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Category Archives: garden
Jump The Garden Wall
We had amazing soul-transforming weather three days in a row over the weekend. We also had a soccer game and some visiting fans of the away team wrote about their visit to Portland. One of the things they commented on was how to them it was just a nice day in April but the locals were running around stoned out of their minds on heat and vitamin D.
It’s gray and raining again. Whew! That was enough open-toed shoes and not carrying around a raincoat for me.
I finally figured out what was going on with my iPod. Remember back in February I was on a road trip and it kept repeating the same song over and over? I don’t use my iPod every day and I forgot about it and every time I’d take it with me somewhere and it would be repeating over and over and I’d think, “Oh crap, I need to figure this out.”
I sat down with my iPod and my trusty search engine and immediately found a forum where someone said, “My iPod keeps repeating the same song over and over, what’s going on?”
And then, the amazingly helpful reply: “Sounds like you have it on repeat the same song over and over. Turn that off.”
No duh, Waldo. When I’m queen of the world that person is going to be banned from the Internet. I found several versions of this helpful information and had to dig around until I unearthed the secrets of where the repeat thingy was and even then it took me awhile of tapping on that tiny screen with my chubby man fingers to get the right menu to pop up. I can’t believe I managed to turn it on in the first place.
One problem, solved!
There’s always a new problem to take it’s place. The dishwasher died and the refrigerator is coughing and the bathtub is on slow-drain. At least the apple tree looks amazing. I don’t think it’s ever looked so pretty. I had enough time to prep the garden plot but not enough to actually plant anything. Supposedly the rain will take a rest this weekend and I can go crazy out there.
Posted in doing it wrong, garden
1 Comment
Use Your Eyes Birds
At the end of last summer I found a sunflower filled with seeds that hadn’t been torn apart by the squirrels and birds and I stuck it in the shop to deal with later. My thought was that I’d have my very own sunflower seeds to snack on.
Like many things that I stick in the shop to deal with later, I never got around to dealing with this.
At the beginning of January when I was still fresh and optimistic about getting things done, I brought it in the house and looked for a YouTube tutorial that would tell me the easiest way to get the seeds out. The tutorial told me that when the sunflower was ready, I could just shake all the seeds out.
I wrapped the sunflower in an old bedsheet and shook it around like crazy and no seeds came out.
That was enough of that project. I threw the sunflower back out in the garden and figured the birds and squirrels would find it.
That was over a month ago.
No birds or squirrels ever paid any attention to it until this weekend when I saw all these creatures rioting over it and chasing each other off and taking turns dragging it around the yard.
So animals don’t notice food sitting around until another animal notices it? Which animal noticed it first? I wanted to go out and yell at them that they could have been gorging on sunflower seeds a month ago if they’d been paying attention.
Remember Summer
Awhile back I read this news story about a guy who died and was cryogenically frozen. He was being stored with his wife who died before him and was cryogenically frozen and also his second wife who died before him and was cryogenically frozen.
Isn’t that going to be awkward? What was the second wife thinking? Obviously the first wife isn’t going to be too happy when she’s thawed out and finds out there’s a new wife. And no doubt there will be a high profile lawsuit because the first wife is no longer a wife. Or is she? Will new legal definitions need to be created for people who are cryogenically frozen? But then if the first wife is still the wife then the second wife is going to be pissed. Those ladies are both going to want something their troubles. I hope he has a lot of money set aside.
Maybe the guy arranged for a “complication” so that one of the wives can’t be unfrozen. But if that backfires then he’ll be up for murder. Or he could not thaw them out concurrently. I guess that depends on what the future of health care is like. If they all died of old age and are then thawed out, does that mean that old age has been cured? He’d just have to keep one frozen. Or he could thaw both and try to keep them a secret from each other and have to run back and forth between two households.
I don’t think he planned this very well.
Posted in doing it wrong, garden
2 Comments
Pam Against the Machine, Part 627
I finally found the picture of the cucumber plant. It did nothing all summer and then blew up at the very end when summer was winding down. Still, it didn’t make any cucumbers. Then when summer was finished, it finally made cucumbers. So when I was pulling everything out I found two full grown lemon cucumbers and another half dozen that were like grapes. I picked and ate them all while I was standing there.
There’s this service we subscribe to at work. On our most recent invoice they advised that their billing would be changing and we’d only be getting a simplified paper bill. If we wanted a complete bill we’d have to do it via electronic delivery. I do not have a problem with that. The notice said you could sign up for this billing via a URL or by calling customer service and picking #X on the phone tree.
I went to the URL and could not login. I called the customer service number and pressed X and was told that choice didn’t exist and to please hold for customer service which was a multi-level tree where nothing related to my question.
I finally got a customer service person on the phone who seemed a little taken aback by my question. I had to wait on hold and finally she comes back and says we have to set up an electronic invoicing account and can continue to hold while we do this?
What? NO! Are you kidding me?
“This is stupid,” I told her. “I just want to get a complete bill. Now I have to set up another account? Forget it. I won’t do the electronic delivery.”
She was very nice and assured me she’d pass on my feedback. I’m sure “This is stupid,” is written in on a whiteboard in the lunchroom so that they can get right to work making it less stupid.
Before and After
I enjoyed my flowers more than usual this summer. Maybe because summer took so long to get here.
At this time of year I know the days are numbered and I keep an eye on them knowing that the first cold snap is going to ruin them.
I have mixed feelings about the end of the garden. I love being outside and digging in the dirt. But I also like being inside and not having to worry about the yard.
The flowers are finished. I saw a bit of sunlight this afternoon and thought I should run out there and try to haul off some of the dead stuff.
It’ll be there later.
Apples and Pumpkins
For the first time our backyard apple tree not only has tons of apples, it has tons of pretty ones (relatively). Last weekend I picked two giant bowls full and canned applesauce.
