It’s a good thing I don’t have Jamie Sommers’ bionic ear because I’m sure the sound of 1000’s of tiny mouths decimating the yard would drive me to a state of psychotic rage. The raspberry leaf above is but a tiny example of the carnage. And really, who eats raspberry leaves? Raspberries are generally a pest free crop if we agree that K and Dashman aren’t actual pests but rather malicious individuals who eat unripe berries and own way too many rubber spiders. Besides the raspberries, entire branches of the red currant have been stripped by nasty little green caterpillars and the basil and hops are sporting giant holes as well. Something is eating the broccoli and the aphids finally found the kale. The yard is under siege.

I picked nearly 100 caterpillars off the currants and sentenced them to death by chicken. The Pinkertons, however, prefer steel cut oats and turned up their beaks at the bucket of squirmies. Stupid city chickens, I even told them that in some places chickens live off the land and that it’s uphill both ways to the waterer but I don’t think they were listening. I resorted to squashing the creepy crawlies and boy was that gross. I washed a lot of aphids off with the hose and picked 10 or 12 of an entirely different breed of caterpillar off the roses and then went inside because I was getting a sunburn. Maybe there will be a yard out there tomorrow and maybe there won’t.

Bagpipe Man, who cannot finish a greenhouse or pick his pants up off the floor, can make a pond. He can make a pond from start to finish in a single afternoon complete with plants, pond scum ($1 a scoop), and a buttload of tranquility. Seriously it is the antidote to agitation, this pond. The other morning when I was all “What the fuck Barack Obama, release those damn pictures already” and “Who the hell put this empty mayonnaise jar in the fridge?’ and “Christ on a cracker how many boxes of tampons do I need to fucking buy before there are any in the house when I need one because I’m really tired of stuffing paper towels in my underwear and actually maybe I will just hop in the minivan and drive away FOREVER,” I remembered the pond.

It was quiet and lovely, dappled with sunlight and demanding nothing at all from me. A white butterfly flitted about and a couple of lady bugs marched along a thin stick perched precariously over a cliff. When they came to the end, with nothing but water underneath, one flew away on papery wings and the other fell into the pond next to the water lettuce. I think she would have been able to paddle over to the island but I hoisted her out just in case because the currants have an aphid problem. While this drama unfolded I nearly forgot about my crappy morning and found myself planning frog colonies and watercress patches. I wondered if goldfish would eat the frog eggs and if water chestnuts grow in water. I planned a top secret mission involving the acquisition of horsetails and pondered the lack of waterbugs. Soon I was laughing gaily at the antics of a sowbug trying to get back under a rotting leaf as it was being pulled along by an ant moving its nest. I had fixed my mood and it didn’t even require half a bottle of wine and that plasticky cheese sauce from 7-11.

Because Mother’s Day is the day I can do whatever I want, I used my spectacular power to procure new Peepertons which I’ve housed temporarily on Mars. Apparently this infrared light will keep them at a cozy temperature and cut down on pecking incidents which sometimes occur in more harshly lit environments. You probably can’t tell, but they are hella cute and sure to be superb poultry citizens. One is an Australorp, the Nicole Kidman of chickens, another a Barred Rock which is some sort of Pilgrim as far as I can tell, and the third goes by the un-pc handle of “California White” which would be great if she were Tom Metzger’s hen but is a little Aryan Nation-ey for Portland. Lastly I’ve got a Gold Laced Wyanadotte which my friend Google tells me was ” Admitted to the American Standard of Perfection in 1888″ and so far has been quite hoity-toity in her demeanor. Their cheeping might very well keep me up if I weren’t so bushed from all the Mother’s Day adulation.

My mother made it look easy. But you know what, it’s fucking hard. I totally deserved my eggs florentine, fruit salad in a watermelon bowl, blown glass necklaces, kickass pottery, and mystery present from Snowpea. I’ve been at this gig for quite a while now and can honestly say it’s the best job I’ve ever hated. Take that stupid Powell’s Books.

The craziest thing about my new greenhouse is how gosh darn dry it is in there. Between the daily gully washers, occasional hailstorms, and near constant drizzle watering hasn’t been on my mind. In fact I had just been congratulating myself on how healthy and green all the starts that live in the ground look.

It’s been raining for a couple of years now so yesterday I stopped waiting for a nice day to till under the red clover over at The Marvelous Plot of Awesomeness and harangued Bagpipe Man into coming along with his shovel. I figured the two of us could bang out the job lickety split and I even brought along a bunch of chard, spinach, and lettuce seeds to stick in the ground once we finished which I assumed would be in about 5 minutes because I am an awesome digger. Sadly the job took much longer than imagined as the clover was knee high and needed to be chopped up with the points of our shovels. It also took a long time because I had to do it by myself. Bagpipe Man has an unreasonable fondness for rototillers and immediately wanted to go rent one, an idea I nixed because they are noisy and pulverize worms. Then he tried to sneak off and buy a garden weasel or some other doodad sold only on TV by telling me he had to go home “to go to the bathroom". Finally after clearing about 2 feet of ground he remembered that he needed to drive out to Vancouver to visit Brad the pipemaker.

So I tilled the soil my own damn self and all the while a big black crow hopped around the other plots trolling for worms. She kept getting closer and closer, attracted by all the upturned dirt but every time I looked her way she made a big show of flying off yelling at me. I tried tossing worms to her because I’ve always wanted a pet crow but she thought I was throwing stuff at her and took off in a huff. It’s sad the way crows always misunderstand me.

Anyway it actually took several hours to get all the green mass uprooted and mixed in and by the time I was done it was time to for me to go home and discover some dog vomit. Soon though, very soon I will go back and plant spinach, chard, green beans, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, kale, collards, and tomatoes. Let the awesomeness begin.

NSFW. Well it’s safe for my work but your millage may vary. Be forewarned. Incidentally, May 1 is pretty damn early for this sort of thing in my neck of the woods. It’s only 47 degrees right now and the grass is wet.