Now, what in the world are those strange creatures you may be asking? Well, one is Stella. You may not recognize her because she has her game face on. She is anticipating all the rabbits she will not see and not catch during this year's gardening session. She is calculating how many times she has to give chase and/or toss out a couple of barks and growls in order to make it seem as though she is part of the family and earning her keep so that she can trot off to a warm patch of grass and snooze it up.

The other creature is apparently a butterfly chrysalis. Mort and I were working on preparing the garden yesterday and stumbled across this. At first I thought it was-well, no need to go into that. Let's just say I was ready to be angry at one smallish dog. She knows the garden is off-limits! But then I saw it move. My reaction was a bit of a gag reflex. However, I am a woman of the earth this year! I am not fooling around. I rescued every worm from the wheelbarrow and put them back in the dirt. I chucked out every grub my hoe unturned. I can handle a freaking cocoon. Even if it's moving.

I had a bit of a raging fear that it was not a butterfly or moth, but some other type of horror that I had not known existed, like that tomato horn worm. But the Internet did indeed pull-up a picture of that chrysalis as a butterfly. So, Mort and I decided to take a leap of faith and see if we could bear witness to a butterfly emerging from this otherworldly sack. I was rooting around in the cabinets for a proper butterfly W Hotel when Mort seized upon the salad spinner. "Hey! What about this? This has a lot of air holes!" So, the cocoon is safe from birds and insects in our salad spinner; a handful of organic greens and capful of water and some sticks in its shelter.

In case you were huffing, Okay , well that's all well and good, but what about your cleaning saga?! I'm right there with you. Let's begin. So, I have begun the search for a cleaner. I feel completely bizarre and spoiled and pretty much like a jerk from the jerk store, but it is what it is. However, before I can pay someone else to clean my house, I need it to be clean. It took me 2 1/2 hours to do our living room. I was choking on the dust. I took a Zyrtec(hateful stuff that is, I am so cranky when I take it) and opened all the windows and made Mort play upstairs. Ugh. I only finished one other room that day. Yesterday, I preemptively took Zyrtec (surprisingly I was once again snappy and short-tempered) and wore a dust mask. The bedrooms that I tackled did not have nearly the dust content that plagued the living room. And then I felt I had put in enough time to head outside.

What a difference a year makes! Hopefully I will be able to whip out some other cliches for you. Last spring I was still forced to rototill the dirt. This year we were able to do it by hand. Mort was Mr. Muscle. He is my new back. While I was ripping out the dead grass choking the borders, he was using his shovel to dig out the weeds, chucking rocks into the wheelbarrow and pushing the cultivator like it was going out of style. Ooo! Cliche number two. So, today I am getting good soil to mix into the existing stuff and it should just about be ready. I'm having a really hard time finding organic seeds, however. Every place is sold out. I have read that the amount of people growing their own food has dramatically increased this year, but wow. Although that's good for us all. The greater the demand for organic seeds, the less people will use ones that derive from genetically modified plants and unnatural hybrids and the better our food will be.

I read a headline this morning that asked, "When will robots do all of our chores?" I think that is perhaps one of the greatest questions ever asked and I eagerly await the answer. I hope that robots have the same chore list that I do. Like putting gas in the car and returning library books.