Not a unicorn

Accepting my fate of having lost my blogging mojo, with a stocking cap firmly on my head, unaware I was out of hot coca mix... I headed out the door determined to fill a bucket to the brim. Last time it was spinach. This time I was after the peas. A week ago I composed an Ode to the Glory of Home Grown Spinach in my head. But I dare not publish such a thing here lest it make me sound weird.

First, I managed to tangle myself in the no-chickens-allowed-on-the-greener-side fence. I mean like really, the toe of my rain boot got hopelessly caught in one of the square space thingies as I tried to step over it, and the whole wretched thing collapsed with me attached. I'm not a cowgirl (which I guess is obvious when I say "like really" and other hippie phrases) so I have to wear rain boots. But I did buy them from the farm store. So maybe I'm an imposter?

Anyway, that kind of fence doesn't stop adolescent cats. Well, no fence does. But that and the fact that the wild little beasties are almost as destructive in my garden as the goofy feathered rototillers are topics for another day. Okay. So I crashed to the ground, minus a boot (rain, not cow), and was instantly wearing a black and white cat on my hat.

Glory be. I had arrived.

There were the peas.

The belligerent things should have been ready to harvest weeks ago.



I found which way was up and extracted the cat from my head.

And a brisk forty-mile-an-hour fifty-degree North Dakota wind went straight down, as my little girl would say, "mine butt track".

Coincidentally, we washed sand out of hers yesterday.

Likely these new jeans don't fit me around the waist as well as I thought they did. The jeans that have these funny scratches on the thighs that made nervously interrogate the sales lady as to whether they were designed to fray, even though I already knew the answer. She looked me straight in the eye and lied to me. I bought them anyway because even once-a-year clothes shopping is complete ridiculousness and I'd had enough of it... and (I thought) they fit amazingly well - no small victory when you have the figure of Popeye's Olive Oyl.


From Wikipedia

However, that daring blast of wind proved it was much too miraculous to be true. I bet cowgirls don't wear their brand new jeans to the garden. They wear belts too. Don't they? To keep the wind and sand out?

The dog howled.

The cold wind blew.

The peas were harvested.

And then it happened...



Not a unicorn. Let me repeat. Not. A. Unicorn.

And don't any of you leave a comment saying, "Wow. A Monarch!". Not a Monarch. A Viceroy. They're a less celebrated butterfly designed to fool birds, kind of similar to how sales ladies are designed to tell customers exactly what they want to hear.

Now I'm going to make up a new batch of hot cocoa mix, because it's June in North Dakota and I'm cold. I'm going to outwit that sales lady and iron a patch onto the inside of my new Jeans, because I'm clever like that and not a bit stylish. And I'm going to insist the peas are delicious, but the spinach was better.

Love,
Olive