Santa Talk.

The Experiment is moving along. It has now reached pornographic stage of development, food porn if you will. If I was really clever I would have arranged for a time lapse camera to keep an eye on it for me, I could hook it up to the Internet and instead of a  wildly successful puppy cam I could have a even more wildly successful shroom cam! It really seems to change hourly and every day its completely different. It is much more interesting on a day to day basis than a watermelon and I thought watermelons were fairly breath taking,  growing and development-wise.

Its too bad that the Experiment is not something I eat, I would enjoy growing another one, m maybe over the summer when the basement is humid as all hell and well warm enough . Maybe I can be a fungi foster parent? Who here likes mushrooms?

I decided that the booklet that came with the kit is not providing the constant reassurance and 24-hour-handholding that I require, so I went online to see what information was out there. It turns out, a lot and there is a lot of information that is not in my booklet, for instance, I need to be on the look-out for "gills" on the mushroom head. My booklet wants me to be mellow and chill and keep up my misting schedule and just let things be. I don't like to let things be. I want to know every minute of every day that the Experiment is progressing within normal parameters and it is not actually a block of styrofoam with a skin problem.

My research showed me that the Experiment is fineish, its not ready to be harvested and won't  beby Thanksgiving, which was not in the plan anyway, but would have been nice, and the block doesn't have enough brownness, which I think speaks to how young it is, I'm guessing-  but it looks like a mid- December hand off is very doable. I am hopeing however for an early December drop date because I am not looking forward to having to bring it with me in the car if I go away for the weekend. Its like having a very delicate, very young pet that requires my almost but not quite constant attention all day. I could not leave it alone for the weekend under any circumstances. I have enough pets.

 In the interest of his - and it is a boy all right, delicate nature, I moved it from point A to point B  to now Point C because I think that the indirect light it was in may have been too indirectly direct. I noticed that its dark side seems more successful than the light side. If the dark really suits it, I may move it to the back of the basement where the light is very, very indirect and where due to the proximity to the water heater, there might be more of desirable humidity for it. We can't have him catching a chill.

Finders Keepers

I found something I was looking for and I lost something I had gotten used to looking at.

As of Saturday,  the garden is done. I ripped out the beans and took down the trellis and laid the hoses out to dry. I also took the timers in and removed their batteries. Next step is to till the garden up and plant the winter cover. I'll do that next weekend when I'm not touring downtown Churches, attending another Occupy rally and going to the opening weekend of the state fair. I think I'm going to have to set an alarm or lower my expectations.

This weekend while I was taking down the beans I managed to find enough still on the vine to eat at dinner, and they were lovely, I realized I I haven't eaten anything from the vine since I came back from vacation and discovered the mother load and got involved with freezing. The  two remaining watermelon are still in situ and seem to be growing. I don't really know what one does with watermelon in October but I'm holding out hope jack-o-melon for Halloween. How about some lovely watermelon borsch?!

I found something too,  but not in the garden. When I came to see this house the very first time, the first thing I noticed were the very pretty curtains in the windows, that I later learned were sheers,  I think they sold me on the house. When I bought the house it was decided that the sheers while decorative, needed to be laundered. Then they disappeared.

I tried to recover from the lose by buying new sheers. New cheap sheers. New cheap sheers that were too short because somebody there did not want me to have full sized sheers. It wasn't really a problem for the first few years because I had short curtains, it would have looked weird with sheers that went to the floor. It would have looked like my windows' slips were showing and that would have looked even more stupid than the long drapes/short sheers look I had for the last few years.

I do think that there was a reason I never settled on sheers I really liked, it was because the One True Sheers were close by, waiting for the moment I would finally find them in the corner of a closet in the bottom of a box under another box. I would look like less of on idiot if the box they were in didn't plainly say "sheers" on the side - in my defence, there was an air pocket between the bottom of the top box and the bottom of the sheers box and I could have easily stuck my hand in and not felt the sheers. Multiple times.

Now all the windows have sheers, very nice sheers, thick, embroidered sheers that I could never afford if I saw them at the store, and these are not the kind you pick up at the dollar store -  and I have enough left over sheers that the single windows are probably going to get two panels each, like the big windows. Very lux. And I think they will improve my forty-year-old windows R value. I'm thinking if I layer them I might not have to wear a hat indoors this year!

