Five strawberries, one Bell pepper, three cucumber blossoms. Heigh ho, heigh ho. Natsume has it right in the virtual gardens. Strawberries are the first Spring harvest. The Landlady has never eaten a strawberry. Incredible.

Husband has little tomatoes and okra. Yes, several of his okra plants made it. I would have thought it grew as a dangling pod but nope, it stands straight upright like a green torch. The Landlady was worried that we’re facing a possible surfeit of okra. I assured her it could not be a problem. I love the stuff, always have, and would happily have it with every dinner.

Sweetpeas and catnip are thriving, too, especially since our furry neighbors evidently haven’t yet discovered the latter. And the Boss Cucumber is threatening to take over the place. In just a few days it has shot out a tendril more than two feet long. I didn’t know cucumbers grew as a vine rather than a bush.

It was a pleasant weekend. On Sunday I went with Helen R and LF (my Lawyer Friend) over the mountains to see a production of Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife and a handsomely presented bit of fluff it was, too. My favorite line came from the mother, quite a Grand Dame, when she said the true test of love was being willing to share a toothbrush.

That instantly reminded me of the morning when the Sleeptalker shocked me by asking to use my toothbrush. Of course I agreed and was quite touched by it. Guess it must have been love … but then I knew that already.

Okra. Its botanical name is Abelmoschus esculentus which I’m fairly certain none of my readers knew (although just what good knowing it will do them, I’m not sure). It certainly is thriving, has matched the cucumber even if the first specimen of it has much larger leaves and looks more dramatic.

I went out to the porch for my post-dinner smoke and saw Husband and Handsome Son shifting Blackie’s house. Erk. Well, they ended up only moving it about a foot from its original position and since Burpee’s seed packet says sweetpeas can grow to fifteen feet, no problem. I’ll just attach some strings to the doghouse to guide the plants over to it.

One of the problems of a novice gardener is knowing how large a mature plant will be and thus how much space to allow it. I thought I was being generous with my spacing but I see (again from a Burpee seed packet) that 18 inches should be allowed for collard greens. At that rate, my seedling collection would need the entire space. I think I can safely leave the second packet of seeds until after the first harvest.

The Huns removed everything in the long planter box beside the driveway. They evidently had a clear notion of what they wanted to plant and brought everything with them, including no doubt an itemized bill. Absurdly, they put in some of the same plants which the Husband had in his collection in more mature specimens. And they dug up my favorite, a delicate flowering plant unique in the collection. When I went to the trash bin to empty my ashtray I saw that plant there. [!] I retrieved it and replanted it in the relative sanctuary of my space. It looks, not surprisingly, a bit bedraggled and I hope it soon recovers.

It’s a pity men with so little regard for plants make the unfortunate career of gardener as a career.

Meanwhile, things are still a bit stormy inside the house. The Landlady is obviously feeling guilty about playing tattletale. She’s getting no solace from me. If there’s one phrase I really detest it’s “for your own good”. When people are inclined to do things for my “own good” I wish they’d just shut up and leave that problem to me.

At this advanced age, if I feel like doing something even if I know it’s actually not for my own good, cue up Billie Holiday: ain’t nobody’s business if I do.

Taurus has arrived like a grouchy old bull too mean to be allowed in the streets of Pamploma, complete with lots of bullshit.

My first confrontation on Monday was during the monthly visit of the rep from Blue Water. Absurdly, the Landlady told the rep about me drinking beer at home. Cue up firestorm. I think the Landlady was feeling guilty for having given me permission to begin with and was looking for someone else to play meanie and tell me to stop. A not too pleasant conversation ensued during which I got rather angry with the rep causing her to back off somewhat. But I guess I’ll become even more of a regular at the Gold Gate.

It was a bit like salt in the wound because I went overboard at the garden center on Saturday so don’t have a beer fund for the rest of the month anyway. I got a couple of “long okra” plants, a variant I didn’t know. Amusingly, Sister gave me some for lunch on Sunday. I like the fat Southern version better, but the long stuff is also tasty. I also got a replacement for the snail-munched cucumber plant, a bell pepper and some more seeds for collards and sweetpeas.

