One of our clients has a tennis court that's been converted into a raised-bed garden. I'm told the person who built it did so years ago. What I don't need to be told is that he had no idea how to design a raised-bed garden. The black ground cloth covering the entire court makes the place a furnace, and may of the beds are so huge you need to walk across them to plant, weed, and harvest.
You should not walk on raised beds; you compact the soil, which is a big no-no.
Compounding this, my boss, who is a beautiful landscape designer but not a food producer, had us plant things...well, sub-optimally. At the time she was really stressed, and when she gets stressed she gets dictatorial, so we shut our mouths and planted way too many plants in each bed.
Also, the garden needs regular and frequent tending, which is not happening, since we are fine gardeners, not vegetable gardeners, and our schedule is set accordingly.
The client uses the vegetables in her restaurant.
We have had a brutal drought and temperatures in the 90s, so watering has been an issue with watering bans, but that has at least been done enough to keep the plants going.
Today I stood with my usual colleague, Amy, looking at a dense forest of tomato plants.
"This is a mess," she said.
"Oh yeah."
"There are way too many plants here."
"And way too close together. Boss Lady admits now she planted too many."
"What are we supposed to do?"
"Fix it. And harvest what's ready."
"Did the client's chef say he wanted more stuff?"
"He has no choice, Look at this stuff. If we don't pick it today we'll lose it."
"I know; he was just such a jerk the last time I brought stuff."
"I'll handle him. Let's go."
We picked three big buckets of tomatoes, and had our other guy, a young pup, cut celery and put it into a cooler with some water. Amy explained end-blossom rot to him, and why you need to remove rotten vegetables and cut leaves from the bed. Another colleague, a very nice middle-aged biker whom I suspect did way too much pot in the day, waters the garden, but just leaves rotten vegetables on the plants. He may be a bit lazy. Or clueless. (Last time, he and I cut lots of cabbage, and he was set to just dump them, loose, into the back of his pickup truck, to roll around in the bed on the way to the restaurant. I explained bruising and damage, and gave him a bin.)
Amy and I arrived at the restaurant, and carried the heavy cooler in first through the delivery entrance. The chef came over.
I put my hand on the cooler and opened my mouth.
Chef held up his hand.
"I have an event at Big Posh Place, and I have to have it ready by three, so I don't have time."
I waited until he was done, and continued.
"This is celery. It's getting woody but has a good flavor, and I thought you could use it for stock."
"Oh. Ha ha. 'stock.' I see what you did there."
"Yeah. and we'll bring in tomatoes and will leave them there."
On the way back to her truck, Amy said, "when he held up his hand, it was all I could do not to punch him. With his stupid hat."
"Yeah, I just ignore that crap and do what I set out to do. I don't accept his premise that his time is more important, because one, I don't work for him and two, we just spent an hour in 92-degree heat in a sea of plants so dense I thought I was in-country, picking tomatoes after spending an hour in 92-degree heat weeding and deadheading the property. Surprisingly, though, I'm not feeling the heat at all."
We headed for Dunkin' Donuts, which is our routine: after the first job of the day, we get our iced beverages, and Dunkies is everywhere.
We drive separate vehicles, and met in the parking lot.
"Is today 'Assholes Drive For Free' day?" I asked.
"Did you see me? I was all 'Thanks a lot, buddy! Thanks a lot!' to all the cars," Amy said.
"They were cutting me off mid-intersection! What the hell!!"
We looked at each other.
"Maybe I'm feeling the heat more than I realized," I suggested.
"Yeah. I need an iced coffee and a bathroom."
Still: better than any day in an office.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Music by the beach
In my city there's a free music concert by local musicians every week in a grassy park by the beach. My sister Jane and I like to walk, hear some music, and take in the cool of the evening. The bands are mostly local cover bands, and the crowd is a nice cross-section of the city, with a healthy dose of seniors and families with kids. And tattoos. It's a multicultural city, and not terribly wealthy. It all feels like the real world.
Tonight my sister and I scored a good spot on a bench, and were relaxing when the flies struck. Thanks to poison ivy looking like pretty much any other benign and generic ground cover, I'm covered in brutal oozing lesions. I have a steroid cream, and it works, but flies landing on my legs sets things to percolating, and I needed that dragon to stay asleep.
(Do NOT chime "leaves of three, let it be," to me. Do you know how many plants have leaves of three? And no it's not always shiny. It doesn't stand out AT all. Which is why every landscaper I've talked to has their poison ivy horror story. I freely confess I'd have no trouble taking a can of Roundup to the stuff. My legs look like tenderized meat.)
I saw a middle-aged woman on a blanket spraying herself and a young girl.
"Let's go," I said to my sister, and approached the woman.
"Is that bug spray?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Do you want to go to heaven for rescuing strangers in need?"
"Oh, help yourself! They say the bug [Zika] is only in Florida, but I'm not taking any chances, even though I'm not going to get pregnant!"
We thanked her profusely and sprayed ourselves.
Back on our bench, my sister commented on how she hadn't seen anyone she knew. My sister has worked at the same supermarket for 20+ years, so she's constantly bumping into people she knows. We make a game of it, with five people being the target number.
Three older women walked by.
"HI!" they said to Jane.
"Hi, how are you? We have to stop meeting like this," Jane replied. "This is my sister." It touches me that she loves to show me off.
They walked away, and Jane said, "The one in the floral shirt? The woman in white is her daughter. The other woman is another shopper."
"That's nice. They seem like very nice people."
"She loves me. She thinks I'm adorable." Totally deadpan, statement of fact. She kills me.
