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My landlord (who is also the Chicken Wrangler) knocked on my door this morning and handed me these.

Fresh eggs! And they are blue!

The diagnosis is official. I have contracted “I can’t stop planting vegetables”.

Sure, there are worse diseases I could have picked up, like “I can’t stop punching people in the mouth”, or “Crabs”, but I maintain that my illness is a serious one.

This is the first time I’ve lived in a place with both ample space and sun. And an intricate system of soaker hoses on timers, preventing me from having to actually remember to water. I thought, awesome, I will put in a cucumber, a yellow squash, a zucchini, and 3 or 4 tomato plants. And maybe a pepper.

Here is what I planted instead:

Cucumbers:
Slicemaster
Lemon
Burpless

Squash:
Ronde de Italia zucchini
Green zucchini
Eight ball zucchini
yellow crookneck squash

Tomatoes:
Celebrity
Jubilee
Better Boy
Beefmaster
Green Zebra
Yellow Pear
Sweet 100s
Brandywine
Cherokee Purple
Black Krim
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Mr. Stripey
Hillbilly
Mortgage Lifter

Peppers:
2 California Wonder
1 Big Bertha
1 Jalapeno
1 Sweet banana pepper

Eggplant:
1 Japanese eggplant

27 plants. 14 kinds of tomatoes. FOURTEEN. And eggplant? I don’t even LIKE eggplant.

What was I thinking??

If all this stuff actually grows, I’m going to be begging all my neighbors to take some off my hands. Yes, even the sex neighbors. (Actually, I haven’t heard any sex from over there for a while. And I haven’t seen their cats in my yard either. I wonder what’s up. Am I using these ridiculous headphones to watch tv for nothing??)

I may have to open a produce stand on the corner.

This has not been a good week for me and gardening.

First, the azalea thing.

Next we have the tale of the Burning Eye Pores.

Yesterday at about 6pm I was out in the back yard, and I decided to pull a few weeds. This turned into about 20 minutes of vigorous weed-pulling. Normally I wear gloves in the garden, but since this was an impromptu weeding session, I didn’t bother.

That was my first mistake.

I came inside at about 6:30 and washed up. A few minutes later, my eyes started burning. And watering. I’m talking a steady stream of tears pouring down my face. I flushed my eyes out with water, but it didn’t help. It was seriously bizarre.

After about a half hour, it was getting worse instead of better. I was ready to go to the ER. I called Dr. Dad, who advised me to take a dose of Benadryl and give it another 30-45 minutes before worrying too much. I took the Benadryl at 7:15 and cancelled my plans for the evening,

By about 8pm, the left eye was a little better, but the right eye was still on fire. I’m not sure but there may have been actual flames shooting out of my eye. I had flushed my eyes, scrubbed my hands and arms up to my elbows, washed my face, and it wasn’t getting any better. I decided maybe I should take a shower, in case whatever I was reacting to had gotten into my hair or something.

This was Mistake Number Two.

Apparently, the heat from the shower was not helpful. By the end of it, I felt like my eye pores must have opened and sucked in even more of whatever was causing the problem. Okay, fine, I don’t think there’s such a thing as eye pores, but it’s fun to say.

EYE PORES! EYE PORES! EYE PORES!

The left eye was feeling ok, but the right eye was now worse than it had ever been. I could barely open it without a surge of burning pain, and the tears weren’t stopping. DAMN YOU, EYE PORES.

I dried off as quickly as I could and went to lie down in the dark, since any sort of light seemed to make it worse. I put a cold washcloth on my eyes and waited.

By about 9:30pm (three hours from when the pain started!) my right eye seemed to be calming down a bit, so after a brief period of TV watching, with a homemade eye patch made of paper towels stuck over the right lens of my eyeglasses, I tucked myself in and went to sleep.

This morning my eyes are fine.

Which brings me to the subject of today’s post. After showering and washing my hair last night, I was too distracted by the ongoing eye pore trauma to put any sort of product in my naturally curly hair. This never happens. EVER.

