Ferns are first...

My brother sent me an Amazon gift certificate for my birthday, so I immediately checked out two of the 1,001 items sitting in my shopping cart:  1) a brass 2-way hose adapter and 2) a new hose.  My only-two-year-old hose was cracked and leaking and nearly impossible to manhandle (unwind and wind back up ... loop over the hose holder).  My very kind UPS man brought them today.  Thanks to the gift card, I had to spend only six cents of my own money to make this necessary upgrade to my yard keeping.

So, I just finished hooking up the new hose adapter, the new hose, and the soaker hose I bought for the fern bed.  Many, many, many minutes passed as I tried to figure out which way to hook up the regular hose and the soaker hose that I could remember which valve stem to open on my new adapter.  Finally, I decided to put the soaker hose on the first valve since ferns are first in my heart.  It took so very long to figure out how to hook up the hoses, because I was struggling to find a rhyme or an initial consonant tie to the words "right" and "left"  Finally, I realized I could think of the valves as the "first" one and the "second."

Ferns are most assuredly first!

Winding the soaker hose through the fern bed, being very, very, very careful not to break any fronds, look forever.  When I finally finished, I had already done enough work for the day:

1. disconnect the short hose from the bad hose; 
2. disconnect the bad hose from the faucet bib; 
3. unwind the bad hose from the holder; 
4. install the brass adapter; 
5. spend eons thinking about how to hook up the two hoses; 
6. hook up the small hose to the "first" valve;
7. very, very, very carefully wend the soaker hose through the fern bed;
8. stake down the soaker hose;
9. connect the soaker hose to the short hose;
10. test the soaker hose;
11. connect the new hose to the "second" valve;
12. test the new hose; and 
13. wind up the new hose onto the hose holder.

Maybe ... maybe tomorrow I will lug a bag of mulch over to the fern bed and bury the soaker hose.  Really, I should also lug at least two more bags of mulch over to the front bed and more securely tuck in those new boxwoods.

I made Crash Hot Potatoes for dinner and plan to spend the evening recovering from my labors.  Recovering and trying to ignore the itching.  Something ... something ... is still biting me.  The ant bites are healing nicely, but I have nine nickel-sized welts that kept me up last night.  Well, who knows how many I had last night.  I know I have nine now because I swear I somehow got more bites whilst lounging in the GREEN chair, so I decided to mark them.  You know ... do a bit of data collection.  What I really need to do is get some topical itching medication.  I am just too weary to drive over to Wal-Mart or Target.

I do need more cucumber.
And a carrot (for a new lentil recipe).
And a head of iceberg lettuce (for the pulled pork tacos).