It also makes me think that I'm going to rethink the roman shade idea for the downstairs bedroom. I think now I am warming up to getting curtains in there instead, I mean, I have the sheers, I might has well make use of them.

How to blanche green beans

How to get more mileage out of your green beans or How To Store Green Beans

1. Get a lot of green beans. I like to start by planting some seeds and hopeing for the best.

2. Harvest the green beans.

3. Collect the green beans and place them in a pretty bowl.

4. Prepare the green beans. I like to rinse them off and snap the ends off and split them in two. This takes a long time, almost as long as waiting for them to grow. It reminds one why people invested in servants back in the day. It also reminded me to ask Santa for one of those those spongy floor mats they sell at Bed Bath and Beyond . After standing there snapping each indiuval bean I decided that one-bean-at-a-time was getting really tedious and that I should try to  speed this up a bit. I introduced a knife and a cutting board to the equation and made to cut the ends off of more than one bean at a time - A truley revolutionary idea.  I soon discovered that this would be a labor saving miracle if I had beans of uniform length, which I did not. My beans aren't those uniform length bean bots they produce at factory farms, no my beans are all natural free form beans and they are allowed to grow like they want as long or short as they want. Damn it.

Back to hand snapped beans.

Done,

 Now you take your beans and add them to a boiling pot of water. FOR THREE MINUTES.

After they sit in the boiling water for THREE MINUTES, remove them from the heat and put the beans in a bowl of ICE WATER for THREE MINUTES

After the THREE MINUTES remove the beans from the ice bath and  freeze. You have now successfully blanched your green beans. Go you.

Winding Down

I think my  office TV might be on its way out, the tube is about out of steam.  I'm <i>pretty</i> sure that commercial tomaoto sauce is not <i>green</i>. I also don't think that there is a lot of violet and neon green in the  Italian countryside, not to say that they are too tasteful for violet and neon green, I just don't think that the sky is neon green there or the trees violet

. Clearly, I am going to have to fix this situation, I have a TV upstairs I'm not using because the satellite people are being obstinate about fixing the broken cable that snapped during the storm last April. They seem to be convinced that all I need to do is mess with the remote adequately and magically my service upstairs will be returned to normal. I tell them the cable is <i>snapped</i>,  I can see it outside my window but they persevere in the notion that they do not have to send a technician out and that whatever is wrong is wrong because I pressed the wrong button on the remote. Yes, I pressed the TORNADO button on accident. Dickbags.

Speaking of things that are green, I'm pretty sure that the beans are done. I didn't harvest at all Sunday, and on Monday when I went out,  instead of another day of Green Bean Christmas, I scored <i>eight</i>. Eight green beans is what I was "harvesting" back before I went on vacation, before I experienced Green Bean Christmas Season. This weekend I am going to start the process of pulling the plants up and out, It is going to be arduous but I also need to get the garden tilled before I plant the over wintering ground cover in and I can't do that before the beans are gone.

It makes me sad to think about it. The plants were so green and vigorous this summer but now they are aging badly. They were Jen Garner but now the have morphed into Lindsey Lohan. I think I'm going to just shred the vines up and drop the leaves back in the garden, they seem to rot away really neatly and I'm sure add lovely plant material back into the soil.

It makes me a little sad that the bag of beans I have in the refrigerator is the last batch for this year. I did try some of the frozen ones for  Sunday dinner and they were really nice, I of course, steamed them too long but other than that, they were tasty. And by the by, they <i>do</i> taste different that the frozen factory bags o'beans you buy in the store. Humph.

The watermelons are  still soldering on but I'm not sure how long they are going to last either. I have two left and every day I snap off flowers and bean melons to help the plants focus whatever energy they have left on the two adolescent melons. I've noticed the vines are getting a little peaky and that can't be good for the fruits. The weather is rapidly cooling off as well and I don't think that melons are really excited about seeing the leaves change. They might be harvested sooner than I had planned, if so I'm voting they become ice cream.

How to make Watermelon BBQ Sauce

First, find a recipe , one that isn't this one <i>unless</i> prefer sweet, ultra mild BBQ sauce that without intersession would double nicely as a marinade or an aperitif. Otherwise, do more research on common recipes and see about adding watermelon to them.

Anyway. Second, get a watermelon, preferably a big one.

