Years ago, Tara signed up for Informed Delivery from USPS. She gets daily email alerts showing her what’s arriving in that day’s mail. Which I guess is handy – unless she has a birthday coming up and you order her a gift.
“We have something coming from Bombas today?” she asked me this morning.
@#$!%^
So much for the element of surprise. I hastily mumbled something about her reading it wrong, it was actually BOMBERS and I’d taken up model airplanes as a hobby, but even I couldn’t play along with that ridiculous charade, so I blurted out the truth all annoyed-like.
“Dammit, that’s a birthday gift for you!”
Her birthday is still three weeks away, by the way. I was proud of myself for being on the ball so early, and even took pains to use a debit card from the personal checking account I set up for freelance income so she wouldn’t spot the charge when paying bills. I could have been quicker on my feet; I should have said I liked the Bombas double cushion gripper slippers I bought myself back in March so much that I decided to get another pair, but it was Monday morning and I wasn’t even one cup of coffee in yet. My brain was unprepared for subterfuge at that hour.
I do love those slippers, by the way. Best I’ve ever owned (and I swear I’m not being paid to endorse this product, but if Bombas wanted to throw some cash my way for promotional purposes, I wouldn’t give ’em the slip. Pun intended.) They’re soft, cozy, comfortable, and super flexible – sort of a cross between a fluffy sock and a traditional slipper, with padding on the soles for traction. And while they keep your feet toasty, they’re not so warm they make you sweat.
The first time I slipped them on, I fell in love. “It’s like walking on a cloud!” I declared. “I’m buying everyone on my gift list a pair this year!” So, I’d already tipped my hand.
It still would have been nice to wrap them up and hand them to her on her birthday. At this point, I don’t know how I can ever surprise Tara with gifts again. Short of meeting up with people in dark alleys and handing over a fistful of cash (which weirdly doesn’t sound like the smartest idea), it’s going to be hard to pull one over on that wife of mine now that she’s moonlighting as a postal inspector.
When we bought our property last year, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. I’m thankful Dick and Carol were so diligent about landscaping, and by all accounts the backyard was quite the beautiful sanctuary in its heyday, but years of neglect due to age and health issues meant everything was severely overgrown. I don’t fault them for being unable to keep up, and I know it’s hard to walk away from a home you love, but they were in their late 80s. It was way past time.
Tara’s already done an amazing job transforming the garden. Not content to let my wife have all the fun, I decided to tackle a tangled, weed-choked section that was such an overgrown mess, I couldn’t tell how many raspberry bushes were even back there. Just getting to the plants required pulling aside cages and netting while dodging poison ivy and cockleburs. Last year’s crop was meager – not much more than a handful – so I figured there might be half a dozen tops, all in poor shape.
I was wrong.
That’s not even a great before pic. We (Tara) just put the fence up a week ago. I came through in April and cleared out a bunch of the ground cover then. But you get the point.
There are actually, I don’t know, two dozen or so plants back there, lined up in fairly neat rows. I’ve been referring to it as our own private orchard, despite Tara’s insistence that it’s a berry patch. An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs where fruit or nuts are grown, so ha! Take that! Last time I checked, raspberries were fruits, woman!
(I may still be a little salty over the whole mail thing.)
In any case, our orchard has been producing considerably more raspberries this year, which makes me think last year’s poor yield was due more to drought than anything else.
I’ve been complaining that every single weekend has been exhausting and we haven’t had much time for fun. It’s been hot and humid, I am literally covered in dozens of mosquito bites from head to toe, and by Sunday evening my muscles are screaming for relief. I’m tired and sore and itchy, and actually long for the break from manual labor that Monday provides. It’s gotten to the point that I’m wishing for snow just so the mosquitoes will die and it’ll be too cold for any projects! But enjoying the literal fruits of our labor is an excellent reminder that it’s all worthwhile. The raspberries are juicy, sweet, and succulent. They’re every bit as good as Doris’s berries were.
And, we remind ourselves that it won’t always be like this. Last year we did very little, choosing instead to observe what grew where and when. Tara (being Tara) took copious notes, planning and plotting for 2024. We knew going in that this would be a year of transformation, of time-consuming work and weary muscles, bug bites and poison ivy rashes, seemingly endless weekends toiling in the hot sun and humidity.
Next year there won’t be raised beds to assemble, fences to build, chicken wire and cages to tear down, overgrown patches of brush to clear, piles of soil and mulch to haul. There will still be work – gardening and maintaining a big yard demand that – but it should be less time-consuming and backbreaking. I look forward to a more leisurely 2025.
Help me outwit Tara: how can I sneak packages by her? Have mosquitoes been feasting on your flesh this summer? Are you dreaming of walking in a winter wonderland yet?
Mark My Words 
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