Sunday, May 24, 1998

Just transplanted the first of the seedlings (three Mammoth Russian and three Giant Tiger Stripe)which were planted one week and five days ago, to the flower beds in the front of the house. The largest of the seedlings are the Tiger Stripes, which are now five or six inches high. In other news, there are twelve new seedlings from the seeds planted Tuesday and Wednesday, exhibiting aremarkable germination time. Five came up today and two came up between the time I left for church this morning and got back from an antiquing expedition (aquired 1st editions of Witness by Whittaker Chambers and The Caine Mutiny).

Wednesday, May 27, 1998

Of the 53 seeds I planted last Tuesday and Wednesday (eight and seven days ago, respectively) 46 have come up. Considering that nearly all the packets of seeds cite a mimimum germination time of two weeks, I'm pretty darn excited about this. :-) I'm planning to till an area for the garden this weekend.

Saturday, May 30, 1998

Apparently the "rent-a-tiller" place (or wherever Dad went to rent a tiller) had run out today, so he's going to rent one tomorrow. This worked out ok, since I didn't realize that I would have to actually get all of the sod up first. So I spent all afternoon in the side yard with a shovel. It was hard work but not too bad, although it was around 97 degrees out, which didn't make for great working conditions.

Sunday, May 31, 1998

Note: If I wrote exactly what I was feeling on Sunday, this web page would probably be boycotted by the Christian Coalition, the Family Media Counsel, and Focus on the Family (not to mention the Baptist Church U.S.A.) So....I will just say that I was a little "steamed" when my mother made a fuss over the cost of renting a tiller ($30), and so the dictatorship decided I should just use a hoe and a shovel to break up the clay (the earth here really can't be called soil; it's very hard and difficult to break up). So I spent four hours with the hoe, shovel, etc., and concluded that this was impossible, so gave up. I was really pretty livid. I also had mammoth blisters on both hands, even though I wore gloves.