In which I explain my sudden absence. Warning, it’s stabby. I am writing this post on May 9th, which is definitely not the third week of April. My garden diary goal had been to update on Friday evenings, so I could let you know the week’s updates, and plan ahead to the weekend jobs. On April 22 when I looked around the yard, I realized that nothing much had happened in the continued cool, wet weather. All I had were photos of the same soggy flowers and the same over-grown grass.
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So, feeling kind of wiped out after the work week, I decided to wait on the week’s blog post. I was planning to spend Saturday with my kid who was visiting from college, but on Sunday I was finally going to tackle the front brick planter with a rented Makita breaker. That would be much more exciting to write about.
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Progress Was Made
The little bit of brick under the window is protecting the foundation vent, so I left it.
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Sunday was a lot of fun and a lot of work. I did break down all of the bricks before I had to return the breaker to the store. The next step was to prune the privet that had been in the planters and transplant it to a trench I had dug a bit farther out. I want to use it to define a front garden bed away from the house, eventually trimming it to a nice boxy shape. I got 3 of them moved before I realized it was 5:30 and I was hungry. I put away my tools and went inside to start dinner.
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Then Life Happened
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I felt very behind schedule with blog posts, between family visitors and procrastination. I decided to make a simple pot of pinto beans for the next day’s food post, and planned to sit down while it was cooking and write up my garden diary. I was rushing, and hungry from the day’s work. I laid out my board for a very basic bean dish- pintos, onion, and just a little bit of lard for flavor. My friend made the lard, it was in a plastic salsa container in the freezer.
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Every other time I have the good sense to warm up the frozen lard. 3o seconds in the microwave, or pull it out to the counter for an hour or so if I am planning ahead. This time I broke the cardinal rule of knife safety- I tried to chip out my three tablespoons of lard with my extremely sharp paring knife, thinking to myself that I had better be careful not to sink the point in and twist it, because I didn’t want to hurt the knife.
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You can see where this is going- the knife, I mean. It slid straight across the frozen lard, through the plastic container, and point-first about 1/2″ deep into the webbing between my left thumb and index finger.
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This knife right here
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It didn’t bleed very much, and it didn’t even hurt very much. It was achy like a deep bruise, but nothing like what you might expect. We rushed me to the emergency room for three stitches and a tetanus shot. Luckily I managed to avoid any important things like tendons or nerves, but it will be a long time before I can break down a chicken leg without feeling some things.
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Time to Heal
The stitches came out after a week or so. I haven’t wanted to write because I do enough typing at work, and I couldn’t really do much one-handed so it seemed like the best thing to take a break and heal up. I did finish the pinto beans one-handed, so I will write that recipe up.
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It has been two weeks, and I can do almost everything without pain, as long as I don’t try to support my weight on a spread hand. I firmly believe that I healed quickly without much pain because my knife is so sharp.
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I got the tomatoes planted out under row cover this weekend, and I looked over my canning jars to see what we need to use up to be ready for the season. I’ll be putting out a few quick blogs this week to get caught up.
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Please Tell Me I’m Not The ONly One
Have you ever done something you knew was a bad idea while you were doing it, an then learned why the hard way? I’d love to hear about it!
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