And it was the garden which brought on the day’s second confrontation when the Huns arrived to, hallelujah, finish their work. They can’t seem to grasp the concept that plants come from seeds and were about to fill in all the blank spaces in my little farm with some boring ornamental things. I growled. They retreated, ornaments in hand. I don’t much like what they’ve done with the garden. It looks too set, too artificial, but perhaps after a month or two it will gain some character.

The third confrontation, ongoing, is with the Social Security Administration. Their first letter said my Medicare coverage would end at the time the State stopped paying premiums if I cancelled within 30 days. That I did, but their latest letter says coverage ended with April, meaning I wouldn’t get my two hundred dollars back. Time to fire off a protest. Maybe I should send a copy to Senator Akaka’s office. Undoubtedly wouldn’t do any good but might get more attention from some bureaucrat at SocSec. Who knows when or if I’ll ever see that money?

Meanwhile, still no luck with the computer. Might be just as well, since if it were working I’d be itching for that cable modem and I doubt I can manage the hundred bucks for that before I get “stimulated”.

There can’t be anyone who is looking forward more to being stimulated than I am.

Helen R kindly took me to lunch at Angelo Pietro on my birthday and we discussed my flakey computer. Helen didn’t think a DOS disc would do the trick even if I did manage to find one, suggested instead opening up the computer and making sure all the connections were secure. That I did, and was surprised to see no cards, none of those finicky little memory chips of days gone by. Everything is apparently incorporated into the motherboard. The only connections to check were those to the hard drive and the CD/DVD. I unplugged those and replaced them, and hallelujah, when I turned on the computer again it worked!

Alas, it did so only for a few days. I left it running, of course, but when I turned on the monitor yesterday morning the screensaver was frozen. Nothing I tried budged the thing so I turned it off. Oh brother, back to the extended beep routine.

This is especially frustrating since my French Reader provided the means to buy the little “router” box necessary to connect to the net. So now if I can just manage to get the damned machine working again, oh my, oh my.

Meanwhile, back to the garden. Only four sweetpea plants survived the ordeal and they are growing fast. I will buy more seeds, though, since I doubt four plants will cover Blackie’s house in flowers. The real champ of the collection is the one surviving cucumber which is by far the largest now. And amazing, one strawberry plant which was almost totally consumed by the snails is making a comeback, has its first new leaf. The little strawberry plant that could.

Looks like the Landlady is getting her bricks, although not as she envisioned. And they aren’t bricks but some kind of artificial “stone” in a rather hideous shade of pink with a scalloped edge. Apparently these are going to outline the lawn area. That is, if those huns ever return to work. Not a word out of them yesterday. I definitely am looking forward to seeing the end of their presence.

So where should I look for magic spells and incantations to force a cranky computer to stop messing about and do its job?

The sweetpeas finally made their appearance on Sunday morning but, alas, they got quite a beating on Monday. Not from those wretched snails but from the two goons … I mean, gardeners … who at last arrived to work on the main garden. The Landlady assured me she had warned them to leave my patch alone so they didn’t dig it up. But that didn’t stop them from walking on it, throwing down their tools there and before leaving, even laying a big piece of wood right on top of the collard greens. Earlier I had been so irked by them that I took smoke breaks in the back with Sparky so as not to have to watch. I did the best I could to water and comfort the poor plants when those “gentlemen” departed but further planting is definitely suspended until their final exit. And the sooner the better.

Husband and I talked on the weekend, agreed we’d both plant the entire garden in vegetables were the Landlady not so set on bricks and grass. Looks like she’s not getting her bricks. At least so far the space has been completely cleared and I suppose sowing grass seed is the next step.

Patience is a virtue, they say, but whatever you call it, I’ve always had an extremely limited supply of the stuff, never more than when finances are involved. I hate being broke when I know money is coming, especially when the government owes me. That total is now up to five hundred, but then we were told not to expect the “stimulus” payment until May. Ah, come on, I wanna be stimulated!

Meanwhile, the State of Hawaii owes me a dollar. State law requires that a refund be given to all residents whenever there is a budget surplus for two consecutive years. So they’re giving us all a dollar. No comment, or at least none fit for public consumption.

Attack of the Giant Snails. Yep, it’s not little green aliens who are the herbacidal maniacs but more earth-bound slimey critters who are trying to devastate my garden. They wiped out a strawberry plant this time. I detroyed every nasty snail I could find. The Husband did put down snail poison but it’s obviously not very effective. Oh well, at least they’re slower varmints than rabbits.

