I’m gonna build my garden today.
Before:
Boring, sad. Full of splinters and negligent HOA policies.
Currently (WIP):
Sexy, full of re-used materials (srsly check out your local habitat for humanity, I got all this for like. $50). 18 cinder blocks, 24 red bricks, 6 large tubs, an old RV mat and an unopened package of weed mat. I’ll call it an upper body workout and get the dirt and plant seeds tomorrow.
So I ganked up my arm a bit carrying cinder blocks Yesterday, so I only drilled holes in the bins for drainage, cut weed mat to keep the dirt from coming out when watering happens, and bought dirt.
the actual putting of dirt into bins and planting seeds will happen tomorrow.
Assembling the bins:
1. Hydrate yourself
2. Drill drainage holes in bottom. If you don’t have a drill and are a feral gnome, you can stab some holes in with a utility knife but this is not recommended.
3. Hydrate again.
4. Wave at your neighbors. Forget you are holding your knife while doing so.
5. Cut a swath of weed mat. Doesn’t have to be pretty or fitted, just large enough to cover the drainage holes. Weigh down with bricks so they don’t fly off with the slightest breeze and you end up accidentally chasing your neighbor. With you knife. Again.
6. D I R T
Open various bags of dirt and pour in, breaking up any particularly large clods with your hands so it areates. It’s also good for your soul to shove your hands into dirt.
7. Realize you’re really bad at math and that you will need to go get more dirt for the last 2 tubs.
8. Wrangle hose from around the other side of the house and give everything a light squirt. Hydrate again, directly from the hose if safe.
So it took a while for our (probably) last frost to pass, but if I didn’t get stuff in the dirt soon I’d miss most of our growing season. And it’s been warm enough to leave the Lemon Shrub outside so It’s probably warm enough for seedlings.
So unless I REALLY fail the hell out of a Will Save I’m not planting 5 tomato plants, but the cages are real handy for keeping the soaker hose in place and indicating to Erin the HOA Snitch that what I have going on here is a GARDEN, THAT THING THAT IS TOTALLY LEGAL FOR ME TO HAVE, HAHAHAHAHA FUCK YOU.
We may have run into a small snag in that while the plumber was here fixing my sink he got my seeds wet and some of them have germinated/slightly moldered but I’m leaving for FoCo tomorrow and they’re on a timer for water so what lives, lives and if it really comes to it I’ll put starts in.
I have no idea what’s going on but honestly spill the tea on Erin OP
OK SO- I own a house that’s in the jurisdiction of an HOA, which is supposed to be an organization that does the stuff a super does for an apartment complex, but for a neighborhood, except that ours sucks and doesn’t do dick fuck but annoy me.
As of right now, I don’t have running water between 8AM and 5PM because the HOA never allowed the city to do sewer maintainence because then they’d have to spend money fixing the parking lot, and now something catastrophic has happened to the pipes, and there is a colossal hole in the ground where the parking lot used to be. Also a hideous amount of noise and terrible smells.
In addition to generally sucking, we have Erin. She was probably born in the Triassic, smokes like a factory victorian children would lose fingers in, and She’s my most recent Mortal Nemesis.
I found out about her when I came down for breakfast about a week after we moved in and found her, on a stepstool, both hands on the glass, peering into my kitchen window at 5 AM. I slapped the window and swore at her, assuming she was the neighborhood loon*, and a week later got a letter threatening me with a $300 fine if I didn’t remove the nonapproved storage bins off the porch. She then took 9 months to approve me putting the gate the HOA had owed the property since 2012 up, and threatened me with another fine when I put up the damn thing anyway. Other neighbors have been harassed for things like having repairs she’d already approved done, having loud children, and having “too revealing” swimwear.**
She doesn’t get paid to do this, by the way. She volunteered.
So I’ve taken two lines of precaution.
Firstly, my reading-disordered ass went down to the library where the actual copy of the rules are kept, INSTEAD OF ONLINE, LIKE EVERY OTHER ORGANIZATION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, and read the whole thing until I found a neat loophole to an issue- The porch is very nice in the summer, but it’s also exposed and people look in the windows and my idiot dog will bound right over that wall after any rabbit he sees, so I want a tall visual barrier put up. But the rules say no artifical fences or blinds. They do specify that having plants that just so happen to grow up over the edge of the wall are A-OK. So I’ve planted corn and sunflowers all around the outside. Should give me a nice 9-foot and perfectly legal fence when they’re done.
Secondly, I’ve made friends with her Priest, a Father McAffery, who runs a legit food bank. So as far as he knows I’m running the Saint Fiacre’s Food Bank Supplemental Garden and Spiritual Refuge***. He thinks I’m delightful and Catholic. I am probably one of those things and good at faking the other, but the illusion is enough that I can probably sic him on Erin if she sees fit to complain about the garden.
*I mean, I’m not wrong.
**Colorado recently legalized allowing people with breasts to have them out in public regardless of gender. Karen in number 6 is also a Mortal Nemesis**** but I’m looking forward to the partially topless fight she and Erin are going to have any day now.
***By which I mean I like growing crops but only want to eat some of them and like feeding other people, and when my mind is troubled and my soul restless, I shall retreat betwixt the corn with an iced coffe and a trashy fanfic until I feel better.
****I have many nemesises. It runs in the family. Karen in Number 6 is her own post though.
Well, it’s been about a month, and everything came up really nice! The corn is about knee-height from where it’s planted the sunflowers are going to be HUGE, and the Lemon Tree made a tiny, tiny little lemon that the birds ate.
I also found my snap pea and pumpkin seeds and stuck them in the dirt because better late than never and last year my MIL was picking tomatoes off her plant well into the middle of November
Also: the first of the flowers has bloomed!
I don’t know what it is but it’s cute and the butterflies love it.
Unfortunately, I cannot explain about the Drama of Karen in Number 6 becuase the situation escalated like crazy a few weeks back and now I’m a potential witness in a court case involving her.
So this post is about a year old now and The Drama with Karen has pretty much been resolved, and unfortunately, it’s not a terribly amusing story:
The short version is I found one of her children having a seizure by the pool which lead to her getting arrested and convicted of child abuse, child neglect, drug posession, driving under the influence, auto theft, and a couple counts of fraud. Fortunately, her sister Debbie from Texas has her life in order and literally moved up to take care of all four of her kids while she is in jail/rehab.
The problem was, the two guys that I had assumed here Karen’s husband and brother were in fact, a pair of heroin dealers she was letting live in her house, and they reacted to Karen’s arrest by breaking into her house, throwing everything that wasn’t nailed down and a few things that were into the back of a truck and trying to steal it before the cops arrived, fleeing on foot, and not getting caught for like three weeks there until they came back to try to rob the place again and very nearly had a shootout about it.
Don’t do drugs kids.
I submitted about twelve witness statements during this whole cavalcade of misery, but didn’t get called to testify because half the neighborhod saw this shit go down.
The good news is Debbie moved in so the kids wouldn’t have to change schools, everyone lived and they’re going a little bonkers in quarentine but they look so much better than they did this time last year. Erin’s children moved her to a retirement home where she can snoop on people away from me, and our new property manager doesn’t live here and hasn’t come by since January so i can basically do whaterver the hell I want now.
Mostly this post is being reblogged for everyone that was wondering what happened, and becuase people were wondering how The Garden Of Earthly HOA Violations: Electric Boogaloo was constructed. The lower bins are the same as the upper ones, but set on red bricks instead of cinder blocks, and a little bit smaller so they fit better.
I still don’t have my damn gate :/
