Welcome from Éire, where the men are all manly,

the women are all beautiful,
and the sheep don't have to worry about the God damned Scotts!

Went to the garden store. Turns out it is a landscaping store. They didn't even carry one and two year versions of most of their trees. I decided not to buy anything, mostly because of the difficulty in schlepping it home and the average fifty dollar price tag on trees that I am hopefully moving away from this summer.
Instead I bought three tomatoplanys at the grocrie store. They ended up cpsting 1.29 or something. I was going to plant one on Brienne's Island, but when I stuck the shovel in it, it was almost striaght clay. Maybe the blueberry bushes will have to go somewhere else. Or I can convince mom to invest in peat and topsoil and i can go through the joyously labor intensive task of mixing clay soil by hand. I wanted to lose weight anyway.
Ugh. Mom suggested a side of the house for some of the plants I have bought, and I put the raspberries there. She said it got full sun, and I didn't think any more of it. Well, it's the west side of the house. It gets full sun only durning the hottest part of the day. That means that during the morning where the water curve lets the plant keep the stomata open so it can actually photosynthesize, they are in shade, but when it gets hot enough for them to shut off their air/water exchange they are in the sun. Oops.
my sunflowers are sprouting in their pots. I'll probably let them grow for a week or two then transfer them to the yard. If I get a job in Muncie, mom has to bring me most of the heads.
I just started the snow peas, though I am going to plant them as soon as they sprout.
A couple hundred dollars and the rental of a rototiller and I could get mom's back yard looking nice again.
By the way, my philosophy of growing things is "get them set up so that they grow, make sure they have an initial advantage over the weeds, maybe even grow them among grass, then leave the plants the hell alone until they are pretty/need harvesting. It doesn't give the largest yearly yields, but it is less labor intensive during the worst part of the year, your plantings/garden/yard looks less designed and more natural (and to my mind much better) and I don't come to hate the plants I wanted to grow in the first place.

Anybody need/want a live in gardener/chef? I need 800 bucks a month, somewhere to keep my stuff and to sleep, and budgets for meals/gardening. Oh and if you have cable or DSL internet and I can hook up to via my hub, the price drops to 750. I also raise dogs. I don't teach them to be obedient servants, but pleasant companions. That one is no extra charge. Especially for big dogs. If you live south of the Mason Dixon line and more than 70 miles from the Pacific Ocean the price goes up to 2000 a month for abysmal climate pay. And if you live in the PNW I can drop the price another 50. I'll drop 20 more if you live within walking distance of a University (5 miles.) If you have all of the positives above, an anime library and a monthly budget for increasing it (and I can watch it) I need 150 bucks a month spending money plus what ever my monthly student loan payment works out to.

Got a bit of a sunburn today. Nothing overly painful, but kind of a "computer geek meets sun" general redening of my arms and face. Can't find the blue alovera gell stuff we used to have. I think I should have worn my Chinese Pesant's Hat if I was going to be outside. At least my face wouldn't have burnt.

Still no fried mexican pastry recipe. I'll do it this evening though.
Take care.