And then start chopping and seeding <i>6 pounds of watermelon</i> . I'm thinking now that it would be smarter to pulp the watermelon prior to putting on the heat, I believe that it would help it cook down more efficiently and make for a better sauce.

I have no idea if this is 6 pounds but the pot seemed to weigh less than a healthy full term newborn and about half of my cat. By this scientific method, I say 6 pounds. Little known fact, as raw watermelon cooks, it smells like cookie dough.

Its hard to get a weight of a watermelon because the weight includes the rind. The rind is heavy. I do not have a scale in the house and  even if I had a kitchen scale, your average kitchen scale isn't set up for pounds of food.

Next. Cook that watermelon for <i>hours</i>. 2-3 Hours on low. At that point, add the rest of the ingredients ( tomato paste, onion powder, garlic powder, brown sugar, dry sherry, lemon juice and liquid smoke). Taste it, panic  because it <i>still</i> tastes like sugar water and add about three tablespoons of cumin and three tablespoons of red pepper flakes. If that is too much spice, add some molasses, if <i>still</i> too mild, add more until you get what you want.

Uncover and cook on medium for an additional three hours. It is messy.

Add corn starch until mixture morphs from a marinade to a sauce. Remove from heat and cool,

Separate into smaller containers and freeze.

Its not a <i>bad</i> sauce. It has an  unoffensive, ultra mild taste that might appeal to a mid western sensibility. I added dried red peppers to it and more garlic and onion powder. I should have added cumin and if I had pepper flakes I would have made liberal use of them. Its a nice sauce, its not going to burn your mouth or take away from the taste of the meat, I found it was very nice in stir fry and was surprisingly good with fish. Send me your snail mail addy and I'll send you some sauce.

Up and Out

<i>Sigh</i>. I pulled out the last pepper plant and blanched and froze the last of the peppers.  I've been watching the peppers and every day and  I'm thinking <i>Still? You're still here? Damn. Aren't you tried of all this?</i> I am.

I'm not at all ambivalent about pulling the plants out, in fact, I'm <I>happy</i> about it. I get a thrill every time I yank another one out by the roots. I was <i>giddy</i> when I was finally able to get rid of the tomato plants.

 I really want to pull up the hoses and the weed barrier and put in the winter cover. The green beans are slowing the whole thing down, but I'm not complaining - they are themselves begin to age out and I think they  have about another week to ten days of productivity before its time for them to go too. Ready or not. I'm running out of space in the freezer. The watermelons are down to two small melons in the yard and one big one in my refrigerator. I've already decided that the smallest, least viable melon is going to grow up to be a pumpkin.

It can escape this fate by <i>growing</i> over the next month but since it hasn't grown applicably in the last few weeks, and a <i>good</i> watermelon grows like crazy, that this guy is going to make a great smallish pumpkin.  <i>Other</i> watermelon might just end up getting eaten, possibly by the people at work if I decide they deserve it. A lot of them suck and I'm not sure I want to waste a perfectly good melon on their suckiness.  I might use the rind for a pumpkin too.

This should not be too hard. The rinds are thick but not too think to be manipulated and I'm pretty sure I can scoop out the meat without damaging the rind.  It turns out I am not being particularly original here, "green" Pumpkins, clearly I am not the first person to have this thought.

My options are  make the two remaining unassigned melons into pumpkins or learn to enjoy watermelon rid <i>pickles</i>, I've found many, many, many recipes for it. Good to know. I still think that watermelon pumpkins sound like a <i>lot</i> more fun.

To do list

I did some coupon shopping this weekend - Not "extreme" coupon shopping because I only bought what I would eat and the only reason I bought <i>four cans of soup</i>  and <i>two boxes of protean bars</i> was that my coupons <i>demanded that I do so</i> , I was only following orders.

I only got soup flavors I know I like and I did not clear the shelves. I am not a hoarder or greedy. Also, I don't have the storage. I would have bought a couple of very sexy dollar off frozen pizzas but my freezer is sadly, full of green beans and meat loaves. I have too much healthy food  on standby to store unhealthy pizzas. Even thin crust pizzas, the healthy alternative.

I also bought single bags of dog and cat food as well as a single box of diet dog cookies. I saved so much I was bale to pick up a brand new, deeply discounted, food processor. A <i>small</i> food processor, I didn't get crazy. I did decide to replace a very old, grungy processor that didn't like me very much. Ha.