We listened to music, I danced in my seat, we waved to passing babies and dogs, and had a lovely evening. And decided that next week it would be a picnic dinner on the grass.
Tonight my sister and I scored a good spot on a bench, and were relaxing when the flies struck. Thanks to poison ivy looking like pretty much any other benign and generic ground cover, I'm covered in brutal oozing lesions. I have a steroid cream, and it works, but flies landing on my legs sets things to percolating, and I needed that dragon to stay asleep.
(Do NOT chime "leaves of three, let it be," to me. Do you know how many plants have leaves of three? And no it's not always shiny. It doesn't stand out AT all. Which is why every landscaper I've talked to has their poison ivy horror story. I freely confess I'd have no trouble taking a can of Roundup to the stuff. My legs look like tenderized meat.)
I saw a middle-aged woman on a blanket spraying herself and a young girl.
"Let's go," I said to my sister, and approached the woman.
"Is that bug spray?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Do you want to go to heaven for rescuing strangers in need?"
"Oh, help yourself! They say the bug [Zika] is only in Florida, but I'm not taking any chances, even though I'm not going to get pregnant!"
We thanked her profusely and sprayed ourselves.
Back on our bench, my sister commented on how she hadn't seen anyone she knew. My sister has worked at the same supermarket for 20+ years, so she's constantly bumping into people she knows. We make a game of it, with five people being the target number.
Three older women walked by.
"HI!" they said to Jane.
"Hi, how are you? We have to stop meeting like this," Jane replied. "This is my sister." It touches me that she loves to show me off.
They walked away, and Jane said, "The one in the floral shirt? The woman in white is her daughter. The other woman is another shopper."
"That's nice. They seem like very nice people."
"She loves me. She thinks I'm adorable." Totally deadpan, statement of fact. She kills me.
We listened to music, I danced in my seat, we waved to passing babies and dogs, and had a lovely evening. And decided that next week it would be a picnic dinner on the grass.
Friday, July 8, 2016
Carpal Diem
The landscaper has been on vacation, and before that has used me maybe 4 hours a week, so I thought now would be a good time to have the carpal-tunnel surgery on my left hand. It was a basic repeat performance of the first one, including the anesthesiologist, a Chinese woman who had, the first time, woken me from a pre-surgical nap by grabbing and shaking my foot while calling out "MS C! MS C! WAKE UP!"in that voice that only Chinese women seem to be able to project, a hair-raising screech reserved for life-threatening emergencies and talking to friends sitting a foot away on the bus.
"Isn't that backwards?" I'd asked.
Can I just say: I'm one of those people who love hospitals. I love the clean sheets, warm blankets, the socks with rubber treads on them. I love being looked after. I love being wheeled into a bright clean white room and surrendering to the drugs and the oblivion.
My doctor, who is awesome, came by, marked the hand, and bim-bam-boom, I was out, then awake, my hand was numb and bandaged, and I was eating the most delicious saltines and cranberry juice of my life. Then home to lie on the couch, binge on Netflix, and doze for three hours at a time. It's the poor student's version of a day spa.
So of course the landscaper texted me to say she could use me all next week, and tomorrow.
"Sure! Great!" I'd texted back with my one un-bandaged hand. The bandage came off today, and I'll be working alone on the first job, so I won't have to worry about hiding any issues that come up.
Also, this time around I'm keeping the ibuprofen going, and the difference is remarkable.
Today I interviewed at a bakery cafe in Salem. They need part-time counter help, and with the assurance of someone I know who'd worked there that they are good people, I broke my 25+-year oath to never work in food service again, and met with them. I liked them enough, and I think they liked me.
"I can do math in my head," I offered.
"You won't have to, but OK," they said. They like that I keep bees, which I'm finding makes me somehow accessible and cool.
The plan is to have this as income when I go back to school. It's close, it's flexible, and I get free food on the job. I can work it along with the landscape work for now, so voila. I may have to give up most of my farm work, but I'm not being paid there. I'll do my best to help out, mostly because I really like them, especially the 84-year old mother-in-law who wears nylons on even the hottest days,and of course, the chickens.
"Isn't that backwards?" I'd asked.
Can I just say: I'm one of those people who love hospitals. I love the clean sheets, warm blankets, the socks with rubber treads on them. I love being looked after. I love being wheeled into a bright clean white room and surrendering to the drugs and the oblivion.
My doctor, who is awesome, came by, marked the hand, and bim-bam-boom, I was out, then awake, my hand was numb and bandaged, and I was eating the most delicious saltines and cranberry juice of my life. Then home to lie on the couch, binge on Netflix, and doze for three hours at a time. It's the poor student's version of a day spa.
So of course the landscaper texted me to say she could use me all next week, and tomorrow.
"Sure! Great!" I'd texted back with my one un-bandaged hand. The bandage came off today, and I'll be working alone on the first job, so I won't have to worry about hiding any issues that come up.
Also, this time around I'm keeping the ibuprofen going, and the difference is remarkable.
Today I interviewed at a bakery cafe in Salem. They need part-time counter help, and with the assurance of someone I know who'd worked there that they are good people, I broke my 25+-year oath to never work in food service again, and met with them. I liked them enough, and I think they liked me.
"I can do math in my head," I offered.
"You won't have to, but OK," they said. They like that I keep bees, which I'm finding makes me somehow accessible and cool.
The plan is to have this as income when I go back to school. It's close, it's flexible, and I get free food on the job. I can work it along with the landscape work for now, so voila. I may have to give up most of my farm work, but I'm not being paid there. I'll do my best to help out, mostly because I really like them, especially the 84-year old mother-in-law who wears nylons on even the hottest days,and of course, the chickens.
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