Random thoughts

Things I learned this morning,

Corn has very shallow roots ( i am sure a google search would have yielded that tidbit) and we live in a windy burb.  An since I do not have a square mile of corn planted, this makes difference.  My corn was leaning so we shored it up with composted material.

As tenacious as the squash plants are they are really rather fragile.. that is interesting...

My watermelon plants are flowering.

What I had hoped would be a crap load of cukes, ARE....JOY

That big bulbish (Bushism) thing I yanked out of my lettuce bed was a fennel bulb... and we are gonna eat it!

There are more beans in those bushes than i gave them credit for (again...dinner)

Husbands are great and you should save them for the truly yucky work, like turning the compost.

I am gonna be harvesting a TON of squash.

I have raspberries and I ate one!

One should not be too overzealous when weeding the strawberries, b/c those little runners are hiding in there.

Something other than a mosquito is feasting on my calves when I am pulling weeds.

I am a little wigged by the stinkbugs or more so the lack thereof.. where are you hiding, where are you laying your hideous little marmorated eggs?   I keep looking for you, the news says you are here in biblical droves...where?  Please tell me they are just not gonna show up in a cloud one day and mow my garden down....Yes I lose sleep over this.

I need another compost bin i.e., I Need some more pallets so I can build my own.

AND I can think of no better use for a liberal rag like the Washington Post than to line my beds as mulch, upon which to compost..totally worth the .50 cents!

To Pluck a Thistle and Plant a Flower

"Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."  Abraham Lincoln

      I think it can be said that I have plucked many thistles this week.  It just sounded far more eloquent the way Lincoln said it and  in the case of the esteemed historic president, he certainly was conjuring a proverbial thistle, whereas I am being quite literal. 

There have been many developments in my little back yard obsession not the least of which is the sheer amazing rate of growth    that has occurred over the last week. 

  For instance, not five days ago I thought bed four could have done with three more hills of corn, so i planted them, now that is impossible as there simply is no more room nor daylight to be had in that bed.  The squash is monumental and the corn trucking along skyward. I have squash blooms and judging by the size of the plants I expect to be harvesting squash very soon which is good because we have no money and it is the promise of food. To the left is a nice picture of the 3 sisters method I used for growing corn, squash and beans:

My tomato plants are just prolific with the little green promises of red yummy sustaining goodness.   I am very happy so far with the tomato fence, it is fairly simple to get the new growth on the the fence and they are mighty tidy compared to last year's tomato jungle.  This picture is probably the first tomato I will pick,  it is "catfaced" which I learned this week is due to a cold spell when it blossomed. 

Here is of the tomato fence (bean fence left, tom fence right) and some of the 'maters. Sorry for lousy pics, I was swatting bugs the whole time.

The bean plants are progressing, the dragon tongues are producing and the poles are flowering which means fruit soon.

Yay for watermelon (or the promise thereof)

Peas are finished for the season, I will plant another crop ion September to see if we can get a second crop going.  I have tomatillos and peppers that are doing fine, I plucked a nice banana pepper, the official first of the season;)




 The peppers on my front porch are catching up too.   This week I planted 3 types of carrots and some more radish, leek and fennel in bed one.  I am eager to see if anything comes of it.

My main goal in the coming week is to get the containers finally planted for a mid summer lettuce and spinach crop on my shady front porch.  I am still confounded by the cabbage, it just does not seem to progress. I feel like we have been here for weeks. Soooo I will try again in the cool shade of my porch.

I have seen quite a few good size onions peeking out of the dirt.   I have seed already from my cilantro and will collect it later this week and my dill just flowered so the seed will soon follow. 

Dill:cilantro

My ugly herb drying contraption. I have some yummy savory, dill and some  seed drying on it right now, ugly but functional.

And for my flowers:)  This is what really makes me happy!

On Bended Knee

It has occurred to me that one has truly surrendered to the garden, the earth and all of the things that spring forth from it and wriggle about within it: the colorful, the tasty, the spiny, the buggy and the slimy, yes, it has occurred to me that this journey has been nothing more basic than a measured act of supplication, humbly and earnestly beseeching the dirt beneath my toes, to sustain, to give forth, to provide.  It has occurred to me that when one has truly surrendered they no longer worry about dirt on their clothes and they give themselves over to lowering upon bended knee, to work, only mere inches from earth to nose in that awe inspiring medium from whence God Himself molded our physical form, knit together with His spirit. On my knees, hard fought and yet, it seemed so simple to me. Yes, it has taken a lifetime for me to give myself over to the garden, today I knelt down and felt that it was right, and thus I planted the seed.

I reap what I sow.

Well there has never been a truer statement than,  I reap what I sow.  In this case, it is seed.  I am really quite good at raising healthy plants that bolt and go to seed.  I must now learn to time it right so I can actually eat some of the fruits of my labor.  This week I was steady in my comfort zone of when I noticed my bolted mustard was in fact sporting some seed,  most unexpectedly (to me, because I am in a constant state of awe and discovery), I had found what I surmised to be seeds, in little pods that I had thought were the stems of the plant.  Brilliant!  I was giddy about it, I called out to my boys to share the glory of it.  I pulled my shears out and with loving enthusiasm I finally mowed down the mustard and took each stalk gently inside for dissection and  further inspection.  I also noticed that my spinach had finally shot up some female seed stalks,  that lesson learned from last year when I pulled most of the plants thinking they were defective with no seed pods.  One lone plant missed the cleansing and weeks later shot up the female bolt with seeds. So flowers first then come the seed...this is my rule number 1.   Yes an old dog can learn new tricks.

