I thought it was bad when the horticulturist/plant patent lawyer moved in next door, but now it’s been revealed that the new neighbor across the street is a master gardener. She’s also retired and a very hard worker. How do I know this? She and her husband spent last week building a raised garden bed that’s about 12 by 24. Saturday morning it was filled with dirt. Saturday evening it was filled with plants. I went over and talked to her, she told me that it was her nursery bed! The plants were the one’s she’d moved over from their previous home. She planted them all herself in a day. During that time I mowed my lawn and trimmed a couple of bushes. I was exhausted. I dug up a little garden that’s maybe a hundred square feet last fall, and it still sits there with a couple of hastas and a few other plants, no mulch, no border, very sad little garden. It’ll be nice though, someday, really. Now that I don’t have children in sports and am only about four months from an empty nest, I should have more time to devote to it. It’s about as close to I get to exercise these days.

Q just bought a new MacBook, the new black one with the Intel dual processor. Very cool!

Quinn is 18 today. Last night she was talking about the tradition of going to the casino, getting tatoos and whatever else you can do at 18 to celebrate your birthday. She said that there was no rush for her, “After tomorrow, I’ll be over 18 for the rest of my life.”

Last night I had dinner with my High School sweetheart , whom I haven’t seen for 30 years. She knew how long because the last time I saw her was when she was pregnant with her first child. They were going through some very rough times at that time. But it all turned out well. He picked up a job in Seattle building cabinets for a coffe shop. The first Starbuck’s. Then the next fifty. They parlayed their little cabinet business into what they call retail theater. They work for Microsoft and Xbox and are about to build a 40,000 sq. ft. building to house their business. 

Tonight I was walking around the back yard in the dark, enjoying the beautiful spring weather we’ve been having. We have one of those cheap wrought iron fire pit things, I tripped over it. Hit it square with both shins and went over the top. Thank God the ground was soft! I hope the neighbors didn’t see that one.

The garden is at least a week ahead of last year. Several plants are coming up that I’d written off as failures last year, they look great. Won’t be long and there will be daffodils and tulips blooming. That’s right I live in a cold climate. But it hit 80 today! Part of me loves it, and another part is thinking, this isn’t right.

Some critter, I’m guessing a bunny, grazed down the crocuses that were blooming in my front lawn. I think we’ll be serving hassenpheffer for Easter dinner.

Most of you know that I’m a big fan of the U of MN Women’s Basketball team. I’m so bummed out. In the last couple of weeks 5 players have quit the team. No one seems to know what’s going on, but there are a lot of fingers pointing at Pam Borton, the coach. I always thought she was a great coach, but perhaps things were going on behind the scenes. Obviously the girls didn’t like her much!

There are three people and a cat in our fairly small house. The humans are all awake on a rainy gloomy day. The house is silent. My wife and daughter are engrossed in their books and I’m working away at sorting out images for my new portfolio. Every hour or so a riff gets in my head and I pick up the guitar briefly to mess around with it. I sometimes, purely by random chance, even find the notes.

The mystery crocuses under the gas meter on the side of the house are blooming. I saw a bluebird land out in the cemetery while I was the binoculars on the couple who were passing a joint out there. I wonder if they know a Minneapolis cop lives two doors down from us.

I’ve been doing this for over two years now. I’ve gotten into the habit of going back to see what I was up to or thinking on a given date in ’04 and ’05. My ’04 entry for 3/30 says I would never own a car with an automatic transmission, My ’05 entry announced I just bought a car with an automatic transmission.

Just now, as I wind down my 12 hour shift, I was walking as briskly as a person with a petrified bratwust for a toe can, when, as I was absentmindedly playing with a button on my sleeve, it popped off onto the floor. It’s a small plastic button and it must have hit perfectly on it’s edge on the carpet, so it came off the floor high. In stride, I bent down and scooped it out of the air with my right hand. And just kept on walking.

Still got it