So when I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror at the puffball-afro-medusa-baby chick-Don King thing happening on my head, I realized it was official: I can never be on a reality show that involves a lack of quality hair care products.

A strange thing happened today.

I looked out the window this morning and saw a GIANT GOLDEN BALL IN THE SKY. And it appeared to be creating a bright light and radiating warmth unto the land.

What the hell?

I dug deep into the dusty corners of my brain, conjured up a memory from February, and realized that the fireball above me might be that thing they call “The Sun”.

For the record, this is what the weather has looked like here for the last, oh, 2 months:

I quickly realized that this might be my only chance in April to actually plant something in my yard without the risk of drowning, so I zipped over to the nursery, picked out 3 lovely azalea plants, and loaded them into my car. I noticed as I was driving home that I seemed to have some sort of slight rash on my forearms. Huh. Weird.

I came home and made lunch (Buyer beware: HOT POCKETS PIZZA MINIS ARE A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR JENO’S/TOTINO’S PIZZA ROLLS), and then decided I should get the azaleas planted before the heavens opened and dumped another 792 feet of rain on me.

I planted the azaleas, and came inside to clean up. That’s when I saw the rash on my arms again. The arms that had just been holding azalea plants.

It was back. And angry. And bumpy. And itchy.

Who the hell is allergic to azaleas??

Itchy arms aside, I hope that fireball thing sticks around. It was rather pleasant.

I have discussed here in the past my fascination with the fact that you can grow fruit in your back yard in California.

Last week I finally got around to fixing up the yard a little bit, and I purchased a dwarf Meyer Lemon tree. I named him Henry, and he’s adorable. He even has TEENY BABY LEMONS already. I’m far more excited about it than I should be. Let’s hope Henry fares better than Horatio the Festive, who shriveled up and died before he did anything fancy.

I also have three tomato plants, but frankly, we had those in Chicago and they aren’t nearly as exciting as TEENY BABY LEMONS.

But wait.

While poking around in the yard, I found a plant that had been dormant since we moved in last October had busted out some foliage. What is it? Hey, what are those??

Upon closer investigation, I found TEENY BABY GRAPES.

I have a grapevine. Who knew?

Make your reservations now for Stompfest 2005.

One of the cool things about living in California is that stuff grows here. Cool stuff, like nectarines or limes or figs or or persimmons. There are about a dozen mature fruit trees in my sister’s yard. My next door neighbors have orange and apple trees. It’s fascinating to me.

I decided I want to grow something too.

Remember that avocado in a jar with toothpicks thing we all did in grade school? Well, I’m doing it again now.

I wasn’t sure where to start, so I poked around online and found a new friend. Meet Produce Pete. I like him because he takes the mystery out of choosing and using fruits and vegetables. He says so himself, right on the front page of his website.

Plus, he has fancy puffy hair.

Pete is a big fan of the avocado. In fact, he says if he were stranded on a desert island and could have only one food, it would be the avocado. Quite an endorsement.

He is also full of wondrous avocado trivia:

“Everyone knows that Mexican and southwestern cuisines include a lot of avocados, but the fruit–especially the Haas variety–has become extremely popular in the Far East. The French also love avocados, consuming an average of four pounds a year per person, while the average American consumes two pounds–that is, outside the state of California, where the average consumption is six pounds a year. In the U.S. the biggest consumption of avocados nationwide is on Superbowl Sunday.”

Who knew?

Well, I like Produce Pete, and I like avocados, but mostly I like sticking toothpicks into things and storing them out of direct sunlight for two to four weeks.

Here are Pete’s instructions:

Grow Your Own Avocado Plant

And here is another set of directions from someone who isn’t Produce Pete. These are more thorough, but this lady doesn’t have a catchy name so all she gets is a lousy link.

So here’s my little guy. I’ve named him Horatio the Festive.

Stay tuned for periodic updates. Only 8-10 years before he starts producing fruit. Wheee!