Fed up!

This has nothing to do with your mother's wonderfully ample and nourishing meals.  Neither did my sensibility boil over at something our local Fed-Ex driver did or didn't do.
       A few weeks ago Terry Simpson generously called to invite me to share in a couple truck loads of horse manure for our respective gardens.  This we accomplished, along with the help of his truck and Tom Holohan's trailer - since he needed manure for his garden area too.  I'm sure our small plot will react nicely to the addition of this natural fertilizer.  And Craig recommended that, rather than working the manure into the soil, we simply leave it on the top.  Planting proceeded then by inserting the seedlings in space made just for those plants.
       Just prior to our transplanting that which had been started inside and while the manure, which by the way did not give off any odor, was newly laid, a couple of neighbors approached us.  Having identified themselves as members of the WHHNA (Watts Hospital Hillandale Neighborhood Association), they proceeded to advise us about the inappropriateness of the look of our garden.  Specifically, they were not enamored with either our selection of fertilizer nor our method of applying it i.e. leaving it un-tilled in.
       I/we were not pleased.  I almost lost my cool, in fact, by pointing out various other neighborhood eyesores (e.g. bathtubs in one front yard) that, on a scale of inappropriateness and distaste, far exceeded a bit of odorless horse manure.  As of today the manure stays put.
      (It may have been that week that I finally admitted to your mother that it was time for us to seek a change in our living environment.)

      On another matter, however, in a moment of exasperation over the City's painfully slow progress to complete the American Tobacco Trail I had written a letter to the editor of our esteemed Durham newspaper.  Wouldn't you know it but the chairperson of the DSOT - actually, a chair'man' - saw the letter and called on me a couple of days later with an invitation for me to fill an open seat on the DSOT (Durham Open Spaces and Trail Commission).  As I write I am on the verge of deciding to accept.
       Perhaps I'll be asked to vacate the position if we move to Orange County, but we'll cross that bridge (Hah! The main obstacle to my being able to one day bike from Bulls Stadium to Jordan Lake, with a stop for tea at Raspberry Ridge is the lack of an I-40 crossing for the ATT.) when we come to it.

      In the meantime y'all have a good day (4-1-2010).