The living’s easy

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I’ve got spring fever, and I’ve got it bad.

I’m sure many of you are in the same shoes, wandering around out there in the big, old, slowly warming world. This time of year comes around, and I’m driven to distraction. Boundless energy makes it difficult for me to sit here in my corner office overlooking the onramp onto I-80 east. In honor of my distraction, I took an extra day off last week.

Let me tell you about it; maybe you’ll get some ideas.

Friday morning, after a quick errand at the Sheriff’s office—I’ll tell you about it in a few weeks—I put a quick tune on the rototiller, fired it up, and tilled the area around my garden. I was using it as a walkway, but weeds were growing and casting seeds into fertile soil, so I’ve decided to put some sod down. Then I headed to the front yard to remove the stump from a tree we had to take out because of high winds last season. Slapped a chain on it, two tugs with my little Jeep, and I had a stump on my sidewalk. Seems someone 25 years ago didn’t plan very well when they planted a tree on hardpan.

Saturday morning, my friend Jeff Johnson came over, and we fired up the plasma cutter on a project Jeff’s working on. Then Kathleen, Hunter and I went touring nurseries. That new G&G nursery on Pyramid is freaking amazing. Picked up some vegetables, including onion sets and spinach seedlings at the Garden Shop. It seems the entire gardening community is just waiting for the second shoe to drop. I was amused to note that some of the stuff that was selling, like basil, is going to die as soon as it freezes again.

Sunday, I went and selected the tree that’s going to fill the hole in my front yard. I went with a Chanticleer Pear from Moana Lane’s Super Nursery out on South Virginia. Finished smoothing out the garden, stuck my onion sets and spinach in the ground.

I didn’t check my work e-mail for three days. I sunburned my head. Life is good.