Valley Gardening and other stuff

A great week, right?  And it is finally, maybe, sorta, kinda spring.  In other words I am celebrating about the first day of no wind!  And I have put all the plants outside in the courtyard and told them to ‘put your big girl panties on’ because you are in the San Luis Valley now.  I am even leaving out the marigolds and Gerber daisies, and dahlia’s. And beans.  The tomatoes and peppers and squash are still in the little greenhouse—built by SLV Builders.

I am trying to get all my ‘other’ work done, so I can start planting out in front of the store, and a few other places.  Sometimes you just have a feeling when it is okay to plant the 1st of May.  That’s how I am feeling right now---only time will tell if I am right or not.  It feels so good to be playing in the dirt and getting some sunshine/vitamin D!

I received my gladiolas and lilies this week.  And some perennial 4 o’clock tubers.  I have never, ever had the tubers before so pretty excited about that.  The 4 o’clocks in front of the store are wonderful—no bugs, no staking, low water—nice magenta flowers that don’t need deadheading.  They usually start blooming the end of July and continue the rest of the summer.  The tubers look like carrots.  I have about 40 available, after ordering 100!  (I am only keeping 30). They are $3.00 a piece if you are wanting one---let me know.

I gave a presentation to some individuals from the Know Your Neighbor group.  This got me writing some of my advice and tips down for vegetable gardening.  If you know a small group that would like a presentation, early morning or evening, I’m available, and willing.  My next task is to start writing down flowers—which is a much bigger job!  I need to get this stuff written down, before I forget it, and it is gone forever—right?

A friend of mine, James Williams, has been helping me build a new lemonade stand for Peyton Sanchez!  It is going to be so cool!  Many thanks to the Alamosa Ace Hardware for donating the paint!  A bright yellow for lemonade, and purple for the Rockies—Peyton’s choice.  If the stars align we may have a small event in front of the store the Saturday before Mother’s Day.  Maybe free coffee, lemonade and cookies.  And Peyton will have Mother’s Day cards available.  Tentatively, I’m going out on a limb and saying we will do this Saturday, May 8th from 10am to 1pm.  I mean, that’s like next week—where does the time go?

As my community workers continue to sweep around the LODA area, I want to give a shout out to Hoyt at Alamosa Building Supply, for some spiffy new brooms!  He thought I was going to fly off on them, but no…we are actually beautifying Alamosa, one corner at a time.

I mentioned Peyton earlier.  What Peyton deals with everyday is NF. Neurofibromatosis.  Peyton’s mom, Sheila shared a story from another young man with NF on Facebook a few days ago.  This young man, Travis is 13 years old.  He made a video plea to raise $10,000.00 by the 29th for NF research.  On the 29th Travis was going to “donate his whole leg, bone, tumor and everything, all of it” for NF research.  He was having his leg amputated, yet wanted to help others.  My little girlfriend, Sydney Carroll, also has NF and had her leg amputated when she was 2.  She is now 21…unbelievable!  These kids are so amazing and wise and kind and gracious and more.  I’m honored to have them in my life.

Here’s my new thought---you didn’t think I would go a week without getting political did you?  What do you think would happen if all unemployment stopped?  What if folks got a stimulus payment when they went to work?  That would be a miracle!  All benefits would be stopped unless you showed you had a job, no more food stamps, no more free stuff unless you did community service or legitimately worked!  What a difference this might make!  Oh…remember when I talked about over 52,000 years to pay back 1.9 trillion dollars at $100,000.00 a day.  That divides out to 650-- 80 year life spans.  So it is more than hurting our children and grandchildren and their grandchildren and on and on forever!  Where in the heck is this money coming from?