Summertime...when the Living is Easy

I finished my third day of working today. After everything else I've worked at/done, working as a cashier in a pizza restaurant, especially with my husband isn't bad at all. The second day I worked I even got a four dollar tip (we don't have waitresses, so usually people don't leave tips), two of which the woman said were for my smile. I'm a sucker for a compliment.

In order to develop my non-existent muscles, I bike to work. Work is only a couple miles away, but it has a lot of hills. This last week I biked with Avram, who not only has been biking to work all Summer, but also went on a biking mission, and so spent six months of his two years biking. I, meanwhile, have done...nothing. Well, at least nothing that would count as exercise. My first bike ride I kept on stopping, and Avram told me that I had to keep on going, and not walk at all. So I would stop halfway up a hill, and stand there on my bike, paused, until my fainting heart decided it could keep on beating, and then I started up again. I've decided that over labor and bike riding, labor does have its positive side effect. While in labor, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't just pause or get off. Whereas in biking I want to, and do, pause all the time on hills.

Avram taught me to adjust the gears to get the greatest momentum, and so now I'm doing much better. Today on the way home, I didn't even stop my bike at all.

Days later:
I really should have finished and published this post by now, but I've been busy...working, as it turns out.
I'll post about my garden. After the escapade with the deer, my garden actually recovered quite well. Papa Juju helped me put fertilizer on the plants, and I've been learning to water my garden more. I've been quite under-watering it, because as "dry" as it's been all summer, and as drought like as the conditions are here, there is still a manifold more amount of rain than Utah gets, and so mentally I've been feeling like my garden must be getting plenty of moisture (what a Utah word; Avram always laughs when people in church in Utah pray for/thank God for the moisture. As he points out, dew is moisture, sweat is moisture. Pray for rain, if that's what they really want.) from the sky. It turns out my garden is a spoiled Virginia garden and did not feel the way I did about it, and so although wasn't dying, definitely wasn't thriving. Now I've seen the error of my ways, and have been diligently watering it every other day or so. So far we've been blessed with the harvesting of five cherry tomatoes, all eaten by Lydia as she loves them so, and one other vegetable.

We bough two cucumber plants, and planted them, at the beginning of the garden. Way back in the second week or so, while enthusiastically hoeing my new garden I hoed one of the cucumber plants right in half, which only left me with one remaining plant. I love cucumbers, and fresh, home-grown ones all the better. When I lived with my grandparents in Duchesne, Utah, I could and would eat an entire, fat, home-grown cucumber in one sitting by myself. Several cucumbers had begun growing, but then started to rot while still growing, which was really frustrating. Finally, however, there was a cucumber that stuck to it, and grew into a nice sized vegetable, although a little crooked necked. I picked it one night after dark, when Avram and I went to check on its size, and set it in the fridge until the next day, so that I could eat it not after my bedtime. The next night at dinner, we had cucumbers at the table, but they weren't my nice, home-grown unwaxed beauty, and so I enquired as to why not. Mom Shannon told me that she had opened my cucumber to use with dinner, and lo and behold, it was a zucchini!

My heart broke. When I first planted my garden, I had planted the zucchini plant next to the cucumber plant, but then when my Mom told me that they could cross pollinate, I moved the zucchini plant to the kitty corner far end of the garden, all before either plant had shown any flowers. Either my efforts weren't enough, or the store mistakenly sold me a zucchini plant instead of a cucumber one. Although I do like zucchini, compared to my love for unwaxed cucumbers it is a pale flame, and so I spitefully didn't eat my zucchini for several days until I'd regained my plant-directed composure.

Today I hope to harvest some full sized tomatoes, and soon there will be bell peppers as well.