Been Busy

This boy’s been busy now that nice spring weather has returned to the North Georgia Mountains.

I’ve been busy doing projects with the Master Gardeners to get my required 50 hours of service so I can become a full-fledged Master Gardener rather than a Master Gardener trainee. One of the projects was the Rabies Clinic.

In Georgia all dogs and cats must be vaccinated for rabies, and the shot must be done by a veterinarian. Here in Fannin County the extension agent’s office sets up a mass rabies shot clinic once a year on a Saturday. People bring their animals to the clinic to receive low cost rabies shots. It’s done in drive-through, assembly line fashion. As the cars and trailers come in they are directed into lanes where attendants (4-H volunteers and Master Gardener Trainees) take the necessary information from them, and then they are funneled into a single line that leads to the injection station. It’s actually a quite efficient system.

I was assigned the important and crucial job of traffic director. That’s what they told me—the job of traffic director is important and crucial. I’d like to believe I was selected to do an important and crucial job because of my obvious competence at any task I attempt, but I suspect I was given the job because (a) I’m a man, (b) I’m the biggest Master Gardener, and (c) I’m expendable.

This will give you some idea of what the four hours directing traffic at the clinic was like. The clinic started at 8:00 a.m. The first vehicle, a truck towing a trailer with seven large dogs in cages (the type of dogs that eat humans, I think), arrived at 6:56. The truck’s bumper stickers consisted of the Confederate battle flag, a No-Bama sticker, and a sticker that read “The South Shall Rise Again.” The driver and passengers were straight out of the movie Deliverance. I was looking for the albino kid with the banjo.

By 8 o’clock there must have been 50 cars backed up waiting to be processed. The vehicles ranged from high end luxury cars to old rusty pickups.

I noticed a strong correlation between the age and condition of the vehicle and the type and number of dogs it carried. The oldest and most decrepit cars and trucks not only had the most dogs, but they were usually the largest, nastiest, and meanest dogs. I think they were all named Cujo, Fang, or Killer. Some of these dogs were downright scary. I have no idea what breeds they were, but some of them looked like they had a little chupacabra in their background. It tells you something when the animal is restrained with cruise ship anchor chain.

I was walking by one old car when a dog the size of Chewbacca lunged its head out the window and scared the crap out of me. I ended up in the ditch. Then I heard the toothless old boy inside cackle and say, “Don’t worry. He’s friendly.” Yeah, that’s great. What about the friendly stroke I’m having?

The people in the expensive luxury cars, on the other hand, usually had one small dog, and typically it was one of those breeds that real men are embarrassed being seen with. These dogs had cute names like Pookie, Nippy and Pansy. The drivers of these luxury cars generally acted like they had sticks up their asses. They kept their windows rolled up and their air conditioning on in order to hermetically seal themselves away from the unwashed masses. I thought they were cheap pricks driving their $75,000 cars to get $10 rabies shots and acting like they were above it all. I hate to say it, but a number of these cars had Florida plates.

The experience convinced me that there are more Ford Fiestas dating from the 70’s and the 80’s on Fannin County roads than in any place in the world. This place may be elephants’ graveyard for old Ford Fiestas.

I also worked the annual Master Gardener plant sale. It is the main fundraiser for the Master Gardeners, and most of the money raised goes to college scholarships for local high school kids pursuing a career in horticulture. The county not only has a 4-H chapter, but also a Future Farmers of America chapter, so there are a lot of kids who pursue horticultural careers.

I must admit that I’m more qualified to direct traffic then to sell plants. I had no frigging clue what the plants were that the Master Gardeners were selling. Eventually I gravitated to the daylily table because there were pictures of what each type of daylily looked like. I felt like Clint on the TV show Cheers: “Now this here is your Red Ruby day lily…”

The Master Gardeners were impressed at the number of daylilies I sold by the end of the day. What they don’t know about are the sales pitches I used to sell the daylilies. I told the men that daylilies produced a pheromone that turned women into raving nymphomaniacs. I told the women that daylilies produced a pheromone that made them hard as a piece of rebar (if it lasts more than six hours, consult a plant biologist). If that didn’t work I told them that if they didn’t buy a daylily I’d take an ice pick to their tires. I really sold a lot of daylilies.

In addition to all that, I managed to get the garden is fully planted with the help of my son, Mike, who’s back from college. I planted tomatoes, peppers, beans, cabbage, kale, corn, collards, and eggplant to go with the potatoes I planted a couple of weeks ago. Even though the beans, corn and eggplant have not sprouted yet, the garden finally looks like a garden.

This first year’s garden is a learning experience, and next spring I will do some things differently. I will plant the same things I planted this year, but I will also plant English peas, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, winter and summer squash, pickle cucumbers, and a lot more cabbage. I will also plant more sweet peppers and less hot ones. I think the 20 cayenne and 20 Anaheim chile pepper plants that I planted this year may be overkill, particularly the cayenne peppers. Cayennes are prolific producers, and if the plants produce well, I will have enough cayenne peppers to feed the Mexican army.

As I say, this boy’s been busy, and that’s a good thing. So far I’m having an absolute blast in my retirement.

A final note: I pass the Mineral Bluff Baptist Church every time I go to town. Last week it had a sign advertising a multi-day revival. The day after the revival started the sign was changed to say “1 saved.” By day four, the running total was five saved. It reminded me of the old McDonald’s signs that used to give the number of hamburgers sold. I wonder if McDonald’s started with “1 sold”?