fiery arms

lesson of the day: wear long sleeves and gloves when picking squash for any length of time, lest you end up with scratched-up, red, itchy arms with weird leather-like green stains on them. i think a layer of my skin has peeled off and been replaced by squash scum residue. ow. it didn't seem to be a problem until i was driving home and the feeling was coming back into my arms after spending several hours with my hands immersed in cold water cleaning shit. it was itchy when i was picking squash, but i went straight to washing after that and sort of forgot that i was developing horrible squash rash. now my forearms are burning.

other highlights of the day include:

sufi ben getting taunted by a saint bernard while doing tai chi. he stopped working at about 3 o'clock, fell asleep in the sun for about 15 minutes, then strolled over to the creek to have his new age moment. i'm all for whatever relaxation/focusing techniques people find useful, but not in the middle of a busy day whey there are clearly many things to wash and bunch and pack and move and agh! what are you doing standing around with your tai chi bullshit while we're all working? maple, the insane 2-year-old st. bernard that has been known to pick up whole pumpkins in her mouth and destory them in seconds, apparently thought that ben was being stupid, too, because she promptly started barking at him while he was doing his zen thing. a nice steady bark- go ahead and focus now, dipshit! i guess maple thought he wanted to play with all his arm movements... nobody told her to stop barking.

ami with an i went to get us all hot coffee at some point this afternoon- that was a godsend.

i picked and bunched 40 pounds of chard, dealt with a whole lotta zucchini, green tomatoes, and lots of easter egg radishes. i then cleaned LOADS of cipolinni onions. for hours. onions.

and then, when the end of the day finally came, after 11 hours of being outside doing laborious farmy things, after 4 hours of the temperature steadily dropping and the drizzle factor steadily rising, after a good hour of everyone being outwardly grumpy about becoming wet and cold- after all this, the red wagon staff experience a true farmy/hippie moment and trek back out to the field, in the drizzle, to pick.... flowers. yes. we could've gone home. we could've hopped into our cars and cranked the heat and taken off our wet shoes, but instead we decide to tromp through the mud and gather bouquets of zinnias. it was a beautiful and ridiculous thing. the only bummer thing about it was listening to everyone go on about how their boyfriends/girlfriends would be so happy to get flowers. i think the only single people working at the farm are me and farmer dan..... so i brought my flowers home and gave them to my dad. aw.

man my arms hurt- i think this is the sort of thing balms are for. i need a balm.