In addition I ended the season for the coleus. It was time, they <i>could</i> have hung on a little longer but they were getting leggy and I, frankly, am getting a little tired of the early morning watering routine. I'm also very into getting this work done before it gets cold and I have to do everything in a sloppy rush. After I got rid of the plants I got really crazy and hosed off the out door furniture and put it in the basement.

Speaking of watering and putting things away, I decided that I am very tired of re-inventing the wheel every spring with the drip hoses. Every year I sweat and curse and work <i>really</i> hard to get the hoses right and it takes a lot of time and effort to re-create whatever I had last year. I <i>know</i> it worked last year and now in the spring I can't remember how I did it <i>last</i> year

This fall, I took pictures of what it looked like. I didn't do proper forensic shots of it but I think I got enough to remind myself of what it should look like next spring. I even drew myself a little map of where the hoses went and where they connected to each other. I still have a pepper plant out there with <i>a</i> pepper growing and of course the beans are still producing, albeit less and less but there are still many baby beans plugging along. I can't take out the rest of the hose system yet. My plan is to hose off the hose I took out and then let it dry out and then bundle it up with  an ID tag and map of where it went. I would like to do this with all the hoses and I would like to do it <i>soon</i>.

When I do get the plants out and the hoses up, I'm going to till the garden and get in some peas and grasses for the winter. This year I won't make the same mistake and just let it grow and grow until I can't till it under.

Oh! Speaking of joy from the garden! I <i>finally</i> scored Liquid Smoke! I can make the BBQ sauce! Woo! I'm going to leave watermelon in the garden until next weekend and that will leave two small melons to find other fun stuff to do with.

Smoke does not get in my eyes.

I have not given up the liquid smoke fight. I looked online for it and  while it is <i>there</i> and cheap, the shipping charges render it obscenely over priced - which at this point is saying a lot because I would spend just about as much as any one asked at this point. It just feels like I've come so far, I've found the actual dry sherry, I  have a bag of brown sugar, I bought the tomato paste and I have this huge melon coming ripe any day now. I mean, once you've agreed to buy an entire bottle of wine for a recipe, you're in too far to substitute ew! <i>molasses</i> . I mean, really and if it was only say, a quarter teaspoon or even a teaspoon I wouldn't sweat it but its <i>two tablespoons!</i> that's like a huge amount in tablespoons measurement. There was just a single tablespoon of honey in my ice cream and that is <i>all</i> you can taste.

I don't want to mess with the recipe until <i>after</i> I discover the liquid smoke is a <i>nothing</i> flavoring. And? did you know how they make liquid smoke? It is water that was held over smoke and got smokified. Period, that is <i>all</i> it is. I imagine that I <i>could</i> make it myself...  But isn't that a lot of trouble? and I am <i>not</i> a fan of open flame. On the upside, I <i>do</i> have some twigs and branches that would make lovely smoke if burned. The DIYness of this idea appeals to me.

But how do you keep the water near enough to the smoke to get smoky without causing the water to evaporate in the heat <i>or</i> burning through whatever the water was in? You couldn't very well use a standard pot because their wouldn't be direct contact with the smoke and  you couldn't put it in say, a cloth bag because the water would leak out , perhaps even putting the fire out or burst into flames itself- too much contact. Is there such thing as a water-tight, flame-proof mesh bag?

Perhaps this is what we <i>buy</i> liquid smoke. And if this is the case, <i>why</i> can't I buy it at the store now? Is there a liquid smoke season? Is it like cranberries or fancy extracts? Things that only appear on shelves at a certain time for a certain time? Do we not BBQ year round? What is the Super Bowl without some good BBQ?  I think its a year-round food preparation method and isn't this prime tailgating season?  Why am I being denied my basic right to BBQ! I blame the vinegar based BBQ culture here. Losers.

Chef Me

Well, <i>that</i> was frustrating. I've gone to two different Kroger's and a Walmart and I have not found Liquid Smoke! I couldn't get away from it this summer when I was hunting for almond extract - Now? <i>everywhere</i> And forty-five different varieties of  vanilla, even at Wally World. On the upside, I <i>did</i> find the dry sherry I was looking for. The melon isn't going to be in the garden forever and once its ready to go I want to be able to <i>go</i> with the sauce. I'm not sure the grocery industry is working with me on this.

Speaking of things to do with watermelon. What did you cook this weekend? I made <i>two different kinds of watermelon ice cream</i>. I win.

