David R. Michael

My obtuse–but hopefully entertainingly colorful–post back in November, The Gut-Punches of Life, gets an addendum.

We took another series of punches-to-the-face starting in January, but we’re in recovery now. Things might even be looking up. Which, yes, makes us increasingly nervous.

Next month marks 2 years since [redacted].

I’m just fucking tired. Tired of all the responsibility. Tired of making things work. Tired of pushing forward day after fucking day.

Almost tired enough to punt the garden this year. Even tho I already have several dozen seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, various flowers and herbs). I thought once I had the seeds started and they had sprouted I would feel better. But all it did was add to the load.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy is pulling me forward, tho. I’ve slowly been getting the garden infrastructure re-assembled. I’ll have the irrigation set up soon. I’ll scatter sunflowers and wildflowers around the front lawn. Get the lawn mowed (around the wildflowers, of course). And get the seedlings transplanted.

I’m not promising to do any other planting this year, tho. Maybe I’ll feel more in the spirit of things come the middle of May.

I love my garden. I love fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. I love seeing the bees and wasps and butterflies buzzing around the zinnias and marigolds and sunflowers. I enjoy the challenge of trying new plants.

But this year it just feels like one more thing on my list that I have to take care of, and I’m tired.

<deep breath>

I’ll survive. The garden will … maybe not thrive, but at least grow and be pretty, and we can have BLTs with homegrown tomatoes on homemade bread come July. Something to look forward to.

And that’s what I think I need more of: Things to look forward to.

-David

An outdoor bench, to be specific, for my backyard garden.

Last week I realized I had accumulated enough scrap and leftover pressure-treated (PT) lumber that I could build a simple bench. The scraps and leftovers were of varying ages and silvering, some going back to 2023, I think, when I built my garden shed. And they’ve just been accumulating in the backyard. Idle lumber is the devil’s tinderbox, maybe?

The original design was all 2x4s, but I had a left over 2×6 from … something? So I adapted.

I won’t build this design again. It’s one I found on the web after a bit of searching, and it looked OK. But now that I’ve built it, I don’t like how the back supports are put together. Also, the back is too short for me (6′ 2″) to sit comfortably for very long. Should I decide I need another bench for my garden, I’ll dig deeper. Or design my own.

Still, it was fun to spin up the miter saw and build something new, on an impulse.

-David

My garden is in that state that has become popular to call “liminal.” Entire beds are now “closed,” except for the flowers I planted to (a) attract pollinators and (b) make my wife happy. The cucumbers, the cabbage cultivars (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts), radishes, and beets have been either been chopped off at the roots or pulled up and tossed into the compost bin. The okra and peppers are still doing well. The eggplants too. I’ve left the tomato vines in place (most of them) because the cooler temps and increased rainfall at the end of the season should generate some nice fruit.

This year didn’t set a record for produce harvested, but it did beat the previous 2 years combined. So there’s that. The cucumbers were still producing when I ended them. I had already turned 11 lbs into bread & butter pickles. If I was going to do more, I would have to can them. And this year I just don’t have the mental/emotional bandwidth to mess with canning. Hell, if the garden hadn’t already been underway by the end of April, it might not have happened this year.

I’m already planning for next year. How I’ll rearrange plantings in the bed (like swapping okra and peppers to get better mid-summer shading for the peppers) and how I’ll change the automated watering. And deciding which plants I won’t try again (e.g., eggplants; we don’t like them enough; which is too bad since they are steady producers) and which ones I’ll do more of or try to apply what I learned this year.

I wasn’t intending to give a full garden report, so I’ll stop. But, yes, I can and will go on and on about the garden. =)

-David