Green Dreams

Now that I have the flowers taken care of I need to get serious about the vegetable garden. I am hopeing to get it tilled next Sunday, so that would give me a week to get something together to plant, I'm not absolutely married to getting everything in the ground on the same schedule I have been keeping because I've finally started doing the math and I've figured out that I am going to be on vacation while the garden is at its peak. If I hold off a couple of weeks, say plant the last week of April into the first week on May, instead of kicking my ass to get it in the ground my April 15th,  the garden will still manage to grow and I can be around to harvest it.

I got another seed catalog today. A gorgeous catalogue full of the most beautifully photographed, genuinely sexy peppers, beans and peas you ever saw, total vegetable porn. It worked though, because I think I may have decided on what I want.

There is a very attractive  pea collection of three different varieties, but at the same time, how many peas do I need? I like peas but they are hardly a staple of my diet, but, maybe they should be and what better way of introducing them, then to have a lot of them? I could have Oregon Sugar Pod II, Super Snappy and Super Sugar Snap. I found two kinds of beans that I think I want: Kentucky Blue and Blue Lake, I have seen these sold locally, so maybe these I can just pick up here.

All of these lovely plants need room to stretch. I did the bush bean thing  last year and was thoroughly unimpressed, I'm going to plant a couple of those with the potatoes though as a way to protect them from nasty potato eating beasties. Anyway, everything I want to plant need something to grow on, which leads us to: What are they going to grow on? Alphagal and Broskey have gorgeous, super strong hand made towers and they are fab -  but I am not a builder and I am not certain I need a year round solution.

Instead of something as high quality as those, I could try  my own  DIY tower, but if I really wanted to do that, I should have thought about that weeks ago. I think my fix for this is going to be three or four store bought trellis', conveniently sold at Poverty Barn but still not cheap. They aren't as romantic or visually appealing or as cheap as choice three, which would be  bamboo pole tee-pees, I have put some thought to, but even with some thought, I am worried that these might not be strong enough alone so I had put some thought to mayne pairing them with some kiddie hula-hoops for strength but it seems like a lot of math to get these together though and again, I should have gotten on this weeks ago. I think I'm going to hit Poverty Barn, if they still have them, again, I should have gotten on this weeks ago. Garden Planning Fail!

I'm having less luck with my peppers. I know I want some, but I don't know how many or what kind. I am sure I want sweet bells, like California Wonder or Flavorburst and Golden Giant but there are lot of them. I want them big enough to use for stuffing but my peppers never get as big as the ones I see at the stores that are sold for that. The peppers I might have to order because I haven't seen any around here that look promising. I'm now thinking, California Wonder, Flavorburst and Golden Giant. That was easy.

Monday Photoblogging!

Yay photoblogging!

After work on Friday I went to my local over priced gardening boutique and  bought some seeds to grow in the garden over the winter. They are a green fertilizer and they help strengthen the garden and then provided a mulch when its time to plow them under in the spring. I am planning for the gardens future and when it will be fully harvested. Because it will be. I swear. To this end I did a little gardening this weekend, I had thought I was going to give the tomatoes a few more weeks but in a few more weeks its going to be November and cold and in years past when I gave the plants "a few more weeks" I ended up gardening in a parka and I never got another ripe tomato in the extra time I gave them, so I decided to just let go and pull them out while I can do so without gloves and a hat.

and then there were five...

I didn't mention pulling out the peppers did I? Because I did not, the peppers are still working and producing and they are green and pretty and I lurve them. I can't kill them, not yet, not when they have babies, Babies that might very well grow to maturity They could. I have hope. The peppers aren't nearly as irritating to me as the tomatoes. The peppers have plans and goals and I know they have more to do. The tomatoes were losers and had no plans and no goals.

I still haven't got a pumpkin, my deck still looks like a Hallmark card and I just can't put a pumpkin in all that and mess up its vibe and I'm just not there yet, no matter how much I am lusting after sweaters and autumnal chotchkies. I did see some funky disco sparkled-out pumpkins at Michael's, I mean these were like Club Pumpkins, they had boas and glow sticks and they were like  wearing tiny parkas and smiling. I got a contact high just looking at them.

Now that I was high I had to get some food. I went to Burger Yucky because a friend at work scored a neat owl toy and while I was scared of the owl because it was like a battle owl, it was Voldemort's owl. I wanted a cute owl. I got a battle owl. I didn't want a battle owl. So I did what I could.

Gargoyle, damn it.

What was I supposed to do with it? Couldn't the makers see this thing and say Wow. it turned out a little intense didn't it? Wow. Maybe we could  turn it into a key chain or something. I didn't want this scary thing looking at me all day so I looked at it and decided that my house needed a gargoyle. Yes, "needed". My house needed a gargoyle, and now I have one. Its going to watch over my house and hopefully, scare whatever it is that gargoyles scare. Boo mother fuckers.

But before all that, I went to church - woke up in time for 10:30 Mass too, thank you very much. I had to park in BFE though and I never love that, but it is good exercise. Blah, blah, blah whatever. Anyway, when I came home I found this

Completely unstaged. Maybe exersice is good for me.