 Four cups of watermelon, seeded and mixed with a cup of sugar, pinch salt and lemon juice.

 Mixed with heavy cream and blender-ed.

Just before freezing.

Frozen. Perhaps too hard. I blame too much gelatin. Still, very tasty once you get to it.

The other recipe substituted lemon and honey for sugar and dispensed with the heavy cream and about half the gelatin. The consistency was better but it doesn't taste like watermelon. In the future when I make watermelon ice cream I'll use the ingredients in recipe #1 and the directions for recipe #2.

Garden Update 21 2011

We have garden update! I know you have been breathless with anticipation <i>How are the tomatoes? what about the peppers? How 'bout them watermelons? The beans? How are the beans?</i>

Well. The tomatoes <i>were</i> quite lovely, right up until they aged out and I pulled them out. I didn't feel bad about it, I was over them and their shaggy, tangled messiness.

Then

Now

I feel so much better now. So much tidier, well, so many fewer tomato plants. A lot of the peppers went away too, if the plant wasn't producing it was <i>plucked</i>. I decided it was <i>September</i> after all and the toms from my experience will hang on making  fruits for as long as you keep them in the ground <i>none of them</i> are going to ripen.  The peppers that are still busy but living on borrowed time - I have been more than happy with them but even their time is growing short. I think I have four peppers out there that have a future and once they come ripe, well,  its a garden, its not year round work.

The green beans however, <i>Wow!</i> Who knew? They just kind of plodded along all summer. I got a total of <i>two</i> meals out of them and I was beginning to wonder what the big deal was. And then I went on vacation. I came home to <i>all the beans</i>, and I picked them and like any good farmer, I "put them up". I thought the plants were kind of over, right up until I went for a casual pick on Sunday and came away with a boat load of beans. I decided that I should always wait awhile between harvests. Great I said, I'll pick again, say, Friday.

<i>Monday</i> I did a quick look see and came away with <i>another</i> load. I was very thorough. I wasn't going to poke around after work today, because well,  <I>how many could there be? I picked a l l of them all ready</i>, well I found <i>more</i> and there are lots and lots of baby beans out there maturing by the hour.

That is a gallon storage bag and oh, in a couple of days when I have filled it, I will blanch and freeze more beans for the winter. Speaking of eating what comes from the garden. How do <i>you</i> feel about watermelon by say, <i>October</i>?  Yeah, that's my problem. So. I went and looked for recipes that would utilize the melons that did not include the words <i>slushy,Margareta</i> or <i>salad</i> I wanted foods that I could store for the long haul. A challenge. I found recipes for sherbet, ice cream, <i>pie filling</i> and BBQ sauce. All of them look very doable and will let me celebrate my harvest all winter.

Grumble

I'm back and I hit the ground running.

The garden "before"

This is the garden "after"

I cleaned house. I came home and did a quick census of who was still productive and who was taking up space and when the dust cleared, literally, I was like a plant-ripping-out tornado, I was left with  three pepper plants, the green beans and a watermelon plant.

The productive plants were <i>very</i> productive and I was able to "put up" a lot of peppers and green beans.The watermelons were not ready to be harvested, but what am I going to do with all those watermelon anyway?

(clearly for display only, this little guy was DOA)

My franken sprinkler worked after all and my  policy of benign neglect, turned out to not be very negligent at all! You can hardly tell they suffered neglect at all, benign or otherwise. I should have started to neglect them months ago! The pumpkin vines died back but that had started before I left, the plants up the front stairs got leggy but their season is ending anyway, and I think they will be the next plants to get yanked. The impatience's  are still going strong.

I also put away all my stuff from the trip, did a mountain of laundry for the <i>dog</i>, took care of some residual laundry of mine from before the trip,  trimmed back all the shrubbery, got pictures made for the folks at work and cleaned out the car.

For those of you keeping track of the natural disasters that happened while I was gone, there was no real damage. I did lose the chimney topper but it fell into the yard - where it did murder a watermelon! but otherwise, everything was fine. I had been hopeing score a good case of food poisoning or flu to prevent my return to work, sadly I am healthy and its back to work I go.

The Family Watermelon

I harvested Mama melon over the weekend, so its just Dad and the kids left. They are all doing wellish.

