garden update

Well, two weeks have gone by and the squash monster is growing.


Squash on the left, tomatoes on the right. I was worried about them, but I think they'll pull through.

Somewhere behind the squash: spinach, green beans, & carrots.

And the basil is nestled in there somewhere... hopefully the sun will keep after it.

First round of green beans!


And, this is what happens when I am gone for a weekend and leave one in the oven too long. The arm is for scale.

Every time I step out the front door, I feel a touch like Dorothy opening the door of her tornado-tossed house into a technicolor garden. And the biggest sunflowers haven't even bloomed yet.


Up next: camping with the Brady Bunch!

summer is trying to win me over.

Between my garden and the weather, it's doing its very best. I'm not the biggest fan of summer; the sweating, the mugginess at work (73 degrees? COME ON! our thermostat is a liar), the oven my car turns into after 20 minutes outside, the watering and campfire restrictions as summer scorches on in Colorado.

But, this late spring and early summer have been dramatic. Mild and clear mornings end in the sky throwing a tantrum- funnel clouds, hail, charcoal-gray clouds dumping rain. Lawns and flowerbeds have thrived on their own much longer than in past summers. We haven't had week-long stretches that linger at 100 degrees each day. When I work into the evenings, chances are my ten minute drive home will be cinematic, like the time the whole sky was clear but for a towering bank of clouds to the east, filled from top to bottom with constant sparks of lightning.

And then there's The Little Garden That Could. On a whim I ripped up some grass, mixed in some topsoil with the clay as best I could, and hoped for the best. The peppers and basil are struggling, but the beans and spinach are thriving. So is the mutant squash plant to the lower left.

The garden is flanked by raspberry bushes that some previous owner planted, and they have just been dripping raspberries the past few weeks. I pick a bowl full almost every day.


The first zucchini squash of the season.


And so summer is not so bad.

dark cloud hovering

The past five months have felt like a steady struggle to outrun a storm. Back in the winter, the storm cloud was a distant speck that often seemed it would dissipate as soon as not. We knew it was there, but it wasn't close enough to be a threat.

Lately it seems like every time I pause and take a look around, the cloud is looming. It rolls and billows and darkens, and some days it is camped out squarely over us, spreading in every direction (or just raining in one spot, like we're Eeyore.). We're trying to stay two steps ahead of it, to keep in the sunshine as much as we can, but the sunlight is more and more fleeting. The thunderhead is becoming impossible to ignore.

We're going camping in a few days, and I'm looking forward to stepping out from under the storm cloud for just a brief window of time.

boob tube

Since we in the Dyer household are in the dead winter of a spending freeze, I have not been knitting lately.

One unexpected side effect of this is that I no longer have something to keep my hands busy while watching television. This is the correct order, if I'm honest with myself. I always thought I just watched tv to have something in the background while I knitted.

Turns out it's the other way around. I like my trashy tv, and I can't help it. I'm just fully aware of it now, and while the embarassment has grown from a dull murmur to an irritating chatter in my ear, it's not loud enough to make me turn The Bachelorette off. I have a problem. I admit it. But I'm going to wallow in it a little while longer.

hindsight is scary-scary

A fictional character's actions in a fictional situation on a fictional tv show just made me SO ANGRY. I can't even explain it. There was just something about the situation, as it unfolded, that plunged me into numbing shock, followed by a small version of fury that could have easily escalated to a full-on version if there were any reality to what I was watching.

It was the second or third episode of the first season of Mad Men, and because we don't have cable, we decided to try it out through Netflix. If you haven't seen it, it's set in the 50's and therefore is full of somewhat predictable chauvinism and double standards- some of which are entertaining, and some are not so much.

So, the part that made my jaw drop involved the main character's wife, who is young but has periods of time when her hands go numb, usually in not-so-convenient situations (Parkinson's?). No doctor can diagnose the problem, and one finally suggests she see a psychiatrist. Because, of course, women's brains are half feathers and half jello, and also susceptible to their "nerves", whatever that may mean. Farther along in the episode, she sees the psychiatrist, uncomfortably muttering on the couch while he silently takes notes. At the very end, her husband comes home, makes sure she is safely in bed, and then heads to his office where he calls the previously mentioned psychiatrist and gets the low-down on her session.

WHAT? I mean, I realized that at this time women were confined to specifically outlined roles, and generally understood to be the weaker (emotionally, mentally, physically) sex, but would this lack of doctor-patient confidentiality be realistic? Were women really perceived to be as inept as children? I'm sure this situation wasn't too much of a stretch, but I also wonder if they're playing up the circumstances of the era for dramatic purposes. Probably a mix of the two.

I'm still not sure why it got to me the way it did... I guess all I can say is I'm thankful to be alive when I am. And where I am. No era is without its injustice and suffering, at any given place on the planet. I'm just blessed, I guess, to have a husband who views me as more than a dishwasher and a baby maker.

brief respite

the loading dock at work, Wednesday night:


since this week decided to turn into a beast, this 30 second break was much needed and much too short.

As The World Market Turns: Twister!

So, this was my Sunday.

....at roughly 2pm out the back door at work.


We are to the right of Party City.



It was a marvelous time, let me tell you.

I think what left the greatest impression on me was how quickly and quietly it all happened. I've always heard that an approaching tornado sounds like a charging freight train, but that was not the case with our buddy. Our store faces south, and the sky was mostly bright and scattered with clouds at the time. If a customer walking in hadn't mentioned the funnel, or if a coworker's husband hadn't called at the same moment to warn us, we would have known nothing of it until the baseball-sized hail started crashing into our roof and our breakaway front doors blew in. I suddenly felt like we were huddling in a shack with a tin roof.

Fortunately, the damage to the mall was relatively minimal- it seems that the tornado hopped around, did intensely focused damage in a handful of spots from northwest to southeast, and mostly left people alone.

It didn't leave Katie's window alone.


Window screen from apartments a quarter of a mile away.


Each store has a cinder block wall that hides its dumpster. Dress Barn's wall got stomped on. And its dumpster has a new life as a twisted tin can in a nearby field.


Oddly enough, we stuck around for three more hours because of conflicting orders from policemen, firemen, excel men, and mall management. I think they finally kicked us out because of all the charming "looky loos" flocking to the news vans.

Next time on As The World Market Turns: thoughts on people who insist on shopping 10 minutes after a tornado has left shrapnel and gas leaks in its wake.