It's Monday! No Duh!

Brody should be a model. Or an Actor. (He has the sensitivities of an artist...)

It's Monday morning ya'll and I'm not rushing around to get ready for work. I have 3, count 'em THREE vacation days this week. Why? Why not! I have a bajillion days of vacation this year being it my 10th year with the company. Who knew I could be consistent? I have about 6 weeks total. I like to take a few days off in a row every other month as 'mental health' days. I love my job, don't get me wrong. But it can be quite stressful, and lately we've been quite busy (which is good) but we're very understaffed for the amount of donors (I'm the trainer at A blood plasma facility) we are processing.

Wait a minute. What am I doing? Am I writing about work? Holy balls Batman!

Yesterday I decided to go to the plant nursery and see if they had anything new and exciting. I love going to the greenhouse, especially in the early Spring when they start to get all their new plants in. I really love gardening, but since I rent and my backyard is in perpetual shade (thank god for Hostas) I was always very limited in what I could grow. Outside. So I put some shelves along the bedroom windows and hung some grow lights above the shelves to supplement the morning sunlight and now I squeeze as many little trees as I can on that space. I guess some would call them Bonsai...but since I know what a real Bonsai is, I'll just say my little trees aspire to be one of those one day.

My favorite tree to work with is the Fujien Tea or Fukien Tea tree. It has small glossy leaves, rough bumpy bark, and it is hard for me to kill. The last part is the most important. There are some plants that, even though I think they're pretty or they have perfect leaves (small), we just don't get along and in the end I kill them. (Sorry all the Serissa plants I tried to grow. But honestly you were a bit needy.)

The greenhouse had a few very nice Fukien Tea plants and some not so nice Chinese Elms and Ficus. Typical Bonsai fodder. (nerd alert) I had a nice mental debate about purchasing another plant...especially in these times of financial lock down (we move into our new house in mid July, but the bank wants us to have 2 consecutive months of 3,000 dollars in the bank account. ouch!) Somehow I came to the conclusion purchasing the tree was my best option, because honestly, I just couldn't find a tree better. At least not in that moment.

Long story short (yeah yeah I know...a little late for that) I brought the tree home, took it from it's very root bound pot, gave it some nice gravelly soil and squeezed it into the group of other trees. It looked quite nice. I decided to take it downstairs and do some wiring on it, because a few of the limbs were off a bit aesthetically. As I was wiring I noticed...Aphids! I quickly mixed up a batch of soapy water and sprayed the hell out of the leaves. And then sprayed all of my other trees too. Damn it all to hell. I hate aphids. Thankfully, they're fairly easy to get rid of but my trees will drop leaves while I soap them. If I was one of those people born with testicles (ovaries for the ladies) I would call the greenhouse and "raise a ruckus," as my mom would say. If I hadn't already repotted the tree and hacked its root system I might have even taken it back. But I'm stuck with. And sans the bugs I think it will make a quite nice tree.

So that's it. That's my Monday. I'm going to get back to...well...nothing.