Farmer Me

It rained!  it not only rained, it is raining! My plants are in shock! They're all sweating and nauseous and confused. I'm going to go out there tomorrow and find the place littered with PTSD pamphlets - which is fine, I can use them as  mulch, its important to think ahead.

I would like to use more than pamphlets to pump my garden. I see reference to using rye grass as a green fertilizer on gardens, you plant it, it magically beefs up the soil and then you just plow it under when you start the garden in the spring. This sounds good, but I'm not entirely sure I want grass feeling all at home in my garden. Grass is bad, I don't know how I feel about inviting it in and telling it to make it self at home. I need to re-read my Burpee catalog to read the small print.

Speaking of the garden, everyone is still in their place. I was going to remove at least one of the tomatoes but they all pulled themselves out of the fire by producing at least something, one is however producing a lot of blossom end rot and that does not make me want to let them live long and prosper - however, it makes me sad to pull out plants and I don't really want to. I feel like I owe them more than just pulling them out.

The peppers are still doing very well and they are in no danger of their season ending early. Just today I put up four peppers for the winter - little peppers but still better than no peppers. I was going to chop them but I decided on julienning instead. It probably isn't going to amount to more than a single meal but it will make me feel like I did something with my summer.

In addition to the peppers I have sauce tomatoes and two meals of stuffed peppers waiting for me. I want to make sauce with my tomatoes , I'm going to have to supplement them with store bought but I can still feel like I made the sauce with my garden. I didn't really out any of my vegetables up last year, I tried with some late broccoli but my brocs never really came out like they were supposed to and they are small and a little peaky looking and I only did it to be able to say I did. They haunt me now.

I would love to have a bigger garden and be able to really plant enough plants to get a real harvest and really have enough to freeze and use over the winter but unless my yard grows or the damn tree magically disappeared, which is not going to happen, most likely. What would be really be neat would be to take over the lot behind my house and use it, its larger, sunnier than my yard and still close enough to feasible provide irrigation to it. Anyone can plant some veggies in a lot but its really hard to keep them watered. There is a church group that every year plants a large plot in a lot down the street from me. They plow and plant and they get a lot of output for a while and  seem to work on it -  But it dies every year, because it isn't irrigated.

In my mind that;s a waste of energy and its unfair to the plants. If you aren't going to take care of the garden you shouldn't start it in the first place. If those people are so dedicated to gardening, they could plow up their neighbors yards for free, provide seeds and help out folks who really are going to tend their gardens.

Garden Update 14

Well, pour one out for our friend Experimental Pepper.

Last weekend it was fine. A week later its done for. I went through its soil and looked at its admittedly tiny root ball and could find nothing that seemed to have done it in. The soil was moist and  very loosely packed. I didn't find any tale tail signs of infestation. It just died. One down, many, many to go.

Speaking of experiments, the experimental Tomato is still producing, it is in fact the only tomato plant producing. It's leaves are looking a little worse for wear but the fruits are healthy and I see no signs of illness or infestation.

The in-ground tomatoes are growing but not growing more tomatoes. When I was touring the garden earlier I did find a couple of fetal fruits but nothing like what the ET is doing.

Those belong to the 4th of July plant. I noticed another very young fruit on what I remember to be the Big Pink plant. One of the sause varieties has flowers now and the plant that was supposed to produce big, giant sandwich sized fruits has yet to even flower, it is however eight feet tall.

On the shorter end of the spectrum

Those are just for show, it produces all these cute little beans that never actually mature.

The volunteer pumpkins just keep doing their thing. No flowers as yet and they are shorter and the leaves less broad than Alphagals on-purpose pumpkins. I am hopeing this is a varietal difference and not that this vine is fated to be just pretty. I'm hopeing that since I bought the donor at the farmers market and not a grocery store that maybe I can beat the sterile pumpkin seed odds.

Back to the tall plants. The peppers are actual out performing the tomatoes. With all but one plant having lovely peppers waiting on stand by for me.

 My only issue is that they are supposed to be bell peppers but they aren't at all like the bells see at the farmers market. They aren't as large and they don't have tidy flat bottoms to rest on in the oven. My peppers are all foldy and elastic. I discovered that they taste really, really good and have a great texture, they aren't really suitable for stuffing. Wah.

A family picture.


Back to the front, we all ready spoke about the sad ending of the EP. Sigh. On the upside, I finally am no longer a member of the Shrub Liberation Front. Thanks to my Dad and my hedge trimmer we went from

 Do notice in the lower right hand corner the still thriving EP, that was a week a go. Post  trimming to this

It actually looks like someone lives here now. My Dad trimmed all the hedges across the front of the house and it looks so much better than it did. Much more tucked in and for the first time in a long time I'm not thinking of ripping them all out just to spite them. I don't mind them near as much now that they aren't trying to eat my house.

As long as we're talking about the front of my house, lets chat about my flowers shall we?

Aren't they lovely? And speaking of the flowers, look more

I can't say much about the seed flowers. They did well early on but they petered out very soon. They were fin while they lasted though.

TGIF

We're getting a scroll on the screen that is warning us that it is going to rain. Yes, its going to rain and we have to be warned that there will be wet stuff falling from the sky. I think they want us to know that  the authorities know that there is wet stuff falling from the sky so that the stupid people don't assume the sky is bleeding. The teabaggers will assume its Glen Becks tears and hopefully drown like turkeys.

