Fact: In Rome, the first hospital was built in the 4th century AD by a wealthy penitent widow, Fabiola<.  In the early Middle Ages (6th to 10th century), under the influence of the Benedictine Order, an infirmary became an established part of every monastery.

Morning is lovely, and its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.  I told Mary, “Keep the dream alive: Hit the snooze button.”

We are getting to be farmers!  Up at 6:00 AM and working in the fields.  OK, up at 6:30 AM, coffee at 7:00 AM, and the garden soon after.

Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work in the garden.

We expected our house cleaners to arrive at 3:00 PM, but they surprised us at 8:30 AM.

We just started a garden tour to see what the rain had brought.  Everything looked so fresh and clean; the rain did quite a job!

After last night’s rain, the sky was beautiful, and everything was clean!

The garden beds were still quite damp, but the straw kept mud from getting onto the leaves.  Mulch is a good thing.

The straw served its purpose.

The strawberries are ready to get planted.  Looking carefully, you might see two worm containers, each housing about 300 worms.  Eisenia fetida, known under various common names such as manure worm, redworm, brandling worm, panfish worm, trout worm, tiger worm, red wiggler worm, etc., is a species of earthworm adapted to decaying organic material.  These worms thrive in rotting vegetation, compost, and manure.

Dig a small hole, drop one hundred in, and then yell, “Lunch time!”

These little guys will be sprouting berries in no time if the varmints do not get them first!  But we have a plan; bring in the chicken wire.

The worm containers were under the straw.

There was dew on the leaves from last night’s rain.  The straw supports the leaves and keeps them facing the sun!

There was dew on the leaves this morning.

The yard was a mess after the contractor departed, but with the help of Carlos and a few yards of excellent soil, the grass is starting to return to the area.  We will have weeds to deal with, but the grass should be solid in another month.  We will have a 40′ x 60′ plot of grass for Scout, The Wonder Dog, to water at his leisure.

The grass seed has germinated; the rain was perfectly timed.

OK, not quite a nudity butt close enough.  My wife was afraid of the dark… then she saw me naked, and now she’s afraid of the light.  I wore my robe to the garden because a) it was warm and b) I was too lazy to change.

I love this quote: “One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas.  I’ll never know how he got into my pajamas.” — Groucho Marx.

Gardening in my jammies!

We are going to plant peas, and they need to be able to climb.  Peas have both low-growing and vining cultivars.  The vining cultivars grow thin tendrils from leaves that coil around any available support and can climb from 3 ft 3  to 6 ft 7 in high.

I used the 5 pounds shop hammer to drive the iron fence posts into the ground.  It looks like overkill but wait until the peas start to grow!!  They get heavy!

Up goes the wall!

The wall is up; let’s have a party!  In six weeks, the net will be full of pea and time to begin to harvest them.  We planted three kinds of peas, including Oregon Giant, Snowpeas, and Little Marvel.

The peas have a place to climb now.

It almost took the hands of a surgeon to tie off the tiny nylon strings, but I managed it anyway.

Ready, set, go!!!!

We will have to measure the growth every day.

All the strawberries and peas are in; time to go to lunch!

Get going; it is almost 11:00 AM.

While I got cleaned up. Mary finished off the last flat of berries and took her wheelbarrow and the tools up to the patio and put them away.

We jumped in the car and were heading to the Elks when the darned phone rang, and it was the doctor’s office telling us that there was a 2:00 PM appointment for me to get another CT scan.  GREAT!!!  We had dentist appointments at 2:00 PM.  Mary made a command decision; we returned home.  Mary went to the dentist, and I headed for Los Alamitos.

I waited in the hospital lobby for nearly two hours before they took me at 3:45 PM for a 15-minute procedure.  I had nothing to eat since yesterday’s dinner and was famished!  I was so anxious to get back to Mary I didn’t even stop for a burger; I finally arrived home at 5:00, and it was getting dark.

We had a simple dinner and watched some TV.  By 6:00 PM, I was dozing off, so we went to bed.  By 7:00 PM, I was sawing logs sounding like a sawmill.  Mary watched two Hallmark movies.