My Garden Interview - Part 4

***i'm currently reading an older garden book titled, "Gardening From The Heart - Why Gardeners Garden" by Carol Olwell. The reason for this book is interesting, because, as she points out, gardening is hard work,

considered pretty much low grade manual labor, and is rarely lucrative -

so why do we do it? She compiles the story of many gardeners who were interviewed for this book. i am barely past the introduction, but i feel compelled to put into words how i myself came to be a gardener, and why....***
continued....

Q: Do you have anything you want others to know about you?

i'm amazed at all the yards in our suburban neighborhoods that have nothing but grass and a couple trees growing in them. My God, at least stick one tomato plant somewhere! Many people i know never go outdoors,

are scared silly of bugs, and we have actually met some who don't know where eggs come from! If they ever had to live off the land to survive, they'd be dead in a hurry! I'm sure even i would have trouble doing that, having been a "city girl" all my life, but i think i'd manage better than they would..

i make it a point to live as simply as i can in our normal American Midwestern life. i have a lot of things to do, but always try to just sit in the garden a few minutes, or walk to the park. If i see a hummingbird and want to stop and watch it, i do. It takes me about 45 minutes for a decent walk in the park, and if i can't find 45 minutes for myself, then i feel something's wrong with my life! i take all the

breaks and lunch hours and vacations i'm entitled to at my job. i feel that all of that is vital to my well-being. All the workaholics i know either have heart disease, or cancer, or diabetes - or have already died!

i try to be as environmentally "careful" as i can, too. i don't know why - i don't have children, so it's not because of my concern for my descendants having clean air to breathe! No, it's just something i feel i have to do for my OWN peace of mind. Don't get me wrong, i have a car, and gas heat, and central air conditioning, and a microwave and a computer - all the luxuries of modern life, but i don't abuse them. We use our central air maybe as

much as two weeks most years, when it's really necessary for sleeping. A lot of acquaintances put their air on the first 80 degree (F) day, and don't turn it off until Autumn! I walk if possible - i don't start the car to drive across the street! If i find a tiny spider in the house, do i call the exterminator? No. Either i gently take it outside, or the cats get it (!), or i leave it - especially in mosquito or gnat season, a couple of spiders in the house is a natural, self sustaining extermination system!

All anyone has to do is THINK a little to improve their lives and the planet.

 

Our current home has about a third of an acre, relatively large for a city lot, but it's conversely not enough and too much for me! One side of me would love several acres of a large, maybe partly wooded lot, but on the other hand, when i get home from an 8 hr workday, a huge area would be daunting! i already have areas that "get away " from me in the summer, mostly because i have my leaf castings to work on now, so even though i work outside, i still can't work ON the outside! My husband does the mowing and weeding (but only the recognizable weeds!), and enjoys the yard when it looks nice, but the work is not out of love, as it is with me. One time i complained to a friend of mine (who is a non

gardener married to a "plant nut" like me) that it would be nice if DH was as passionate about the plants as i was, but she said, "Yes, but then you would always be arguing about what plants to buy, and what location to plant them in, and in what configuration, etc. This way, you can do what you want without another person with different ideas getting

in your way." Well, i thought that was quite the wise thing to say, and ever since then, i don't really wish as much that i had married a horticulturalist !

RANT : Lost Life Data

Being a middle aged (the latter end of "middle"!) person, i don't take all this new technology for granted. Yes, i'm thrilled silly with my iPod, and love my netbook, and i think it's great that the Smartphones can do all the things they do - but i am also old enough to remember when cassette tapes were hi tech! So i see the other side of it. i own a pay as you go cell phone and still have a land line - i can't bring myself to trust a phone that can run out of battery power! That's just too unreliable - we have elderly parents - i don't want one of them to get sick and not be able to call me because my battery died or i ran out of minutes!

And while i couldn't live without my computer now, it still bothers me that the information i'm now putting on CDs, SD cards, flash drives, and peripheral hard drives may not be able to be accessed in a couple of years because there will be NEW ways to store data! i have my resume on a floppy disk, had it safely on there for years and could update it at anytime - now it's just a piece of plastic! i still have my old PC - it does have USB ports, so hopefully (if i ever think about doing it) i could transfer the resume to a flash drive. i know there are solutions,but, as a self described computer illiterate and old person, it's a lot

of work and confusing - more trouble than it's worth!

i had a scanner - just utilized it on occasion - and now, after i acquired my last PC, it's too old, not compatible, and also junk! i paid a lot for that thing at the time - now i have to invest in another one when the one i have is like brand new! Then i have to explain to my "Don't get any of those newfangled gadgets near me!" hubby WHY i'm throwing away an expensive, perfectly good piece of computer equipment!

Some of my NEVER USED floppy discs sitting on my useless scanner...
Hey, they're for sale....... cheap!

So are all these photos i painstakingly transferred to a CD for posterity going to be unavailable to me in a few years, or will i have to transfer all of them to something else? i know there are companies that can store all of my data for a monthly fee. Great - what if they disappear 3 years from now? What if i lose my job and can't AFFORD the monthly fee anymore?

i guess i'm looking for certainty in an uncertain world, and may never get what i want, but i wonder if i'm the ONLY person who has noticed any of this stuff!?

My Affair...

i never thought it would happen when i married, but it has- a new love has come between us...

Actually, this has been going on for some time now. This interloper i have been spending my time with is always there for me, is good - looking, is extremely fascinating, can answer almost any question i have about anything, and is a wonderful muse to my creativity.

It even checks my spelling!

Yes, i love my P.C.and all the new technology, but DH does not! i did, at the beginning, manage to get him to play a couple of games with me, but that faded quickly (plus i'm not really into the games myself that much). i acquired my first P.C. only about ten years ago, and THAT was after a couple of years of wheedling, arguing, and explaining to him why we should get a computer! Of course, at that time, it was well over $1000 to get even a very basic desktop (only kind there was).

Remember these?

i still remember when i set my first PC up and turned it on (OMG, i think it had a whole 1 GB hard drive!!- now what are we talking about- terabytes?!). i actually acquired it handed down from my SIL, who had bought it second hand from her boss! i already had, like everyone else did in this country, an AOL free trial CD (the first software i ever loaded), and when it was done, i heard a "ding!" and that now ubiquitous "You've got mail!" i swear i almost cried! FINALLY! i had arrived into the age of technology!
Spent the next few months sitting in the computer room late into the night, cruising the Web, printing out greeting cards (in black & white- didn't have a COLOR printer!), creating Word documents (the full version actually came already loaded into P.C.s back then, too - sometimes!), and emailing the very few people i knew who HAD an email. i had fallen in love! It was very much like that with me, and i can bet some of you can relate to that, too- the amazement, the wonder, the urge to find out everything you can discover about this crazy new thing in your life.

To this day, Hubby does not understand why I'm so involved and want to spend so much time with this creature.

 

Here's my newest baby-my netbook!

So i showed hubby some of the wonderful things i could now do (like THIS blog), and he said, "That's nice - but does it do anything important?" Sigh.... Left brained are from Venus; right brained are from Mars...