I had to block an elementary school classmate on Facebook today. He almost never posts and then when he does he praises Glenn Beck and derides the judge that over turned Prop 8! He really, really had to go. I love the ignore function. I get to keep my all-important friend tally up while at the same time never having to deal with this jackass again. Yay.

I've been saying all week I'm going to mow the yard, I'm going to mow the yard and again I did not mow the yard. I'm going to give the yard guy cash to mow it this weekend. It was great when it was not raining at all and it was hot and the grass was playing dead but now its raining again and the grass is green again and growing and I don't see me out there trying to beat it back with the push mower. Its going to need more horsepower than I can provide. I'm going on vacation in a few weeks and I don't want to die before I get a chance to blow this pop stand for a few weeks. That would suck, I mean heaven is, I'm sure, very nice but I really need to go on vacation.

I think my experimental pepper might be dead. It went all floppy and  wilty and shriveled up  and the peppers don't seem to thriving the way the peppers planted  in the back are, it took them a while to get it together and the plants are skimpy but I have four or five very nice peppers back there. I am practicing self control and letting them mature on the plant. They aren't coming out square like the ones at the store though, those are tidy and easy to cook with - not that I am throwing my sexy little friends out of bed, but they don't look the same.

Speaking of  my garden, the tomatoes are not doing well. And by "doing well" I mean producing tomatoes. At all. One of the plants hasn't produced a single fruit, not even flowers! If some of the plants are  co-operating, I'm also contending with bands of roving squirrels that steal my harvest! I've never had problems with that in the past and this year they come through like furry locusts, I bang on the window at them and they don't even react. Bastards.

I think next next year I am going to make some changes to the garden and think about plant placement. I don't want to get too discouraged by this years garden performance because this summer has been so constantly hot and humid and unfriendly to growing things and so over run by squirrels.  The results are not entirely my fault.

Living La Vida Kiddie Pool

86% humidity and it doesn't rain. It just doesn't seem fair somehow. I go out every morning at an ungodly hour of the morning in the dark to walk Dogger and I walk out the door and into some one else's lukewarm bath water. I just feel coated with ick and then I have to go to work, icky.

I was so happy when it finally stopped being winter. Sigh, be careful what you ask for.

I did not take Dogger for walk number 2. It's just too hot, for her, for my part life in Texas prepared me to deal with this. My blood is a gaseous state, bypassing entirely the lower quality, less advantageous "water" blood. You live in this environment you develop blood the consistency of condensed soup - which is helpful during the winter months as it prevents freezing to death but makes the summer heat brutal.

This humidity business is a bitch though. You could evolve beyond the need for blood entirely and still wish for death after a few minutes in the sun. I develop flop sweat watering my plants in the evening. Flop Sweat, like that character from Broadcast News but its not from savage stage fright its from the 86% humidity - that hangs on all day. It never burns off.

My plants aren't happy. As much as they like the sunlight the humidity makes them sad, they aren't tropicals and they don't understand whats happening to them and they are tomatoes! allegedly they love heat and sunshine and disappear shade and coolness. The peppers are just barely hanging on possibly because they are planted in a strip that seems to get marginally less sun than the tomatoes. Marginally. If I could I would get one of those over sized deck umbrellas and set it up over the garden to make them feel better. The plants in front that get shade are the happiest plants I have  and the only specimens left that I did not have to replant. The experimental tomato is the lone holdout who seems to enjoy the heat and the humidity. The freak.

Happy Monday!!

Early in the week I took purple bike to the bike hospital. It was time. I told them that while it was a cheap bike it was a good cheap bike and it had been good to me. I rode that cheap bike every day and that's more than a lot of people can say about their not cheap bikes. I wanted them to treat it with some respect but I also told them I wasn't using it right now and they didn't have to get to it right now, you know, if they had someone come in with some sort of bike emergency that they most certainly should get right on it and not feel bad about it.

On Friday they called me.

The bzzzzzzzzzz needs to be replaced.Bzzzzzzzzzzzz The wheel and inner tube have been replaced. The bzzzzzzz is bad and the part needs to be ordered, converting to single spebzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The bzzzzzzzz is on its last legs. Derailbzzzzzzzzzzzzz What do you want us to do? bzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I asked them how much this had cost so far

$Bzzzzz

I told them I paid $48 for it and how much more they thought this was going to run me.

$Bzzzzzzzzzzz

They asked me what I wanted them to do, as I had now spent much more to fix purple bike than I spent to buy purple bike in the first place. About twice what I spent for it and the ticker is still ticking. I told them to do the least they can do and not get sued.  To acheive this they have to order a something that is a "six" and what they have in the store is a "seven" bzzzzzzzzzz to take the bike from a three speeder to a one speed and fix the breaks that failed and do something with something else and thing they need to order won't be in for another week and they'll call me then. Bzzzzzzzzzz. I was like thank you for the updates but you're speaking Sanskrit, just fix the damn bike.

After my talk with the bike guy, I  went on to spend entirely too much time in grocery stores. I would go and buy what I needed and then I would need more things and I would go back to the grocery store and buy more stuff and then do the whole thing again. On the up side I did get everything I needed.

