Man, I suck. I really thought I would be able to write more during these Covid times, but work is crazy busy, and I'm gardening like a fiend, and riding bikes like a mad woman, and cooking healthy meals for us.
Soooo, I am REALLY trying to write more. I know you would just hate to miss posts about the books I read, and how they made me feel, or the tricks and plans for my garden and the feelings I have about them, or my political rage, or my old lady health problems and the emotions they invoke in me.
Well, today I'm going to write about my husband and how I feel about him. Basically, I am so damn lucky to get to live with John. Maybe I appreciate him so much because we didn't start dating until I was 45 years old, and I had to sort through all kinds of frogs, and spiders, and snakes, and scorpions, and poisonous creatures of every kind.
Anyway, John puts up with my weird obsessions, and gardening is a big one of mine. He doesn't love to garden himself, but he will always help me and support me in my gardening, and he really loves the fresh food we get out of ours too. As I've said before, gardening is basically war. You battle the elements, you fight animals trying to eat all of your hard work, and you wage war against the bugs...And right now, the worst of those bugs are Japanese Beetles. I am always looking for solutions to these problems in an organic way. So, one of the solutions, is to buy Neem oil and spray your plants with it every couple of weeks. Especially, the week or so before the Japanese beetles come out. The male beetles come out first and eat the leaves of plants and they go back down and feed their babies with those chewed up leaves and if they consume the oil laden leaves, it will kill them before they can even come up and be pests. Neem oil is an oil that comes from a tree in India and helps kill fungus on plants (which has been a problem for my tomatoes, and zucchini and basil), and it also helps kill said Japanese beetles.
The big problem is that Neem oil also kills bees if it has direct contact with them. So, I can only spray it when there aren't any bees around. So, I did the only logical thing, I Googled "What time do Bees go to bed?". It turns out, they go to sleep once it's dark out. Which means, I could only spray the Neem oil at night, and since we're almost at the Summer Solstice, it gets dark after nine o'clock at night. John normally goes to bed BEFORE nine.
Last Sunday, I decided to spray the Neem oil. John was sweet enough to set it all up for me and left a flash light too, so I could see what I was doing. As John was getting ready for bed, I told him I was going to go out and spray the Neem oil, and he came out there too, showed me how to use the hand held sprayer, and then followed me around with the flashlight, so I could see what I was doing. We were like bug thieves in the night. I know what a pain in the ass it is to stay up past your bedtime to help your partner with something you aren't really all that interested in yourself, so I appreciate the hell out of him for doing so without me even asking him.
I just hope I'm not lazy and I can support him like that the next time he needs help doing the things he loves, but I'm not particularly all that interested in.