Daddy watermelon. He might not <i>look</i> like a full grown melon but trust me, you would <i>not</i> want to run into <i>this</i> guy in a dark ally. Son is a <i>big</i> guy.

With Mama watermelon gone, big sis is the next largest. She's about the size of a junior soccer ball now.

This is baby brother melon. He's chortling along and gets bigger every day. Literally.

This is wee baby melon. I found this one the same day as baby brother melon. Wee baby does not seem to be growing at the same rate as baby brother or really at all any longer. I have serious doubts about wee baby melon. I had another melon get to about this size and then turn black. Think a happy thought for wee baby melon.

If you  saw the watermelon grow over the season and wondered if you had the room to grow them yourself, the answer is <i>maybe</i>.  Below is <i>one</i> plant. But keep in mind there are many, many varieties and not all end up this large, there are watermelons that can be grown in container gardens and others that grow watermelons in bushes. I'm going to test the soil next spring and see if it needs to be amended to grow fewer leaves and more fruit.

<i>note Big Daddy melon in upper left</i>

I planted three seedlings in the  main garden and they quickly out grew the space and spilled over the side but did not produce very well (one that died young, one that stopped growing, one that exploded, one that is not growing, and one that is healthy; the plants in the satellite garden have produced two healthy, ready for harvest, and  healthy one growing - fewer over all but stronger and healthier fruits) . I won't be growing them in the main garden next year. I will absolutely be growing watermelons again.

Garden Sadness

I went out to water this morning and was faced with this

To say I was a little horrified is to be putting it lightly. I had all ready said goodbye to the animals and turned on the alarm. I quickly yanked the fruit from the vine (sob!) and tore inside to refrigerate it. I left for work again and left hopeing that somehow the refrigeration would some how heal the melon.

Oddly, that did not work. I quickly got y work computer up and running and I went to my buddy Google and asked why my melon freaked out this was. And Google knew. It freaked out because my watermelon got too much water! Who knew! I think the deluge we got over the weekend was the culprit.

Later, I opened it to see if I could at least eat it. The first sad melon was small but edible. This one was larger but not.

(objects in frame appear pinker than real life)

I was saddened. The fruit was mostly white rind and was clearly not something I would want to eat. I shook off the disappointment and did what I do with all garden failures - Launched it over the fence. I can't get precious with what I grow. I don't cry over ruined tomatoes or woody beans - true, there are a lot more tomatoes and beans, so the few I have to launch really don't affect my harvest, while there are so few melons that everyone has to count. I still have two adults and an adolescent that seem viable, I can't tell much about the two babies.  They all need positive vibes.

Food Porm part 2

Boom chicka wah wah!

I have a lot of peppers. A Lot. I have frozen, I have refrigerated, I have on the vine. I have a lot of peppers and while its been satisfying  filling my freezer with them, I would also like to take advantage of eating them in the now too.  Enter pepper steak or as it was pepper fajita slices $4! for enough to feed me twice. And I used three peppers, two from the fridge and one from the garden.

Speaking of gifts from the garden, while I was sniffing around for a pepper steak recipe, I studied up on watermelon storage. It turns out that while I'm freezing to death this winter I can freeze to death with a belly full of fresh watermelon.



It was the kind of morning where its  only twenty after nine and you are all ready mentally fixing dinner and planning your escape. I made myself a a mental list of things I needed 1) To find a recipe, 2) pick up some red meat and 2) get rice. I should have made  the kind of list you hold in you hands and you read and use as a study guide not the kind of list you completely forget you had  mentally checked off in the first place - also something that happens, I understand, with paper lists but its the cheat sheet aspect, you had to think about the information to write it down.

I ended up making it with noodles - I know that it was supposed to be served with rice and the recipe I found online was very specific about that - but when I was at the grocery store at lunch and after I picked up the steak and approached the check out I said to myself What else do I need? and I said I need a coke! and away I went.

It was fine with the noodles.

Pre-Tripping

And so I'm bringing out stuff to take on vacation, counting out t-shirts, trying to learn weather divination to better decide if I should bring a sweater with me our sweater with me. If I bring only warm weather clothes it all but guarantees four days of forty-five degrees and gail force winds, as we have had in the last two years but if I come outfitted to climb K2, it will be ninety and stagnant the whole time. The only answer is to bring too much of everything. I can't be sure that I won't get invited to a last minute wedding, I should bring something dressy just in case.