Other than marketing, I did laundry, I baked - I baked very naughty blueberry muffins from a package and then I baked very obedient blueberry  all-bran muffins. From scratch, flour, baking powder, egg whites... 

Speaking of from making from scratch, two of my sauce tomatoes either jumped or were pushed to their deaths! by squirrel or squirrels unknown. I only had three of them to begin with and now I have one. How can I make sauce with one tomato?! I put the fruits into a bag and I'm hopeing for the best but I know it won't make them ripe it will just make them red.

Garden Update 13?

I know you have missed Garden Updates - I have too but Blogger has made it very hard and time consuming to post multiple shots and the whole narrative isn't the same without illustrations. I will try though.

I have harvested a number of Forth of July tomatoes, they range from smallish to mid-sized and despite their size they are slice-able,  a big pink, which shockingly, is actually big and pink and I think two Carolina Golds.

Much to my shock, the experimental pepper is kicking the traditional planted peppers butts! I have four young peppers on the EP plant and  one on the four other plants. Total.  The Experimental Tomato is also really showing the planted tomatoes up as well. The ET is covered with sizable fruits and is still making new fruits too. The plant is compact and has not out-grown its cage in the least. My planted tomatoes are all taller than I am not not covered with fruits - all but one of the plants has unripe fruits, and the remaining plant might have issues with the humidity. I wish the fruits would come ripe though. One of my plants is trying to make sauce tomatoes and I am going to make sauce with them damn it. If they ever get ripe and if it ever makes more than three fruits.

I pulled up most of the beans because they had become played out and weren't producing any longer and I thought they leaves looked a little tetchy so I pulled all but two of the plants out and replanted. The two remaining mature plants have a handful of baby beans but they don't seem to be maturing . The newly planted beans haven't sprouted yet.

My plants in the front are doing well, now that I pulled out and replaced almost everything with inpatients. The flowers I started as seeds are still plants,  plants with interesting foliage but they haven't made the transition to flowers as yet.

See? none of this makes anywhere near as much sense without illustrations! You just have to take my word for it - Tomatoes, too tall, rangy, peppers shorter and not producing, beans pulled, experimental plants kicking traditionally planted plants planty butts, flowers pretty.

Plant Chat

I just made the loveliest dinner. Stir fried chicken  and tomatoes flavored with garlic and oregano along side garlic and parsley flavored pasta. The tomatoes came from my garden! Tada! Productivity!

And the were good too. Yay! I am very proud.

I have been bonding with my tomato plants lately because I just didn't feel very close to them. In years past I have had a very good relationship with my plants but this year I just don't feel the love. I'm out there visiting with the green beans but I don't know why I don't feel as close to the garden this year, its weird. Its feeling very auto pilot for some reason. I think I've been spending too much time with my flowers. So I have been trying to spend more time with my vegetables and its good that I have been paying more attention because I might have missed an entire tomato limb falling over! I could have lost and entire limb! I mean how awful. I blame this on the tomato friendly heat and humidity that we have been experiencing. My tomato plants have morphed into tomato trees.

I have actually run out of green garden tape! I've never run out of garden tape before. I have been tying up plants like a crazy person, a crazy person with tomatoes that are growing at insane rates and growing, growing, growing out and around their little houses.  They are taking over. Last year I did more pruning but the growth has happened so suddenly I didn't have time to do it this year, I mean one day they were spindly little plantings and the next day  they had escaped their cages entirely.

The limb was the biggest problem yet. It has four fruits on it and it must have just gotten too heavy but thus far the fruits are not all that big or even close to being ripe. I ended up having to tie it to the fence.  The Experimental Tomato is also growing fruits like a crazy thing but it is much more shrubby in appearance and oddly, has more fruits further along in development. The  exact same variety is also the back yard but are taller than I am and oddly, the leaves look different. The Experimental plant is way shorter than I am, has darker leaves and fewer branches and I haven't had to do any tying of it at all, which is good because I ran out of tape. It has a total of  six or seven fruits on it with two large and coming to ripeness, the other plant doesn't have nearly as many fruits  and they are all small and nowhere near ripeness.

If I was a better gardener I would under stand this. E.T gets more light but less water and is in a container. The garden plants are on a timed soaker hose and get exactly the same amount of water twice a day and the benefits of plastic mulch to keep the ground damp and warm and of course, are planted in the ground with all the benefits that accords. I dump water on the ET twice a day, sometimes more  water sometimes less and at  various times. I have fertilized the ET but only after heavy rains - I don't do this with the garden because the garden I would think would suffer less after a heavy rain?

Regardless, it looks better than its in-ground brethren.

Speaking of my container garden. I gave everything a through soaking with the hose today. I try to limit my watering to what I get out of the rain barrel but its been so hot and dry lately that I decided to give everything I good refreshing bath to keep them happy and hydrated. I water them twice a day with the watering can but it's not enough to really keep them as wet as they probably want. I've noticed some of my Not Queen Annes Lace getting a little toasty and one of my vines was looking a little peaky. I fixed that.

PS, the volunteer pumpkin plants look very happy.

Garden Update 11

I was going to  brag about multi-tasking and being all efficient but every time I try to multi-task I remind myself of my friend who speaks five languages but none of them well. Also I'm not sure I could claim correcting my hair color as my task.

