My vegetable garden is coming along.  I have several tomato buds;  my cilantro and parsley are quadrupling in size; my shaky basil is regaining strength.  All is well.  Almost.

Enter the slug.

Yes, I my garden has slugs.  So I filled a couple of caps full of beer and placed them around the garden.  Then it rained and washed my beer away.  And the next day I had even more slugs.

Ugh.

Today, I revisited the garden not less than eight times.  And found slugs EVERY. TIME.  My solution?  Throw them as hard as I can across the yard and scream, “SEE YOU IN FOUR YEARS.”

And tonight I placed bowls, not small caps, of beer around the garden.  If I see even ONE slug tomorrow, it will be the end of all this nicey-nice.  I will resort to chemicals.  *Sigh*

But all I can think in this struggle is, I must be growing a good garden if it’s attracting slugs, no?

There is this.

This that is larger than any sole practitioner’s office.

The tales, the legacies, the advices

recalled with a chuckle and a shudder:

“Old Man Sawyer used to say to me,

‘If you are gonna drink at lunch,

make it gin martinis.

Let people know you are drunk

and not an idiot.’”

The tomato plants have flowers.

The satsuma tree, new blooms.

The St. Joseph’s Altars have been dismantled.

And Sun now has the feet of a child and no longer a baby.

Spring has sprung in New Orleans.

And we are all another year older.

I have been having an idea of a project.  And lately, that idea has been nibbling away.  So my question is, do you want to share your secret?

I have several posts that I haven’t published (some I haven’t even written) because, in a word, I am too chicken to post them.  And maybe you have the same issue.  Maybe it’s because some posts are just a touch too personal, or they relate to a family member that we’d fear would misinterpret us if they read the posts, or we have something to say about work that’d be uncool to openly write about.

But what if I wrote that post and, say, posted it on YOUR blog?  And you wrote your post and posted it on another’s?  And that blogger, in turn, posted her anonymous post here?  Then we all get to have our say and get things out in the open but we don’t have to risk, well, whatever it is we may be risking posting on our own site?  We could all link up some way that we are Blogging Anonymously and to check out each other’s blog.  Hell, we could even consider ALL posting the same post on the same day, or linking to the anonymous post on the day it’s posted.  Anonymously, of course.

Yes, someone would be in the know.  If I send my post to you to publish on your blog, then YOU will know it was really me that posted it.  But having that ONE person know may not be the issue.  It’s not YOU, dear reader, that I fear may reject me, after all.

It’s just a germ of an idea.  It needs fine tuning.

But, are you interested??  Would you participate??  We could even create a cute button for our side panel!  Imagine the fun!  The freedom!   The liberation!!  The SECRETS!!

Feel free to leave me a comment (or drop me an email if you want to be completely anonymous) and give me your thoughts.

The back porch is a room unto itself.  Tucked away from the street, the television, the office line.

It is here where we swing Sun, paint Mardi Gras ladders, enjoy a setting sun.  It is here where our parties end up in the evenings and where crawfish boils and birthday parties take place.

It is on the back porch where Sun sits in her stroller and “pretends” to be a baby; where she pushes her wagon and sits in her own-sized chairs.

Louisiana is a hot state.  The winters are mild and the summers long.  It’s almost a requirement of citizenship that you have a porch to get relief from and enjoyment out of the weather.

It helps if you are sipping a Pimm’s Cup, Mint Julip or an icy cold absinthe.

We plant our garden

And dig out weeds.

We make mud pies

And jump in puddles.

We drive the pylons

That become our homes.

And live our lives.

And bury our dead.

Last night, I barely slept a wink.  A family member was due to have a serious surgery today and I was worried sick about it.  This morning, that surgery was postponed.  This wasn’t the worst of the news this day held for me.

As I got off the elevator in my office, our receptionist asked if I’d read my e-mail.  I had not.  He called me over.  I knew bad news was to follow.  I was not prepared for how bad it was.

An attorney in our firm died this morning.  Today.  He was the managing partner when I was hired (11 years ago today was my first day with the firm).  He called and gave me my offer.  I sat in the office next to his for 4 years and learned to understand his fast-forward thinking without even meaning to.  Clerks would get assignments from him and I’d “translate” what he was asking of them.  He was so intelligent and so clear a thinker that he’d usually be three steps ahead of anyone speaking to him on a legal matter.

He’d been ill and keeping his health issues rather private.  But I am certain he did NOT see this coming this soon.

He was 67.

This afternoon, the black wreath was taken out of the closet and his name and dates of birth and death pinned to it.

I work in a large firm that has been in business over one hundred years.  The black wreath is usually displayed as a show of respect for the deaths of the retired attorneys.

This is the third time it’s been used for active attorneys.

I was in shock most of the day.  But his closed door, his empty reserved parking space and the black wreath all settled in.

And now I am just sad.

He once told another attorney in our office that in his estimation the practice of law is a privilege we don’t all have.  He’d do it for the nobility of it even if he didn’t get paid, he’d said.  He meant it, too.  Knowing he worked until the bitter end is satisfying.  It’s just what he’d have wanted.

But it sucks for the rest of us.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~Cicero

We recently had our backyard cleared of bushes and tree stumps that have been needing to go.  Overall, the yard still needs help.  The previous owner had an in-ground pool and just threw dirt in it when they didn’t want it anymore.  So now we have a big cement crater that just needs to be broken up and taken away.  But hiring someone to do what is considered a small job? Hard to find.  But it’s too big for us to do ourselves.

Nonetheless, our backyard is coming along.  And it has afforded me the opportunity to finally plant my vegetable garden.  I have been so excited.  Researching what to plant, how to plant (we went with a square foot garden), when to plant, then planning, procuring, and executing.  It’s all been wonderful.

We started with this space:

We cultivated the hard ground, added Metro-Mix, safe fertilizer, stepping stones (more to come in the garden so that we don’t step on the roots) to define the area and got this:

Then we planted 2 creole tomato plants, eggplant, mustard greens, artichoke, thyme, basil, parsley, cilantro, and lemon verbena (to detract bugs safely) and got this:

We will also be adding mirliton, okra, cucumber, and cayenne peppers.  It will take a lot of attention.  But I LOVE the idea of fresh vegetables and herbs, and the idea of tending to this garden, and that I’ll get to play in the dirt.

New Orleans is so darned fecund.  It’s been rated as one of the greenest (not “green”) cities in America.  We have trees on patios of skyscrapers.  Left unattended, the weeds and vines in this city will not only encapsulate an entire building, I am certain if you stand still long enough, they will capture you, too, and tie you down with roots too strong to be broken.

So am I hopeful this garden will flourish? You bet I am.