The Renfair approacheth, just in time for a sanity check.

What the...it's JUNE already??!! Where did the spring go?

Oh, right. I've been busy gardening, weeding, planting and other dirty yard work. And getting medieval on the gopher colony in my yard. How does one get medieval on a gopher? I'm glad you asked.

Their mounds, as they appear, are opened and flooded with my trusty +3 (to gopher slaying) garden hose. I wish I could use boiling oil, but that stuff's not cheap. I've poured out buckets of the foul-smelling pepper powder barrier, to no avail. The traps (as much as they look like medieval torture devices) have failed to trap even one gopher. Lately, I've been wandering around the backyard at night like a village idiot, trampling their tunnels and stomping the earth to drive them out. There must be an entire underground city under my house, and they just keep sending up reinforcements...or maybe they're zombie gophers and just can't be killed...

Thankfully, a close friend called yesterday and broke me from my reverie.

Her: "Want to go to the Renaissance Fair? Opening weekend? It's two for one..."
Me: "RenFair already? What month is it?"
Her: "June."
Me: "Wow, somehow I'm still in May."
Her: "Do you have fresh dirt under your fingernails?"
Me: "What? Uh....yeah...why?"
Her: "You need an intervention, you know."
Me: " WHAT?"
Her: "Remember your other life? The one with the costumes? The fencing? How long has it been since you've even BEEN to the Renfair?"
Me: "Uhh, three or four years?"
Her: "And you call yourself an anachronist? Pah."
Me: "Touché."
Her: "We're going in costume. You ARE wearing one. And I'll drive. You have no excuse."
Me: "But-"
Her: "Your garden will be FINE without you for a whole eight hours."

Today I can write about this and laugh. Yesterday I was stressed at how much I think I still have to do outside with more planting, building trellises, cages, and supports, setting up row covers and of course keeping the zombie gophers at bay, and then I realized I really REALLY need this excursion as a sanity check. I never knew I could catch obsessive compulsive disorder from gardening.