Its odd, the longer your body has to practice doing something the more it makes mistakes doing it. My hair for example, even with forty some years to get it right and it did get it right for decades,  has either developed some sort of follicular Alzheimer's or its just mean and lazy. It all together forgets  or "forgets" depending on how I am feeling about it - that I have dark hair and tries to sneak in these really horrible, clearly wrong light hairs. I tried to claim these were highlights but yeah, really? not so much. I have to step away from my work from time to time to do its. It's hard being in management.

I have good garden news. I have tomatoes! And not just tomatoes, I have a very nearly ripe tomato. A very nearly ripe  tomato - I know, you're saying a tomato Call me when you have an actual ripe tomato, better yet, Shut up and call me when you have plural ripeness.

Well. You shut up. I have some  not as nearly ripe too and my the time you read this I may have three ripe tomatoes. They are 4th of July tomatoes are are supposed to be the earliest ripening of all the tomatoes. I thought they were bigger fruits but I'll live with them because ripe is ripe. They aren't cherry tomatoes by any means more like maybe small plums or little peaches.

 In the experimental garden the Carolina Golds two of the many are getting large and will soon be gold, in the traditional garden there are many, many, many  fetal baby tomatoes and on one plant  that I couldn't get close enough to check what kind it was, has two huge examples and they are nowhere near ready to go. I do have two plants that haven't produced anything. I am hopeing it is because they are going to produce big enormous fruits and they need the time to gather their strength for  the huge things to come.

The peppers are doing nothing as per usual with peppers in my gardens. The experimental pepper has started to grow up and out  and put on weight but it is also doing nothing -  So I gather everything is okay. The green beans are beaning along but I have run across several that are yellow and empty - I don't know what causes this but I know its not a sign of good things to come. The beans near the tomatoes are getting an odd haze on the leaves but on the other side of the path, away from the tomatoes,  the other beans have new blooms and are covered with baby beanlings. I bought more freezer bags in hopes of having lots of beans to freeze. I am also thinking of planting more bean seeds.

Do tomatoes freeze?

My flowers are making me sad.

I looked at pictures from last year and they were luxurious and they did not make me sad. This year I'm having to hustle out and buy patches. Not luxurious. I bought some daisies to fill in for the front plantings and lunch today I'm going to go to the farmers market and see if they have anything that will mesh with the plantings on the deck. I must have bought the wrong variety this year and the accidentally bought the right kind last year . Duh.  Luck of the draw.

Sadly, bad draw this year.  The seed flowers I planted last winter are perking along, well, at least the not- Queen - Anne's-Lace are perking along, quite frankly they are at a raging boil, the other kinds are more at a low simmer- growing, yes,  and they have lovely foliage's but not really doing anything - which is fine, I'm not complaining about growth and development, that's cool, we like  that sort of thing but we also like flowers. Flowers are our friends.

I would like to see more of my friends or really, I would like to stop buying my friends and start developing them naturally. I was a GDI for a reason and that was primarily because I thought buying my friends was the wrong way to nirvana. Humph.

 My front steps do looking great - wild with multiple textures and layers - which is a major landscaping score and that's super and all but would it kill  the flowers to bloom? I mean would it be problematic for the flowers to be floral? I have two different kinds of poppies would it be so difficult for them to, I don't know BLOOM aren't poppies famous for their blooms? I planted a lot of a couple of different vining plants. Do you know how many are actively vining? One! I have one vine!

 You know when the whole mess will bloom?  When I'm not here to enjoy them, while I'm on vacation! They are going to bloom like mofos and then promptly die in time for me to get home.

Last years flowers bloomed wildly  and spectacularly until November. I didn't have to buy fill ins, I didn't have to do a lot of fertilizing, I never had to tie them up and they bloomed all season. The only thing I did for them was being diligent about deadheading.

Garden Update 9, 2010

We have  tiny produce! And for once, we don't do have limited pictures of the tiny produce and aren't they are adorable!

Thus far I have four or five perfect little tomato-ettes! Not all the plants are producing and they don't all even have blooms yet, but everyone is tall and green and strong - and they got this way over night, I wish I had paid more attention the day before because two of the plants are all ready very disobediently climbing and reaching outside their cages and this is not allowed. I am not the tomato plant dom I thought I was turning into. Clearly, someone who is not me needs to be disciplined with stakes and garden tape.

The peppers, also not pictured individually are growing and developing. No baby peppers yet but we do have blooms and that is making me hopeful and getting my hopes up. It would be better for me just to avert my eyes until say, July if I really expect to see anything. Peppers are a long haul plant.

The green beans are doing well for such small plants! They are just itty and they are going gang busters. I am learning something though,  I did some veggie reading and I saw some reference to some growers experience that is it is not a good idea to grow beans with tomatoes and I think they are right. My beans grown away from the tomatoes are doing very well, my beans growing with the tomatoes are not doing very much at all. I thought it was an old farmers tale and it turns out its true. The source didn't know why the plants don't do well when grown together but they really don't. It does not seem to be a shade thing because the same plants loom over the beans that grow well, I think it has something to do with whatever the tomatoes pump into the soil. I think its a way to keep the competition down. It's working.