(who am I kidding? people up there have full on Church weddings outfitted in  L.L Bean  flannel couture and professional grade, heavy duty sandles)

There is also the chance, every day that I might fall into a creek or the lake, or down an embankment - its a lifestyle choice Ive made and I'm comfortable with it,  and if you have to plan to change clothes at least twice a day every day, your available wardrobe needs to reflect that. But if its forty-five and gusty, I'll be doing less (I hope) creek invading and embankment falling. I don't have the wardrobe fir winter invading and falling.

And then there is shoes. I need my sneakers and I should probably think about the creek invading aspect of my lifestyle and just how much I do notlove walking around with wet sneakers, so that means a second pair of sneakers and then there is also the professional grade, heavy duty sandles and the regular duty sandles  - that I probably won't wear but if I don't bring them, I will so need them, as sneakers aren't really cute and not always appropriate and the heavy-duty professional grade sandles can be clunky so that means, lighter weight, cute sneakers as well,but at the same time, its vacation and hang other peoples fashion.

And speaking of vacations. The garden is not coming with me. Bummer, I know, I know, its mean to leave it there unprotected from the squirrels and no doubt producing like a son of a bitch - but the watermelon vines wouldn't fit in the back of the car and the tomato plants are too tall for the drive to see over and you know they would object to seat belts.

Out of sight not out of mind though. I am going to continue to take care of them. The main garden will be fine, the drip hose will drip on without me. The satellite garden on the other hand, this is a problem. I would just say "maybe it will rain, hopefully we'll get a tropical depression" and let it go, and that would be okay, except one of the new melons is there and I am not going to abandon a baby to "maybe it will rain, hopefully we'll get a tropical depression". I have to figure out a way to keep it alive.

My first thought was to splurge on a duel timer - because I thought they had such things. They might have last May but here in the depths of August - when we actually need to water our plants, they aren't on the shelves. Its the "duel" part that is a problem, one hose is no problem, and I all ready have one, I would like to water two areas at  two different times - it can't be that hard a problem and yet it is.

My  first idea was to just get a splitter and put one timer on one and one timer on the other - a great idea in theory but splitters aren't all that wide and timers are. I would have to buy more hoses and the more things you have Frankenstein-ed together, the more opportunity for leaks and I hate leaks. I like elegant and elegant means A) tidy B) less-is-more and C) not leaking . Leaking is untidy and umteen hoses is more.

I started to think about the front. The idea is as follows : use the front water, add a timer, and run hose or hose - i  from the front to the back behind the shed to culminate with a sprinkler that will water both the melons and the beans. I have a spigot looking for work, and where there is a spigot there is somewhere to plug in a timer. I have a timer all ready in storage and there is a  existing hose. I think what the plan is going to be is that I use the old timer, I have to find out if it still works after sitting in the basement for a year, but if it doesn't, a replacement wouldn't hurt my bottom line all that much and I know all ready the project would need at least one more hose - First I need to measure though and find out just how much hose I'm going to need ( the lack of an elegant design comes into play here), I'm pretty sure my existing hose isn't a super long variety and I'll need to do this before the Wally World Christmas fairies pull their  garden hoses off the shelf and replace them with garland and Christmas lights.

Cookin'

What a great weekend. No jobs! No projects! I didn't do anything I didn't feel like doing. It rained( thank you baby Jesus!)  so I didn't feel obligated to do anything sweaty outside. Fortunately for the people at work, I felt like doing laundry and taking a shower because otherwise, I watched TV and played in the garden and watched some more TV.

While I was in the garden I got some great news

A TWO! new baby watermelons!! So exciting! While I'm  bragging on my watermelons...

I think the experiment worked. They are all ready a lot larger than the first one ever got. I am so pleased with these guys. Who knew you could grow watermelons in your back yard? The Watermelon Board should do more to let people know this.

The rest of the garden is doing its thing, the peppers are doing fab

Total rock stars. The tomatoes are perking along, producing heroically despite the increased attacks from squirrels. Bastards.

The garden as a whole is being very productive, I've put up about a cup of sauce so far  from my Roma's and had two very good meals from my green beans.

 Family picture

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After spending so much time with food, I was hungry! Enter pork nee' boeuf en croute with garden fresh green beans and peach pastries.

Actually, it looks like I worked kind of alot. Time flys when you're having fun.