries last weekend. Imagine, going thirty-three years and not knowing what a peck was? Picked a peck of pickled peppers? Peter was an overachiever, apparently. I don’t know from pickled peppers, but in blueberry talk, that’s a whole lot of berries. So many, in fact, that I have washed two colanders full, loaded them into freezer bags, sucked all of the air out of them (making me feel as though I were fellating the damned things) and then threw them into our gigantic mostly empty new freezer. Then I made a blueberry cobbler, (from scratch! It was a political statement meant to protest the wrongful incarceration of my domestic muse.) which was not what I had thought it was. Apparently, it involves a cookie type material and not some kind of crumb-like matter as I had thought. (Not only have I learned the width and breadth of a peck, but also the wily ways of Martha Stewart’s cobbler. Oh goodness, that sounds very naughty, non?) I’ve had cobbler for breakfast since last Thursday and there’s still half a pan in there, sitting next to three-quarters of a peck of blueberries. When I am an old woman, I will wear purple. Because I will still be eating this peck of blueberries.
Last Saturday, however, after my shower, when I went back into the bedroom to get dressed, Esteban was awake. I mentioned that I was going to make my weekly pilgrimage to get stupidly addictive caramel (cocaine) corn and also some tomatoes and leaf lettuce and whatever else should delight my eye. He groaned and said ‘I should get up and go with you.’ Which is, of course, a grand idea! Of course he should go with me! And this made me very happy indeed. So he got up, quickly did his morning ablutions, and then we scurried off to the car where we sped over to the farmer’s market, circled it four hundred times trying to find a place to park (which boggles my mind, because I find an excellent place to park every damn time, without even trying hard) then finally ended up with street parking (how urban of us!) We then wandered around the market, scoring some more tomatoes, a huge shopping bag of fresh leaf lettuce for a dollar (a DOLLAR!), more chicken booyah, some plump black Door County cherries, a bunch of bratwurst from the little Amish grocery store north of town (too far for even me to make a hike, but we’ll see how I feel about that once the farmer’s market is done), some fresh catnip (that soft-hearted Esteban!) and some Scotcheroo bars. By then, we were starving, so we jumped into the car, then wandered around town deciding what we wanted to do for breakfast. We ended up getting an early lunch of burritos at Esteban’s favorite little Mexican place, and then made the weekly Tarzhay constitutional. We spent a buttload of money (why does Tarzhay mesmerize me so? It makes no damned sense.) and then wandered back home.
Esteban had plans for the house. This, right there, was unusual. I also had plans for doing things around the house, more specifically, tackling the yearly task of Fighting the Rosebush. The Rosebush had grown to mammoth proportions. I’m beginning to suspect that perhaps there are bodies buried in the flower bed, and if there weren’t when we moved in, then perhaps the Rosebush has snaked out and snatched pedestrians off the sidewalk. It is evil. EVIL.
Except I didn’t realize evil, until I met’ the Christmas Thistle.
We named it that when Esteban suggested leaving it until December and stringing it with white fairy lights. I had honestly had no idea that thistles could get so large. The largest one was nine-feet tall. I am not making that up. It was so large that it had gone condo, branching out into several small five foot tall sub-thistles. I wheeled over the wheelbarrow and grabbed my long sheers. I couldn’t even get near the actual stalks of the thistles, so I had to take off the branches. Snip! The first one went down.
And then I realized that my normal garden gloves would not suffice. I won’t say how exactly I realized this, but there might have been blood involved.
I stomped back into the garage and dug out my leather gloves, which are marketed toward men, because women would be far too fair and lovely to undertake such tasks that required leather hand protection. But hah! Hah, I say! I have leather! I will dominate that thistle! And sub-thistles!
I snipped the next branch and quickly picked it up, watching as the needle-like barbs drove through the rough leather like it was silk, piercing my delicate little hand.
You bastard. You fucking bastard.
I started chopping like mad, slicing here or there. Every now and then, the Rosebush would reach out and swat at my legs with its thorns, but I was not to be deterred. I brought down most of the sub-thistles and could now grasp at the big giant Christmas Thistle. Given that the needle sticker things were pretty dangerous, I decided that the easiest way would be to chop it all down at once and then pick it up and dump it on the brush pile. I squatted down and carefully pushed back the picky leaf’
‘to expose a Thistle trunk the thickness of my calf.
I looked down at my rusty pair of weak sheers. Yup, this called for a trip to the Despot.
I hopped into the car and over to my local Hundred Dollar Store. I managed to spend less than $20 this time, however. Apparently, it takes seven years of owning a home to purchase the bulk of items needed to live in said home.
With steeled determination, I approached the Thistle again, not looking directly at it so that it wouldn’t be aggressive. The Rosebush tried to hold me back, snaring a bit of skin behind my knee (Kids! Don’t try this at home! It sucks!) but I would not be dissuaded. Finally, I knelt down like a priest readying for an exorcism, brought the big tree nippers down to the base of the trunk, opened then quickly and began chomping my way through the stalk. It took five crunches until the thing began to fall. I thought about yelling a glorious ‘Timber’ but then realized that the Thistle, much like the villain in a scary movie, had one last trick in its sleeve. It fell on my head and also down my back.
Words, they do not come. You would think there would be words, but there are not.
After the great fall of the Christmas Thistle, I still had considerable Rosebush to conquer, but it was then that all I could do to limp into the air-conditioned house, crack open a green apple wine cooler, and flip through a Lucky magazine. Because while I may not be Gardener Extraordinaire, I am very good at other things. Like shopping.
I did go out later and work on the Rosebush, but by then, Esteban had run out of room in the truck with bits and pieces of ex-pine trees, so I gave up and decided that tomorrow is another day. And the Rosebush will always be there. Waiting. Wanting. Plotting.