My Experimental tomato has its own tiny offspring and is growing along at the same rate as its in-ground cousins.That experiment is succeeding, the Experimental pepper is not being successful, I even moved it from the sun to shadier location hoping that this would kick start it but thus far I don't see any change. I have noticed that it has grown more leaves but the other peppers have grown inches and  blooms and this little guy is static.

The seed flowers are finally behaving like growing things! My not-Queen Anne's Lace is looking very much like NQA, except its not blooming yet and doesn't seem as butch as a real QAL - because it's not QA. Anyway, its growing and its tall and sways. There are two others that are making steps into the right direction but so far they have only produced pretty leaves. I'm pretty, I'm good with this.

The raspberry plants are continuing to be stand out performers. Oh! and I forgot! I have volunteers! and they may be volunteer pumpkins left over from last years jack-o-lantern! I don't believe that the market fruits are actually fertile and it in all likelihood will not produce its own young, but wouldn't that be kewl? And if nothing else I'll get a nice vine. and if it wants, it can climb up the little fence around the deck. Score!

Rain drops on roses

It finally stopped raining and my rain barrel is weeping, earlier, while it was still raining it was vomiting so progress has been made but I think I need a rain barrel for my rain barrel. I think during hurricane season it may be over matched.

I guess if were really to rain hard for a long period as it is want to do during a hurricane, I might open the spigot at the bottom and let it run out. If was over matched by four inches of rain over a couple of days I think that twice that in a hours might prove its undoing. I will have to investigate this.

Speaking of the rain. I'm not sure I mentioned it : It rained for two days. It stopped. Since it was pouring for days I didn't have chance to do my daily flower deadheading. I do it twice a day because its addictive. Anyway, I was not able to do it and when  I finally was able to go outside to check the flowers I was appalled! they looked awful and it wasn't just because they had been rained on for hours. They were all half dead from being old! I never let a bloom get old. It starts to sag or get limp or gawd forbid , fade and it is out-of-there in a hurry.

They looked awful. A mass of limp, faded, wilted socks. They were  really pissed at me. I popped out there for a quick look see and I ended up spending forty-five minutes removing blooms and tying up  limp stems. Everywhere I went were more dead blooms! I felt like a bad plant person, I mean I walked Dogger in the driving rain and yet I was too precious to go out and tend to my other living things? Am I a specisist? If you don't have a heartbeat when the going gets rough you're on your own? A little rain gets in the way of providing care? No wonder my hydrangea spent last summer on strike!

Bad, bad Diana. On the upside the Experimental Garden looks good. The pepper looks a little taller than it was and the tomato absolutely looks better. I hope this is not their way of saying that what they would like me to water them even more than I do now - I already water them a lot and I don't want to hear that they need to be watered more. If I was really on the ball, I would use this heavy rain as a cue to go ahead and dig its new home while the soil is soft and wet and easy to till.

My excuse now is that the plant is completely sodden and too heavy for me to move and the soil is so wet that it might not come out of the pot neatly and it might cause it trauma so I'll wait until um, later. What is not traumatized? My raspberry plants! They gave me three ripe berries today! Nummy! and many, many more to come. Yay!

Garden 2010 Update 8: The Return of Photoblogging!

Sometimes I appreciate my cat more than others. My cat needed to go so he used his box upstairs while I remained warm and dry. My dog needed to go so we walked around the block in the pouring rain and I became cold and wet. Anyway, thanks to the rain my rain barrel is full again as of yesterday and I am relieved of my twice daily watering duties until the ground dries out.

Speaking of my watering duties...

All in all doing well. I am going to have to spray it sooner than I had thought I was going to and that doesn't make me hugely happy but so far the damage is minimal and localized and may have been the calling card of some transient evil doer.

The first is the aptly named 4th of July variety of tomato as its supposed to produce by July 4th. the second shot is just representative tomato growing and developing. All the tomatoes are about the same height and weight except for the Experimental Garden tomato, its about half the height and weight of the others. This is totally against my original theory that  despite the limits of the container  that all the sunlight would make the plant healthier and stronger than the same plants in the garden with less sunlight.

You can't really tell but both plants are scraggly and small.

Speaking of the not scraggly and small other plants...

True, they aren't as butch as the tomatoes but peppers do things on their own maddening schedule. I am pleased that the smallest plant is growing and I really thought that it would have not made it this long. The other, other plants on the other hand are on a very pleasing schedule.

some of those green things are green beans

Yay for the green beans! And here, a family picture. Soon to be covered with beans!

Speaking of happy, growing, productive things. My raspberry plants are going gangbusters!

There was even a ripe-ish one over the weekend but a bird got it before I did. Bastard bird.

My other little friends, my flowers are doing well too. The flowers I bought are flowering along and growing and getting taller. My little seeds are also growing and getting stronger but they are really flowering yet.

The tall greens are baby plants. I'm not sure what kind of flower they are going to turn into but they are pretty even without blooms. Speaking of blooms, my hydrangea didn't bother blooming at all last summer but this year it has had a change of heart.

Okay. Speaking of old things that are new again...

Introducing my new old chaise!!

Garden Update 7

As ya'll are my wittnessi : I am through planting*

* I reserve the right to replace dead plants. If something dies I will put a new plant in. One out one in. I don't think that's unreasonable. I also promise not to kill anything I decide I don't like anymore. That would be cheating.

