Peas and Brownies

My next door neighbor is FINALLY home! YEAH!

I don't have to water her plants anymore.

So about 3-4 weeks ago she asked me if I would water her garden, her landscaping, and her porch/deck plants while she was away on vacation.

Immediately I hear the knee-jerk reaction voice inside my head yell "NO, I can barely keep up with my own garden, landscaping, and other high maintenance plants!"

But the pleasant neighborly coming-out-of-my-mouth voice said "sure, just so you know there might be a few losses. Show me what you want watered." She said she was fine if something didn't make it.

She showed me around and left the next day. The first week and a half I managed to water every other day, sometimes once every two days. Then I hit a really busy patch at work and it got hot and stayed hot and I got super cranky and came home tired from work and quite frankly I really wasn't doing a consistent job with watering my stuff and I forgot to water hers for about 4-5 days in a row.

When the guilt and obligation got too much for me, I dragged my unhappy ass out to her yard and discovered her dahlias were SUPER unhappy with me. They were all drooping forward over their mini gates and some had even slipped under the gates. Her veggie garden on the other hand was SUPER happy, everything was tall, fat, and taking over each other's spaces.

I gave everything a good soaking, even the fat and happy garden, but especially the dahlias. They got watered 3 times. Then I tried to straighten them out and get them propped back up again. In the process of doing that I managed to break at least three of them. So then the original guilty feeling of neglect was compounded by actual accidental plant murder. Great. Let's just say I was back on track with the every other day or two of watering.

Yesterday I got home from work and my neighbor was walking around her yard taking a survey. I showed her my boo-boos and apologized. She said she was thrilled to see everything and amazed at her veggie garden and pointed out the huge sunflower she hadn't known about. I said I thought it was supposed to be there. She laughed and said I could have the pick of her garden, just tell her what I wanted, and she had something for me.

I told her that I'd been eyeing her peas so she said she'd pick me a baggie full and leave it for me on my stoop. Then she went in and came back out with a tiny sampler of Simply Divine Brownies as a thank you. I told her she shouldn't have and she said she wanted to.

I'm going to have the peas for lunch tomorrow and I had a brownie tonight with milk. YUM!