It really isn’t that much work but I timed it poorly so I was trying to cook dinner and keep track of my canning which involves lots of things boiling at the same time. It all worked out and now I can have a stash of applesauce.
I thought it would be funny to label it all 2005 so when we pull it out in February we can gasp and wonder how it had gotten lost in the cupboard for so long. The canning specialists tell you to eat it within a year but I’m here to tell you I’ve let stuff go way longer than that and no one died.
I have a recipe for slow cooker apple butter and I was thinking of doing a quick batch of that since I have tons of canning jars. But I already have 10 other projects going this weekend and canning would probably push me over the edge.
Check out these pumpkins Kent gave me. His are the two big pretty ones. The sad little one is mine. Babe the pig is there for perspective.
I gave him some seeds a few years ago and now he likes to grow them, too. He brought them to work and I walked over to pick them up. I put one in a backpack and carried the other one. Everybody smiles and says hi and makes chitchat with you when you’re carrying a pumpkin.
Some guy asked me for directions to a place that was completely in the opposite direction. I pointed in the direction he needed to be going and told him it was a hike. He shook his head and said I must have misunderstood and then very carefully enunciated the name of the place he was looking for. “Yup, it’s still the other way,” I said. He said he must have just overshot it and would backtrack. He’d overshot by about 12 blocks.
Three Tidbits
This was one of the first promising looking early pumpkins that then withered without explanation.
A couple of weeks ago a guy called the office. I answer the phone with the name of the business. He said, “Yeah? I had a missed call from this number.”
Me: Okay.
What is he expecting me to do with this information? I don’t know who he is. Sure, it’s only a 2 person office, but it doesn’t really feel like my problem to solve.
Him: (on the verge of dying of annoyance) What is this again?
I repeat the name of the business.
Him: (Derisive snort) Well?
I asked if he had business with us. Co-worker overheard me and called, “I dialed a wrong number earlier.” I tell greatly inconvenienced lunkhead this.
Him: (Another derisive snort and then hang up.)
I’ve already have the answer but do people really do that? If I see a missed call from a number I don’t recognize it would never occur to me to call it. If someone wants me, they’ll try again. I wish we’d kept his number because I would call it from a different phone every day and hang up.
One dinky Cinderella pumpkin. Barely worth the trouble to process it.
We got a notice from our bank inviting us to refinance. They’re getting itchy because our house is almost paid for. The profit margin on us is dwindling. They used to do this to me in person, too, but I asked them to put a note on my account not to try to sell me stuff when I go in. They still do sometimes.
This one was funny because it has a graph with what our payments would be if we refinance for 30 and 15 years and then how much we’d save on interest. Those boxes were blank with an asterisk that said, we wouldn’t actually save any money on interest.
Nice try!
This is the new variety Baby Pam, which doesn’t seem to want to turn orange. I’m so sad about my pumpkin crop. A friend brought me some Cinderella pumpkins he grew from seeds I gave him. I’m going to pick them up after lunch.
This past weekend I had the time so I put the garden (mostly) to bed.
One reason I was putting it off is the birds have been loving the sunflowers. Every morning on the weekends I would see all kinds of activity out there. We had several days of cold rain and the sunflowers looked like refugees from a Tim Burton movie.
The cucumbers which have sent out all kinds of vines and nothing else finally started producing about 2 weeks ago. I’ve eaten two and put 4 in the fridge. Gee, thanks for nothing. I took out two of the tomatoes and optimistically left two in in case they want to keep going.
I dug up everything else and I now have about two pounds of beets in the fridge. We’re going to have something beety this weekend.
Tomato Report
I don’t have so many tomatoes that I want to cry, but I’m getting there.
Remember, that was the goal.
The German Lunchbox are small. They’re like Roma shaped cherry tomatoes that are a pinkish color. The Roma are also small. I think I was over-watering because I’ve backed off and they are going gangbusters.
The Early Girl are also on the small side, but perfectly round and pretty.
The one that I grew from a seed and then knocked all the leaves off when I planted is producing big giant tomatoes. I like that one. There’s a gigantic one out there now. I’m going to pick it tomorrow.
I’ve been eating about a half pound a day but I need to make something with them. Probably soup because that transforms a huge amount of tomatoes into a few ziplock bags of soup I can have in the winter.
This is a typical haul. I picked the green one by accident. I try to pick every other day.
The cucumbers are making big leafy vines but producing zippo. The pumpkin patch is sadder than sad. The beets have been doing great. I yanked one of the sunflowers because it was getting in my way and turns out the birds and squirrels missed it because it is loaded with seeds so I brought it into the shop. I need to figure out the best way to de-seed it.
Maybe ehow has a completely worthless article I can consult.
Pumpkin and Puzzle Update
Guess what I got in the mail today?
Another puzzle book.
I finally sorted through my immaculate record keeping system and found a number to call about my subscription. The person who answered the phone was very nice.
She told me that they received my subscription payment and I was fine on that.
She said the puzzles would have been a mail-in offer.
I don’t think I could have done that and forgotten about it.
For a second I thought someone was playing a trick on me but I couldn’t envision how that would come about. Some of my friends doing tequila shots and then saying, “You know what would be hilarious? If we secretly sent Pam a 40-pack of puzzle books.”
After some research she discovered that another order was mistakenly assigned to my account. She sort of laughed and said, “You have a subscription, too.”
I am free to keep the puzzle books I already have, I’m assuming my subscription is canceled and the person who actually ordered them will be getting his soon. Whew!
This is it so far in the pumpkin patch. The yellow one is my usual Cinderella variety and I’m guessing this green one is the Baby Pam. I fretted last year about my pumpkins being so late and they did fine. We’ll see how this year goes.