I thought I was done. I had all my tomatoes and peppers and beans and flowers in the ground and all was right in the world. And then I remembered marigolds. You can't plant vegetables without marigolds. Its a rule. The plant changes the chemistry in the soil and renders it unsuitable for some grubs and certain fungi and rabbits don't like them. There are no rabbits in my neighborhood. Better to be safe than sorry.

 We have growth but we don't have photos. It took me 45 minutes to figure that out. It may be time to take Mr. Computer back to the computer store and have them do whatever it is that computer guys at computer stores do to computers to make them do stuff like upload images.

The plants are getting taller. Not fuller but taller, one of the tomatoes is getting a little leggy but it might be the variety so I'm not worrying yet, the peppers are as always lagged but the pepper I thought was going to be the runt of the litter has shown some improvement and seems to be gaining  slowly on the others. The Experimental Garden despite getting 23 hours of sun a day doesn't seem to be showing super growth as a result, in fact I think they are showing less growth than the plants in the less sunny garden - however, the EG were not planted until a week or so after the other plants and they might just be behind for that reason. I was really expecting a great deal more from them though and I feel less bad about the amount of sunlight the other garden gets - which is not enough but obviously, but not not enough to be lethal.

The beans are the real superstars in the garden being the first plants to begin making fruits! I have a multitude of teeny, tiny green beans! Yay!

The flowers in the front have gotten taller and prettier and I'm religious about dead heading them and I've fertilized and poisoned and slug -B-goned them. The plants I raised from seeds are still with us but still too young to make flowers. My honeysuckles are doing well, to be honest, two of the three or doing well, one is even flowering while the other just seems to be getting taller. Plant 3 doesn't seem to making any strides at all. In case one or more ultimately fails, I did make a cutting of a Japanese honeysuckle plant I found along Dogger and my walk today, to set on the bench and probably die because I don't know how to raise cuttings.

 I'm going to use it as a threat to make plant three get in line Get it together #3 or I'll bring Cutty in off the bench and you know whats going to happen to you #3 once Cutty is in the line up? That's right, you'll be benched or worse! What? you don't verbally assualt your plants? Really?

Work is good for you

Baby Kitty is street legal! Yay! And he was such a brave baby kitty too. The clinic was held outside and we had to literally  wade through pit-bulls just to get signed in. And dachshunds, there were dachshunds every where under foot.  The barking and yapping alone would have been enough to freak a lesser kitty out but  not Baby Kitty, he was a total kitty rock star.

And then I went to the city dirt store and  shoveled dirt pant, pant and  then I came home and filled my planters pant, pant and then I went with Alphagal and Tiny E to the mall to find new glasses. It was way fun and thanks to Alphagals excellent direction and taste, I ended up with some rocking frames - think Buddy Holly meets Tina Fey. Without Alphagal I would have ended up looking like Harry Potters' older, deranged cousin. They still sell HP glasses and yes, they look good on me. Good in a "Hi. I'm 12" way but still, I can wear round frames. Perhaps as sunglasses... That might be kind of cool, I might have to check out those Internet glasses places and see what I could get. Hmmm.

After the  fun break, it was back to work. I was afraid that I was going to run out of plants (two flats) before I ran out of planters (4)  but instead I wound up with more flowers than planters. I had to get creative with my left overs but now the front of my house is gorgeous  and it even smells good.

*taken through my window

When I was planting my flowers I also got started on my Experimental Garden. I want to see if tomatoes and peppers will grow better and be more productive if they are grown in the much more intense sunlight on the side of the house. I think I all ready know the outcome here but I want to see for sure. I planted one tomato and one pepper in containers - I think this is going to effect my results and not in a positive way but I'm not prepared to tear up that area because my neighbors take care of it and have to look at it all the time. I see it only when I have to and I've ignored it for the last eight years. My challenge is going to be to remember to water the plants. I could in theory hook up a franken hose to the side yard but the experiment would have to be wildly succsessful before I took that step.

Saturday after I finished everything else, I called a furniture reupholster I found online who as it turns out has his shop blocks from my house and spoke with him about the chaise. He said as soon as I get it to give him a call and he'll come look at it.  He lives so close I regularly walk Dogger past his place. I didn't know he had a business there.

And then it was Sunday and it was time to pick up my $20 chaise!  For a  $20 investment I can totally afford to have it re-covered and fixed up. I had looked at spending $300-$400 of my tax return to get a new chair so I am willing to go to at least $250-$300 to get this chair taken care of. Can they make them longer?

*object is a lot more orange than it appears.

Ms. Greenjeans in da house!

It was not looking like a good week. The satellite guy didn't show up, the plumber didn't show up, the plants didn't show up. Not a good time.

But then the plants showed up!

Aren't they they cutest things ever?

They of course arrived in the middle of a rain storm. Perfect timing, I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get them into the ground until the weekend. In actually, according to the instructions, that would have been just fine for the plants and is in fact advisable but I wasn't in the mood gratification that was less than immediate

Clearly, I have a lot of room left for more goodies. I'm in the market for  Carolina Gold tomatoes and more peppers. I wish peppers matured faster though that would be the one pepper draw back and as previously stated, there will be no broccoli this season. I have a lot of room  left though and maybe I'll go full out experimental and go with something that needs more room to grow. Hmmm, for example, Alphagal is growing watermelons...

