Oh my aching back!

So today I planted tomatoes, peppers and lettuce.  I ran out of the black stuff (keeps the weeds from taking over) and so I will have to finish up tomorrow.  I still have quite a bit left to plant, but it's getting more difficult to figure out where to put things, I keep thinking, hmmm, perhaps it needs to be bigger?  Of course, there are enough tomato plants to feed an army -- way more than any one family will ever eat, but I'll do something with them.  I put in three different kinds of lettuce and spinach -- it's gonna be one heck of a salad!

After doing all the prep work last Friday, I pretty much incapacitated myself.  My lower back was totally shot by Friday night and I could hardly walk.  That of course did not stop me from planting the flowers I had bought on Saturday morning, which required me hefting around buckets of dirt from the gator to the flower pots.  The problem with my gardening-related pain is that when I am moving around and working I am fine.  It's the moment I sit down.  Then I am screwed.

But ... we had that little issue of running out of water on Friday afternoon.  It was due to a blown well pump, so while the repair guy was working on that, I headed to a friend's house to take a shower.  Because I was SO dirty, after hefting all that sod, that I was dying for one.  She forgot to mention they had no hot water.  Well.  Let me tell you.  A FREEZING cold shower is an experience.  But I am happy to report that since I reminded them that their hot water heater was on the fritz, they were able to call in a repair person that night so that THEY could have hot showers in the morning.  Am I not a great friend?

Yes.  I am.  I hardly complained about the cold shower.  She was making me great mojitos and then served me a delicious gourmet meal.  She is a great friend too!

So, then on Saturday afternoon, with me being gimpy girl, we headed over to the cottage with the intent of being in a place with water, as ours was the most disgusting dirty brown because it had been upset by all the work.  It was NASTY.  While I made beds and generally cleaned up, Peter was out in the garden putting in the plants that he'd taken out earlier to put in the new wall.  Our life is really just one project after another it seems.  I couldn't even ENTERTAIN the notion of assisting him -- my back was totally shot.  I could hardly get out of a chair.  Painful.  But my brother-in-law jumped right in and they went to town, both that evening and on Sunday, work work work.  Me?  I just sat sat sat.  I was done for.   The weather, which had been so-so all day, just did a hocus pocus and it turned into a beautiful evening, with a smashing sunset.

But ... Peter had lit the pilot light for the hot water heater, so after he was finished working, he went to take a shower.  And guess what?  There wasn't any.  The hot water heater was broken!  Geesh.  I was so excited at the prospect of a hot shower ... and it didn't happen, two days in a row!

The boat went in on Sunday and we all went out for breakfast on the lake.  The weather was so-so, but by the end of the day it was smashing.  We went out to dinner on the lake too!  

I was concerned my back might never come back (ha ha) but on Monday morning I was able to do a four-mile walk without too much trouble.  I was slow at first, but I managed to work out the kinks about half-way into it.

So I planted today ... and my back is killing me again.  I hope it strengthens up, because I find it irritating.  But here's the funny thing.  Because the well people were supposed to come here today to put in a new tank and raise the pump in the well, the whole shower thing was going to be a problem again.  The cottage still has no hot water, and the prospect of getting all dirty and not getting a shower concerned me, as I had a lunch date at noon.

Anyway, because of that, I had the washing machine, the dishwasher and the shower all going at 8:30 this morning to try to get everything done before the water turns to that brown slop again.  But ... I was so happy to be clean that there was NO WAY I was going near the dirt until later.  As a result, by the time I went out to plant, Peter was home.  And he was nice enough to help me.  Except, we are such different people when it comes to approaches.  Once we had laid out the black stuff, I grabbed the tomato plants and started cutting holes in the stuff and planting.  He was beside himself.  Do you know how far apart they should be?  I shrugged and said sure, I'd been planting tomatoes for years, I could eyeball it.  No!  He shuddered.  You have to measure.  I was like, how ridiculous is that?

He called his foreman to ask him the distance, found out it was two feet, took out the tape measure and began to cut holes in the RIGHT amount of distance.  I just rolled my eyes and planted.  A tape measure?  Really?

Now granted, I am an eyeballer by nature.  I hang pictures by feel, and Peter takes out his tape measure and level and quite frankly, all the pictures look off kilter to me when he does it.  And just right when I do it!  A brain thing I guess.  So it would never in a million years occur to me to measure a garden.  I do not even care if that is how it is done.  It is just wrong.

I know that he wants to look at the garden and see everything all symmetrical and as it should be, but I think tomorrow I might plant the other half of the garden haphazardly, just for fun.  

BAHAHAHAHAHA.  You think I am kidding???