Back to the Garden--but First...

Here is the arch I worked on yesterday. I do have a couple more shinies to attach to it, and after having some of my tomatoes stolen last year, I want to construct an equally rustic looking door so it won't be easy for thieves to enter.

Today I woke up late, got My Angel off to her brand new dentist appointment to glue the temporary crown back on, had some food, fed the outdoor cats, and got the mail. And then instead of going outside to garden, I picked up my phone. My call was in response to a letter saying if I didn't register to get a bill online I'd be charged a $1.99 monthly fee. I object to this in principle, but I'm doing enough "fighting city hall" due to the person in the white house, I don't have spoons for crap like this. But I also don't have spare money for stupid fees, and I was, indeed, already set up to view and pay my bills online, and had been long before they sent that letter.

So I called, listened to the robot waste my time telling me all about my balance and recent payment and how much more I could charge, told it no I didn't want to ask to increase my credit limit, and finally was allowed to start the unnecessarily confusing decision tree to try to get to talk to a human being. Eventually I figured out that the magic words at this facility were not "person" "human" "operator" or "agent", typing "0" was ignored. No, I needed to ask for customer service and listen to the robot tell me about long wait times and really, it can help me with most things. Did I want to hear about my current balance and recent payments or pay a bill or change my address or... Eventually it let me through, and someone picked up immediately.

I spent way too long talking to the guy who answered before he got off his mental butt and actually looked to see why I got the letter instead of just repeating that he could see I'd paid online so I wouldn't be charged that fee. But then why did they send the letter? (repeat, rinse, repeat...) I said ok, and asked his name, saying I was documenting the call in case I was charged that fee. Finally he said that they didn't have my email and so they couldn't notify me when a statement was ready and that's probably why I got the letter.

He offered to put it in for me. Sure. I spelled my email address slowly, because it includes my first name, and asked him to read it back to me. It was wrong--he left out one of the Rs. I told him it was wrong, he had left one of the Rs out, and spelled it again, slower, and had him repeat it back to me again. He assured me he had it right and with obvious annoyance repeated what he'd said before. Wrong again. It took two more iterations before he could repeat it back to me correctly. As soon as I said I didn't need help with anything else, he hung up really fast. If he had paid attention in the first place, he wouldn't have took up so much of my time, so he gets no sympathy from me.

Then I took the important piece of mail for someone else I'd just received with me and drove to the post office my mail delivery person works out of instead of the one closest to me. I mailed the two pieces of mail I hadn't been able to stick a stamp on last night (the clip board with return address stickers and stamps is not where it's supposed to be) and talked to a very nice and sympathetic supervisor. She nodded when I noted that mail delivery was not as good as it was before 45 appointed DeJoy, and said that she was hoping things would get better now that he resigned. DeJoy resigned? Really? I'd have been ecstatic to get that news this time last year. Of course, now 45 is 47 and working even harder to dismantle the government, so I'm not holding my breath.



Finally, after I got home, we pulled some of the old support poles out of the fence and replaced all but one. (That one had become non-functional last summer when it had bean plants twining around it, so I added new support then, but left the broken wood where it was to protect the bean plants.) I dug some of last year's leaves into the ground while My Angel picked up trash that had blown into the yard, then I worked on removing dead bean and morning glory vines while My Angel planted about six feet worth of peas. I want more planted, but it was getting cold and we went inside to work on dinner.

As expected, I did not get anything but peas in the ground, but we're not expecting rain until Friday, so tomorrow we should be more peas and some other stuff into the ground too. Assuming, of course, that there are no more time-wasting diversions.

You know, the pictures look so much more bleak than it feels to be outside in the garden with sun on my skin! Give the garden time, it will look prettier soon.