Another thing that helped take the sting out of this bad week was Administrative Professional's Day or Take Your Secretary to Lunch Day. I got an expensive lunch from the boss and plant from our group

Yes, its that big. They got me one last year too. And while we are admiring the flowers in the front yard let us admire my raspberry plants. The little white button looking things are flowers. Lots of flowers.

More front yard updates:

the tall plant in this image is a green bean plant that was too viable to be

throw away but there wasn't room for in the back. I'm afraid he's going to

have to be moved again before too long.

So, it hasn't been a good week service -wise but my plants seem happy.

Forgiveness

I am officially out of the dog house with myself! Yay! I know you were deeply involved with the ongoing soap opera that is my relationship with myself. I rode my bike twice I walked the dog three times, I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen and I vacuumed the living room. I am so totally proud of myself and I can officially start speaking to myself again.  It sucks when I argue with myself. I hate it when I fight.

Today my honeysuckle arrived! Wheee! That is very good the unwhee is that I ordered them like yesterday and I ordered my vegetable plants last winter and they still haven't arrived. I'm not hugely worried. Much. But I did get my honeysuckle in the ground.

I have pictures of me getting the plants out of their box and me putting my home made re-purposed trellis cum little fence things set up and pictures of me getting my plants in the ground and pictures of  me watering the plants but for some reason the server rejected them. I think because they were so boring and stupid. I mean who cares!? really about me putting these little plants in the ground? They were very cute pictures, I mean little things are cute and my plants are little and so they are cute. I think.  I mean other than me, because I care very much about my little plants and I was just thrilled to find that the soil was actually really pretty good , which should not have been a surprise because the ivy has always been really healthy and lush.

Of course I had to dig that lush, healthy mother fu***cker up. And it was okayish about it, kind of, I mean it's going to kill me in my sleep but that's okay. I can mow it up anytime I want to and I have thumbs.

Growing

The renters had another baby. A 7.6 lb boy. I thought she was pregnant but its so rude to ask. So now they have six children in a space the size of my living room, the gossip I heard was that Ms. Renter was less than thrilled to find herself pregnant again, Margaret Singer weeps. If you do not want to fall pregnant again there is a little thing the rest of us call BIRTH CONTROL. If your scuzzbag husband doesn't like it he doesn't  even have to know.   The next time he annoys me, I think I'll call the cops. Gawd knows she could use the time away from him.

I was a bad girl today. I didn't take my evening bike ride again, I didn't ride last night either but at least last night I was doing house work and I do believe that it is considered aerobic enough to make up for it. Tonight however, I didn't ride because I was planting the remaining seedlings. I did have to go back and forth to the basement a couple of times and I lifted up some very heavy planters so I think I go some exercise but not enough.

 I  decided to just suck it up and plant the seedlings because they looked kind of sad just sitting on the deck and the nurseries don't drain and I was afraid they were turning into mosquito hatcheries. So now they are in the permanent homes but as always,s I have a serious lack of faith problem with them. I had thought by now they would be much further along than they are, but maybe now that they have more room and dirt they might be able to grow more. They were growing in their nurseries because  I saw their little roots trying to break free of their baby beds so at least I know they are marginally healthy  Next weekend I'm going to go to the dirt store and get more dirt and then get some bedding plants and pull out my big planters and really get my flowers on.

Bad Girl

I was a bad, bad girl today. Bad . I ate at McDonald's for the first time in a while and I saw on the french fry wrapper that they list the calorie count. Do you have any idea how many calories there are in an order of small fries?

A butt load and adding insult to injury? My happy meal toy sucked - It started out cool because it was a dragon and I thought Wow. A dragon. This could be cool but then it didn't light up or talk  or anything and the wings kept falling off! What kind of happy meal toy is that?! I think that maybe once upon a time it might have at least made noise, it was hard to tell from the picture if the little lines were supposed to represent light or sound but it didn't do either and I was sad.

And fat.

Sad and fat. The good news is that the small burger comes in at under 80 calories so at least I didn't feel bad about that part of my lunch.

And then I went home. Well, several hours later, I went home and when I got there I was faced with a new Burpee catalog. Evil, evil, evil. Then I was bad again. I was looking through the catalog and looking at all the absolutely gorgeous flowers including one Chomley Farran I want so bad! I mean really, really want I saw it in last years catalogue and it was so pretty and there it is again and I can buy plants inside of seeds so there is the instant gratification aspect that I really, really respond to and I'm thinking about ordering them even though they are relatively expensive for flowers.

So I decided that I would  not order the flowers  now but they are on my wish list. I will order them because I can rationalize this because they are perennials. Okay, I was not bad yet and then I looked through the rest of the catalogue and I found page 68.

Major Wheeler! A bright red honeysuckle! Honeysuckle that I paid for! I didn't have to steal it or anything! So, really Good Girl! But I had to pay for it, so actually Bad Girl and I bought three of them. But they're perennials! They'll come back! And they're so pretty and red and everything else in the back yard is so green, I mean there are about 256 different shades of green back there and these will just totally pop. So Yay. I have my honeysuckle.