I collected a lot of good spinach seed, and I will have a ton of mustard seed.  I also pulled an unidentified stalk bearing seed pods that looked like miniature pea pods and it had beautiful delicate purple flowers on them.  I had no clue what it could have been.  So, inspector Google went to works and as I suspected on an outside chance, it was indeed identified as a radish bolt.  Exciting, because I thought I had pulled all of my radishes...and ate them, a small victory. Here is a rendering I found online, I did not get a good picture of the real deal.

I looked around for more seed treasure, my lettuce is bolting but no flowers as of yet.  The onions that bolted I will let lie till next year and see what comes of it.  I made a closer inspection of the pieces I harvested today, sorted and tied them and hung them along side my herbs.  I'm in definite need of  system to hang my herbs more efficiently than on the hanging baskets over my sink, there are only so  many times a girl can be hit it the nose with drying dill before she loses her composure. At the moment it is dill, cilantro and now mustard and spinach seed.   It is getting little crowded. The picture to the left is my onion flowering, it will make lots of seed but no bulb.

I am absolutely floored by the success and beauty of my butterfly garden. It is actually a perennial/cutting flower/companion planting/butterfly/hummingbird garden/barrier between my 2 primary beds.  I will definitely expand this notion to other areas of my yard next year.  I dare a weed to get through this thick mass of whimsical random gorgeousness.  I think it really has lifted my heart to a place it has long missed.  I look every day and another big burst of color, splashes the palette. Oh the Poppies!  What a joy.

Yesterday I noticed that the stems of  these Poppies have a bright yellow ooze coming form them them as I was doing a little deadheading. It is latex, and there apparently is some medicinal value, hopefully none that would cause you to faila drug test.

My beans are headed for fee fi fo fum Giantville and I am left wondering if there is a need for horizontal trellising at the top of  my bean trellis, I am half tempted to see where they go unfettered with.  Tomatoes are blooming and bursting with little green tomatoes.  I have a broccoli head about the size of a baseball right now, I can actually see it and don't have to search for it and my cabbages look happy and healthy forming their heads.  I really think the neem oil is working although the cabbage moths are defiantly in the area doing the deed tho damage seems quite minimal.

                                                                Innocent looking huh >>>

I believe I've confirmed that I have found two baby stink bugs in my mustard seed harvest. Alas I squished them before I took a picture. I know I found some yellowish eggs, (most of which has already hatched) on of the stalks. Incidentally on a side note, my very good friend has some guinea hens that are 2 -3 weeks old and DEVOUR the marmorated stink bugs at their house. 

I have corn about 1 foot tall, potatoes are still going, squash and cucumbers are thriving, watermelon making an appearance and pumpkins under the sunflowers as well..we will see how much the stink bugs allow me to harvest..

I found one of these yesterday pollinating in my garden, a Blue Orchard Mason Bee.  He was too beautiful to pass up a good Google search, this is not my picture as I did not have my camera.  I will be on the lookout though for another chance....

The heat has been unbearable but I am doing a good job of maintaining vigil on the garden, not so much with weeding, I am sure that there is a lesson to learn about waiting to weed and at some point this week I am certain I will learn it.  If I don't answer my phone, I am quite certain to be buried alive in weeds, send help.  Good news, both kid have garden gloves now, Bad news, I doubt they will pick any damn weeds.  I plan to experiment with using grass clippings as mulch so we will see how well that goes although I highly suspect that 90% of the green stuff we cut is merely what I delusionally call grass.  I suspect most of it is not grass but instead a  fine carpeting of weeds that I call my back yard.

While we are on the subject, there is a guy in Brunswick who has such gloriously perfect grass.  Seriously, it looks as if Adam plucked up a piece of sod from Eden and saved it up for some guy in Brunswick to manicure, and I do mean manicure, for there is not even one errant blade out of place and if there were I bet he would be out there with a pair of scissors, sculpting it back to perfection.  Yes, I often wish this guy would skip a watering, miss a mowing.  Good grief you're  making the rest of the middle," work the slaving job to make our pay" class look bad.  My eye twitches when we have to mow twice in 2 weeks.  I am so not worthy.  Here is my answer for keeping up with mister lawn obsession man:

So the surface of the Sun or that little place I like to call anything outside my cranked up air conditioner, seems to not be hitting the garden too hard, of course I was watering some 4 and 5 year old boys this morning at a balmy 98 degrees, so I guess that was a welcome drink of water for the garden.  The peas, brave peas are hanging in, though I am still disappointed in the wando's.  The snaps are doing well.  I am pulling peas daily and can not even begin to fathom how many plants a girl needs to plant to yield a pound of peas...mind boggling.  Tomorrow I will pick a plant to take seed from.

Finally, I missed two strawberry flowers it seems and they fruited 2 beautiful berries, I ate them.  I am no longer pulling flowers so I am hopeful of a fall harvest.  My raspberry bush  has berries forming and the blueberries are not looking much different than when I planted them.  Something else to google.

Tomorrow I am pretty busy but overall I would like to get out front to weed the berries.  The perhaps turn my attention to weeding the big garden.  Praying for a cool breeze.


gift today from the boys:)


Happy growing:)