An echo from the past:

Meanwhile, I’ve gained four pounds in three weeks, which is absurd. It’s the fault (or to the credit) of the people who so kindly help me patronize McDonalds (gift certificates and free bonuses) and whoever it is who keeps leaving bags of food outside the hacienda. Such a splendid bag awaiting on the evening of Easter Sunday! Yummy rice balls with mayonnaise and cucumber slices inside, some kind of meat on others, all wrapped neatly and tied with green ribbon.

It’s also partly Kory K’s fault since he fed me again, twice. On a pre-Easter visit, he had a bowl of a (strange) mixture of beef stew, Kalua pig and rice from Yama’s, and said I could eat it. Did. Then he not only let me attack his bottle of Jack Daniels, but also prepared more food on Easter Sunday. Yeh, yeh, it was my birthday, too, and Kory’s mama obviously taught him well to be kind to old folks.

And most kind it was. I was a terrible guest, but he’d have been disappointed if I hadn’t gotten drunk and a little loud … still, that was partly Yvette and Barbra’s fault.

The first of the Tales’ birthday posts. I wonder if this will be the last?

My little farm was attacked by aliens. A cucumber plant vanished without a trace. If something ate it, I would have expected at least a little stub of the stalk to remain and, if they were that fond of cucumber leaves, why didn’t they eat the other one, too? Despite that mystery, things are thriving, especially the collard greens which are growing very quickly. Still no sign of the sweetpeas which is odd. I remember them as being quite fast-growing. Maybe they’re just slow germinating. And speaking of that process, a few days ago the Landlady gave me a plum with my dinner. I let it sit and ripen a bit more before eating it, then planted the pit. I like the idea that perhaps long after I’m gone, a plum tree may grace the front garden. The Johnny Appleseed Syndrome?

My poor old body has been attacked by aliens, too. Some very nasty cold bugs have given me a hard time although the worst is now over. Unluckily for Sister, the Landlady was called into work on Thursday but I just didn’t feel up to leaving the house so Sister couldn’t go out. Oh well, the first time that has happened in eleven months.

It’s fund raising time again on Public Radio, alas, a chance to discover just how awful most of radio is. The one country FM station claims to play the classics and the best of the new but that’s a load of horsefeathers. It’s strictly top-40, with one new track introduced each evening. If you hear the top 40 countdown on Saturday, you hear almost everything they’ll be playing, over and over again, for the following week. A pity they don’t at least have an hour each evening featuring some truly classic musician from the past.

No aliens at my Harvest Moon farm but that game surely does demand a lot of patience. Winters are especially dull and I tend to get up, feed the animals and go back to bed. My chicken coop collapsed during a blizzard, killing all four chickens, so I’ve only got four sheep left to feed each day. I tried keeping cows but they were constantly getting sick and the medicine is so expensive I got fed up and let them die off. Guess I’m just not meant to be a dairy farmer. Maintaining a bunch of animals was much easier in Rune Factory, but then so was almost everything else.

At least for the real-life farm, the weather has been perfect. Dreary and wet. I think I’d rather be stuck with having to use the big watering pot and enjoy some sunshine instead.

Three…count ‘em … three … strawberry blossoms. Even better, the collard greens made their debut this morning. I am especially eager for all the seedlings to appear so I can see if there’s any open space left. Doubtful, but I don’t dare lay claim to any more ground, and since Husband’s attempt to grow okra from seed doesn’t seem to have worked, I’d like to put in a few more plants. I went to the garden center again to get some catnip seed and they had strawberry plants on sale so I added three more of them to the collection. The catnip is, of course, for our furry visitors. I’m not sure if cats react to the stuff growing but if not I’ll dry some of it for them.

This is the first time I’ve had a garden since the Sixties so I don’t remember anything about how long it takes from seeding to harvest. I could look it all up on the web, I’m sure, but it’s more fun to just wait and see. At least this time I don’t have to compete with rabbits which were the plague of my life at our summer place in New Jersey. I like rabbits, but they were just too fond and greedy in my garden and I spent a lot of time chasing them away. Our cats were no help, just sat and watched the rabbits.

