Black swallowtail butterfly, Piedmont azalea, and the Atlanta Stoveworks table-and-chair set

This weekend we did most of our spring vegetable planting. Rob planted 17 tomato plants in brightly colored cages. He planted four Romas, one Arkansas Traveler, one Japanese Black Trifele, one Sweet Baby Girl, one Park’s Whopper, one Red Grape, one Yellow Pear, one Red Brandywine, one Mr. Stripey, one Indigo Rose, one Tommy Toe, one Stupice, and two Matt’s Wild Cherries. He also planted a bunch of hot peppers: four Long Slim Cayennes, one Super Cayenne #3, one Kung Pao, one Holy Mole, and one Dante’s Hot. He planted four Icheban eggplant, one hill of zucchini, and a hill of yellow scallop squash.

Meanwhile, under the Chinese chestnut, I was arranging our newly painted Atlanta Stoveworks table and chair set. (The little set is so heavy, full of iron curlycues.) After I got it positioned, I planted Indian pinks, Southern wood ferns, and chain ferns all around it, and I made a little path of stepping stones leading right up to it.

Rob kept “thinking aloud” as he planted the vegetables. I was having a bit of trouble following as he pondered the complex subject of crop rotation.

“This is getting a bit too entailed for me,” I’d say from time to time. I love using “entailed” that way; it makes me sound nice and dumb.

Oh, this was fun: On Saturday we bought a plecostomus to help eat up the algae in our pond. Rob was talking to the little black fish as he released him into the dark water. “I think you’ll like it here,” he said. “There’s lots of algae, and lots of places to hide. Well, goodbye. Good luck. I’d like to see you again, but I suppose I never will.”

You see, we had already become quite attached to the plecostomus during the car ride home from the pet store. He seemed a very grave and dignified creature.

As soon as Rob opened the bag, the plecostomus disappeared into the darkness, the watery shadows.

We kept passing Jammer’s grave all day on Saturday and feeling sad. There’s an old bird bath pedestal near it, near the grave. “Gosh,” I said, “I wish we were rich. Then we could commission a marble bust of Jammer and set it up on that empty pedestal.”

“He would deserve it,” Rob said. “He was a very deserving cat.”