salvage operations

To wake up to a beautiful day, no, more than that -- a stunning day and then to let it sputter, sputter, and fizzle away is, well, it is how life occasionally proceeds.

So, let me pay tribute to the good moments. I baked a new batch of granola and we had our porch breakfast. A grand meal that was. It's always grand. Especially when the sky is all blue and the air is clear and crisp and the wind gusts tell us that the mosquitoes out there will be struggling.






Walking the farmette land, inspecting the flowers -- can a day be more sensually satisfying?






That's the good stuff. But there is another side to the morning. The Fed Ex guy comes and delivers a big, brand new blender from Walmart.

The problem is that I did not order a big, brand new blender from Walmart. And upon calling Walmart, I find out what else I did not order -- the remaining $313.62 dollars worth of merchandise -- on its way! And, if you can believe it --  someone ordered stuff for that amount, three separate times (therefore $940 worth of Walmart merchandise, in triplicate, coming soon!). They did this on a newly established "Bill Me Later" account. In my name.

The funny, absolutely funny thing (I use "funny" to mean something other than ha ha funny) is that apparently the impersonator could not get it to ship anywhere but to the home of the cardholder and so try as they did to get their goods, all that happened is that it was shipped to me. (This is conjecture on our part. I mean, it's like the mysteries surrounding the universe -- there is much that is beyond our understanding.)

Are these thieves just too new at the business of stealing, or are they messing with me in ways that are beyond the beyond?

And I would love to know (so much would I love to know this, that I outright asked them) how Bill Me Later allowed for the creation of a new credit account in my name, when I have Fraud Alerts! up and down the three Credit Reporting Bureaus, and with all credit card companies, and the IRS, and even the State of Wisconsin for good measure. (Seeing as my otherwise beloved state's small blunder is the source of all my troubles here, I am in contact with their staff to let them know how I feel about all this. Feelings are important. So is the time wasted on monitoring this stuff.)

On the assumption that the thieves google the name of their identified cardholder, I consider the possibility that they are lurking here, on Ocean. In which case I would also like to say that I do have the police chasing your tail and since you've left a tail long enough to be seen from here, in Wisconsin, perhaps you might want to consider other, more noble ways of acquiring a blender. Have you tried craigs list? You can bargain your way down to some cheap stuff on craigs list. And it involves no jail time. Where, nota bene, a blender will be of little use.

Okay. Got that off my chest.


So long as the morning is progressing in the way it is progressing, I tell Ed that the cool air makes it possible for me to put on the mosquito net protection clothing (it's hot in that suit otherwise) and begin my attack on the once-raspberry-now-sadly-weeded-over plot of land. I can't drive the big powerful mower there -- too many trees, bushes, low hanging this and thats. So I take the regular old push mower and attack.

I create a maze of zig zag paths, taking down everything in sight. It's tough, tough work and I should add -- also really unpleasant work, because the mower is loud, the bug garb makes me sweat and pushing that machine over bushes, bramble, vines, five foot tall weeds is just plain brutal.

I go at it until the mower uses up a tank of gas. (Just so you know, this only makes a small dent in the jungle of weeds. A wee dent.) To be continued in another season.


A far more pleasurable task is the setting of stakes for the fledgling grape vines we planted in spring.






There, it's all about good, controlled plant growth. In the battle of us against the weeds, we're winning. Not surprisingly, the grapes are doing well, as is the corn, as are the cucumbers, as are the tomatoes. (The fruit trees of the young orchard -- well, maybe. The animalia remain a constant threat.)



cukes



corn


Now, you could let this kind of a day really slide into not much of anything very quickly. Tired from the phone calls, from the mower work, from all that, I could retreat and be done with it.

But, we egg each other on, Ed and I, and sure enough, before the evening sets in, we are on our bikes, going over to play (bad but better) tennis, returning in time for a dinner of all the vegetables I could bring to the table. Which are many: cauliflower. asparagus. spinach and lettuces. mushrooms. garden tomatoes (yes, they're just starting!). garden cucumbers (exploding!). garden peas (ending..). Throw in eggs (with garden chives!) and we have one of my favorite summer suppers of no particular denomination. Simple, good and fresh stuff to eat.


 


So that if you measure a day by how beautiful the skies are and was how satisfying your meals are (I should include lunch here: a pb&j, on the proch, with my school work)...


 


...I'd say we did extremely well.