It’s about fucking time
Summer begins officially today at 4:59 pm - and hold and belo, we might actually have sunshine here in Godforsaken, WA.
It’s a good thing, too, ‘cuz I was about to take the pills.
Normally the cloudy weather doesn’t get to me this much, but this spring I’ve been hating on Mother Nature something fierce. Doesn’t she know the basil in my garden needs sun? Those stumpy little starts are just sitting there, waiting for Her to get out of the shower so they can grow. Doesn’t my need for pesto mean anything to Her?
My gardens are actually rather spartan this year. Two tomato plants, two cucumbers, and a cantaloupe in the vegetable plot,1 and basil, parsley, and dill along with the perennials in the herb plot. Guess I just can’t see subjecting too many more innocent plants to Ms. Nature’s wet whims.
Of course, we could end up having a hot summer like the one we had a couple of years ago that had me shaking my fist at the blazing ball of fire in the sky that was making it impossible to sleep in my non-air conditioned, top floor bedroom.
But at least I’ll be eating lots of pesto along with my words.
Technorati Tags: weather, summer, gardening
- Why a cantaloupe? Because I’ve never grown one before. [↩]
2007 Farm Report
When Kevin was a little kid growing up in Montana, they didn’t have Sesame Street, The Electric Company, or the Muppet Show. They had the Farm Report.
So as summer fades into autumn, the City Mouse1 and the Country Mouse2 pay homage to that venerable broadcast with a brief recounting of this season’s gardening wins and losses.
The beans we planted were not, as we thought, a climbing variety but rather a bush that skulked around the bottom of the trellis, grew stunted for lack of sun, and died nearly fruitless. Note to City Mouse: Do not trust Country Mouse; read the seed packets.
Our peas fared even worse - they grew a little, bloomed half-heartedly, then died without further ado. Country Mouse thinks we planted them too early, but City Mouse thinks they are dainty and didn’t get enough water; we were unable to come to an agreement about this, despite fist-fighting3 in good faith.
Our eggplants are still just kinda sitting there, all stems and leaves. Maybe the fruit grows underground? We’ll give it another week or two before we get out the spade.
Our sunflowers didn’t grow as big this year as last year4. Country Mouse accidentally pounded a stake though the rooty heart of one of them so we had to pull it up. Have you ever watched a sunflower die a slow death? It’s a terrible thing.
But all was not sourness and ruin: Our tomato plants are fixin’ to tip over, so heavy is their bounty; between them and our gangbuster basil, we’ve had plenty of fragrant pasta sauce and pesto to stuff in our gobs.
A cautionary word about oregano: Pots! We cut ours down to the ground three times this season, but that only seemed to strengthen their resolve to take over the world, one garden at a time. Oy.
The Spanish lavender got a little overenthusiastic and had to be restrained from smothering the neighboring lemon thyme, which appears to bear it no hard feelings.
The bay tree is recovering nicely from the clumsy haircut the City Mouse gave it last year.
Our cucumbers, though ugly and mishapen, are nonetheless plentiful and tasty.
We’re relieved to report that the rosemary planted by Country Mouse in memory of the one killed by City Mouse is doing very well.
And finally, our first-ever pumpkin plant would make Linus proud. We originally planted three, but they all grew quickly into alien, leggy creatures and we had to pull out two. The remaining plant has proceeded to hop the garden barrier and invade the lawn, where its tentacle now snakes through the grass like a spiny garden hose. Its fruit are deep green orbs with promising streaks of orange.
On Halloween night, you’ll find the City Mouse camped out in the garden, waiting expectantly for the famed Great Pumpkin.5 Our garden may not be perfect, but it’s nothing if not sincere.6
Technorati Tags: The Great Pumpkin, gardening
- Uppity [↩]
- Kevin [↩]
- our Conflict Resolution Method of choice [↩]
- though they sure are a pretty yellow. I couldn’t resist taking this photo, though the bee didn’t appreciate the rude interruption and chased me angrily around the back patio but ultimately let me off with a warning. I guess I got spoiled by that imperturbable mayfly, who let me practically bonk him on the head with the camera lens. [↩]
- From Wikipedia: According to Linus, on Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch he deems the most sincere. The GP then flies through the air to deliver toys to all the good little children in the world. [↩]
- Footnotes are totally cool. [↩]
Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. - Tom Stoppard
This is Herby my garden gnome. He’s hiding from Kevin, as usual, because, well, you know what happened to Herby the last time Kevin was in a bad mood.
You see, yesterday was Himself’s 40th birthday. I have no pictures from the auspicious anniversary because Mr. Crankypants wouldn’t let me take any. He didn’t want a party, no presents, nada. The night before, he’d mourned, “I’ll never be a millionaire before I’m forty.” To which I replied, “Keep trying. You have an hour and a half.”
Despite Kevin’s protests, I did manage to rally some of our friends whose assisted living communities have later curfews. We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurante muy bueno by the water, siphoned off some of the excess carbs playing frisbee in the park, then drank them back again at a martini bar. We were finally at home and in bed by midnight, which is, like, the first time since college graduation.
Then today we got up and went for a run, during which was made the sobering discovery that old people should not drink and expect to be functional for the next 24 hours. This did very little to cheer up Himself, who spent the rest of the day holed up in the garage, consoling himself with his power tool. (What?)
I, much more sensibly, chose retail therapy. I went out and bought cheese, pie, magnetic paint, a pair of shorts, some stupid-expensive hair goo, a few vegetable starts, and a potted two-headed daisy. Then came home and puttered in the garden which is where I saw Herby, who’d come out to supervise.
All in all, a decent, if somewhat bleary, start to a long Memorial Day weekend at home.
By the way, thanks to everyone for the emails and Happy Birthday songs left on the voice mail. And thanks to Kevin’s parents for the five cards - we’re glad his birthday coincided with the postage increase so you could use up your old stamps. Hugs!
Photo: Herby in the lavendar and thyme, 05/26/07 3:30 pm
Filed under Brown Thumb, Buff Blog, Kevinsylvania, Rib Eye | Comment (1)Giants in the garden
The Prodigal Gardener
OK, so I’m a lazy gardener.
I’m a good example of what happens when a city mouse shacks up in suburbia with a country mouse: I get all excited about gardening every spring, make plans, plant a buttload of stuff, and then forget about the upkeep. Like watering and weeding and harvesting and watering and weeding and … you get the idea.
But all may not be lost: Herby the Gnome is back.
We think Herby has belonged to this house since it was built in the 1940’s. He ran away shortly after we moved in, after his less than welcoming first encounter with Kevin:
But this weekend, I spied a familiar face peeking at me from within the basil.
Perhaps garden gnomes are like those house elves in the Harry Potter books: they can’t leave until their masters give them new clothes. One more good reason to ban Kevin from doing the laundry.
Technorati Tags: garden gnomes, herbs, surburbia, house elves, brown thumb
Filed under Brown Thumb, Kevinsylvania | Comments (2)