I'm a grub

We went to the wholesale store today to buy some candy and then we went to work. I brought my 5-gallon bucket (clean, with a lid) for the coffee grounds. We have a coffee vending machine, it fills a good 20 gallon trash can at least once a month. Why throw them out? They repel fire ants, are a balanced organic fertilizer, and the earthworms love them. I'll state the obvious, I'm a big fan of used coffee grounds even though I can't stand to drink coffee.

Ron tied off the garbage bag and set it in my bucket. The bucket's out in the backyard waiting for my next project. I'm not in a hurry to apply them; we have a good chance of rain 'most every day this week. Why let them wash away when they can hang out in a bucket?

Right as we finished up with the coffee grounds, I had my little "Candy wagon" all set up to stock. A woman came up to me: "I want to buy your tuna sandwich but your machines are down." "Your machines are down" - not a phrase you want to hear applied to expensive cold food vendors. I checked one of the machines, while the woman got annoyed "I want the sandwich out of the other machine."

I viewed the display. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I can't sell it to you."

"What?" She was black, I'm not (although married to a man who has "negro" on his birth certificate). The inevitable question arose: "Why?"

I showed her the display: Health time expired. "Even if I would sell you one, you wouldn't want to eat it!"
She thanked me for being ethical and went on her way, delighted that I wasn't going to sell her the sandwich.

In order have health code adherence, the cold food vendors have a health time limit. If the machine stays above 40 degrees for more than a couple hours, it shuts down for a "Health time expired" error message. You cannot get the machine to work unless you open it and rotate it completely. Now, some people could cheat, open the door, rotate it, close it again, leaving the expired health time sandwiches in the machine. But I've had food poisoning. When I was a child, I watched both my parents suffer through a terrible bout of salmonella; the same disease that "Got" me the day we closed on the house. I wanted to die, I was so ill. I would never sell bad food, it's anathema to me. Never.

As Ron and I were throwing out the food, a Postal worker came by. "Why are you throwing them out?" We told him. "But they power wasn't out that long. Why throw them out?" We explained, because the health time expired, they aren't safe. He kept telling us we didn't need to throw the food away.

I picked up a sandwich and held it out to him. "Would you buy it and eat it?" He shook his head. "That's why!"

I'm delighted that woman saw me as ethical. She'll remember that the next time she buys a sandwich. She knows it's safe, because I won't tolerate anything else in my vending machines.

Ron went to Starbucks after work. I went out in the backyard. We have an iron "burglar bar" door over the sliding glass door. We only had one key, so yesterday I had it copied. I leave it locked unless I'm out in the yard. I went straight outside and got to work.

I had a blast, but half an hour into my adventure I was filthy. My arms were covered in mud up to my elbows, and my jeans were wet and muddy. I called Ron. He asked how I was doing. "I'm a grub! A happy little grub!" I could hear him smile.

And I was. It's really easy to get tenacious weeds out of the garden beds when you've had over 3 inches of rain in the last week. A moderate yank got up even the worst offenders. I'm so glad I went out and did the weeding! The small, wimpy weeds are going into compost, the big mean ones are getting thrown out. I can hardly wait to get out there tomorrow. I weeded half of bed 3, and all of bed 5. I did some layer gardening techniques on bed 5, first I did the gypsum (1 cup), then I applied 5 gallons of compost, well spread. 5 gallons shredded leaves (thank you ash tree!), and 5 gallons dry grass clippings. I didn't want to work the soil at all, it was sopping. At least now the microrganisms can get a good start on the compost and leaves. Until I get something better, the dead grass is my mulch. It looks "trashy" but it works.

Since the weather was so miserable this weekend, I also had a lot of fun with my graph paper, plotting out my plant placements. My little garden makes me so happy, I'm glad Lithium gave me back my garden, too.

Tomorrow is Ron's birthday. I'm going to go bake him a little cake.