My Harvest Moon farmer is such a wimp. There’s unfortunately no gauge showing stamina and energy levels. Instead we get silly effects like wiping the brow with a hankerchief, swooning with exhaustion twice and then eventually falling down with a skull symbol over his head. If that’s ignored and I try to water a few more squares of crops, he totally collapses and someone carries him home where he awakes the next morning. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can afford some potions to restore him but they’re awfully expensive so I wish he had a bit more brawn to begin with.

There’s something odd about Harvest Moon, though. I don’t understand why but it’s very hard on the eyes. After awhile there’s the annoying Sandman effect and I have to stop for awhile and rest with my eyes closed. I’ve tried all possible light settings but that makes no difference. It’s the first DS game which has had this effect and it’s baffling.

Meanwhile, on the non-farming front, the domestic balance has been seriously upset. The Landlady is an R.N. and was working two days and one night at Saint Francis Hospital. But there’s a shortage of patients and so they’ve laid off all the part-time workers. It has made her slightly grouchy, not helped by the Old Lady’s irksome antics, so I tread carefully (as do the boys).

And on the financial front … yikes. Almost empty pockets this early in the month. Oh well, the headphones continue to give great pleasure as do the gardens (the real one cost even more than the virtual one), so no regrets.

Aoril Fool’s Day, indeed.  Word came from SocSec that, yes, payday will be “on or around the third”.  I don’t much like the sound of that “around” but it doesn’t really matter since I’ll have the small pension payment on the first.  The really bad news in the SocSec letter was that the State of Hawaii ceased paying Medicare premiums after January.  Thanks so much for telling us, Governor Lingle.  Consequently SocSec was deducting $200 for February and March premiums and would be taking out $100 every month hereafter … unless I cancelled within thirty days.

Straight to the Federal Building I went, had an amusing time getting through the entry security.  After emptying my pockets of all things metal I was still setting off the alarm.  Turned out to be the tinfoil in my cigarette packet.  What was I going to do, attack a Federal Judge with a tinfoil spitball?  Could have been tempting, true, but then I really don’t need to add residency in a federal pen to my resume. Well, it took about an hour-and-a-half before I could talk to a clerk and fill out a little form cancelling Medicare.  I had to give a reason wny.  Simple:  I CAN’T AFFORD IT.  Done.  So supposedly I’ll be getting my $200 back from SocSec.  Only the Landlady cares since I gave her half the rent and told her she’d get the rest as soon as I did.  “That’s okay,” she said.  Pity the poor old folks with less understanding hosts.

Some delightful additions to my life during this very cool first week of April.  The older boys got a new laptop so I inherited a Hewlett-Packard machine, itself only about a year old, with all the bells and whistles including CD/DVD player/burner (wow!) and providing my first brief experience of MS Vista.  Brief, because the damned thing died on the fourth day, just makes a long, intermittent beep when turned on.  I’ll see if I can find a plain old DOS disc and try booting with that to see if the problem is with the machine or Vista.  If the machine is at fault, it will have to go to a repairman because I WANT IT.  The moreso after the Landlady stunned me with the news that the house is already connected to Roadrunner.  Had I known that, a computer would have been the first purchase from those accumulated SocSec checks last spring.  Well, it will all be together soon, I hope.

Another, very, delightful addition are the new headphones, Koss Pro35A.  Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.  I spent the first evening hopping around stations to hear my favorite records from last year which I hadn’t yet heard properly.  Still haven’t heard the Fighting Four’s “Hundred Years”, one CD I will definitely buy when that computer is again operational.

And I have Natsume’s Harvest Moon;.  It isn’t as sophisticated in play mechanics, graphics and dialogue as Rune Factory; but is still great fun despite the difficulties when first starting and continually collapsing from overwork on the farm.

I didn’t quite go that far with my real farm but came close.  The main planting began on the third, okra, cucumbers, Jalapeno peppers and strawberries … and collard greens.  I was really surprised to see those seeds at the garden center.  Alas, they didn’t have turnip seeds, though, so I’ll have to get those from the mainland.  I also put in seeds for crysanthemums and sweet peas.  I had planned to put the sweetpeas where they could climb on the fence but the Landlady said no, she wants bricks there.  Covered with soil.  Say what?  Brick walks in the garden would be lovely but why put down bricks with dirt on top???  Little wonder her intended gardener has never shown up.  So I planted the sweetpeas behind Blackie’s house and all going well, she can spend the summer in a fragrant, flowery abode.

April’s off to a fine start, despite the glitches.