Economics, Vegetables and Epsom Salts

a days harvest
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

The vegetable garden has finally started to deliver. Look upon my expensive produce and despair, ye mortals! Ha ha! After you factor in the cost of rototilling the garden and buying plants and seeds and straw and all the water needed this drought ridden summer, well, I tell you what. I'm probably paying slightly less than twice what I could be at Ingles, even given our current insane rate of inflation. But - and here's where I'm all economical and shit - the money for all that stuff is either already long spent or invisible, like the water bills yet to come, so, hey, free yard groceries! I'm eating for free! None of this cost a cent and I feasted last night on sauteed zucchini with goat cheese and corn that went straight from the stalk to the photo shoot to the boiling water. Now, if only I could economically leverage the price of the house I want to buy down so easily. . . argh.

Also, the groundhogs ate my cantaloupes. I'm paying out groundhog protection money in the form of old produce chucked towards their house every week and still, they ate all the beans, the cantaloupes and the cucumbers. They apparently are not fond of tomatoes, zucchini, hot peppers and corn, for which I am grateful, but still.

In other news, have you ever tried to soak a dog's paw in an Epsom salts bath for 10 minutes twice a day? Yeah, it's impossible unless you are a Hindu deity, in which case you will no doubt be totally able to hold the dog's collar, the dog's leg, which you have managed to leverage into the bowl of water on the dining room floor, the kitten, who doesn't want to be left out of the fun, the dog treats to bribe the dog with the foot in the bowl and the other dog, who feels that if treats are being given out than he surely must be involved somehow. Five arms at a minimum and really you need another one to catch the bowl before it flings salty water all over everything and everyone - that's what got me yesterday morning, that lack of a sixth arm. So in the afternoon I just put Django in the bathtub and figured it would be okay to soak all of his paws. That was working admirably and I got to soak my feet too while Pebble and Theo watched with interest from the edge of the tub, but then Django decided that if he had to be in there he was damned if he was going to stand up the whole time and the situation began to rapidly degenerate. Salt water is not really an ideal cleaning solution for dog fur or the bathroom floor, I have found. On the bright side, I think the dogs are starting to hate the kitten slightly less - they haven't actually tried to eat her in over 24 hours and I'm viewing that as big progress.