Category Archives: garden

I have been in an advanced negative mood for several days now and when I think about writing here I can only come up with a range of thematically linked rants like about jerkoff entitled SUV drivers on cellphones driving like idiots who don’t even wave politely to say thanks when you award their bad behavior by letting them cut in [these are the same people that back in high school were only your friend when they were copying your homework] or the same folks running around Trader Joe’s with their cellphone headsets gabbing away [“look at me, look at me”] while blocking three quarters of the cheese display and I won’t even get into the national or global stuff. I need to focus my energy on more positive things.

On that note, I’ve been digging around in the yard and I didn’t lose all my dahlias in the big freeze. I’ve found sproutage in all three key dahlia areas. I still haven’t planted my new bulbs — according to the directions I can do it this month. I want to put them on the east (?) side of the backyard but the soil desperately needs to be amended and we have to finish cutting back the hedges. Bob just bought a hedge cutter — after living here 5 years. You can bet those hedges are out of control.

I finally saw Gladiator which I never saw on big screen because of the violence and sheet-howdy. Good call. That was one gory picture. Those ancient Romans sure had nutty ideas about entertainment.

Here’s a Bob story. He took his bike in to get it tuned up and when he went to pick it up, he realized that in the new tuned up condition he couldn’t get the front tire off as easily (or something like that) to get it in the car. So he decides to put it in the trunk and tie the trunk lid down but then he realizes he has nothing to tie it with: no bungees, no rope. What can he use? (how Bob is this?) He ends up finding an old cable from a Zip Drive and it worked like a charm.

I cleaned out the front flower bed this past weekend. It needed it badly. One of the plants I bought last year did not come with a warning sticker: “this will take over your yard.” I didn’t notice how much it had spread around until I started digging. I thought about pulling the whole thing out but I’m going to wait and see what it’s doing at the end of the Summer. I’m sure that at the end of the summer I’ll decide to wait and see what it’s doing next Spring. This is the way I pretend to take action while actually putting off taking action. It’s a great system.

Bob came back from High Sierra and got sick. On Friday we took him to the doctor and he had a 103.5 fever, not a happy person. The doctor who saw him was a complete Doogie Howser, he stuck his head in the door and then had to go back out to answer a question and I looked at Bob and went “Doogie” and we totally laughed. He was very through and competent, but I continue to wonder what happened to all the old doctors? When we were kids all the doctors were old and grey. Where are these doctors now? Yeah, I realize those actual doctors are long retired but in the meantime, shouldn’t there be new old doctors to fill their places? But back to Bob’s illness: he had to get a shot and he’s not at 100% yet but he’s feeling a lot better.

And my face rash update is that it is looking a ton better.

Last Friday I left for the spa at 2:30pm, so the hottest part of the day and I passed one of my neighbors, looking mighty unhealthy I might add, standing outside watering his completely brown lawn. What was he thinking?

Cinderella pumpkin update: last year I saved the seeds from my cinderella pumpkin and it ended up that most of them got moldy and I had to toss them but I managed to save a few and a week ago I took 5 out for planting. I think I should have started this project a couple of months ago but oh well, we’ll see how I do. Meanwhile, I soaked the 5 seeds in a wet papertowel for a couple of days and then put them into a small container on the window sill thinking out of 5 I might get 1 to sprout. Well, all 5 sprouted and it happened fast, one morning I looking in the container and saw the edge of 5 green stems and that evening I could see leaves in the dirt and one day I could practically watch the leaves emerge from the dirt. Erin said to replant them outside right away and she was right. I planted them yesterday and they already had a lot of roots all tangled together.

I went and saw The Whale Rider yesterday and I’d advise you to run, not walk to the nearest theater. Get in the car and drive a ways if you have to. It’s a fantastic movie.

I took another look. The actual plant of eggplants is very pretty — I would grow them again. I found a small eggplant the size of a ping pong ball and something had pulled it off and gnawed on it. We must have some hungry critters back there because everything gets nibbled on and I found an apple in the front yard with teeth marks in it. I think I’m going to go ahead and pull up most of the garden.

I’m thinking about putting the garden to bed this weekend. This is about 4 weeks earlier than usual and I think a couple of years ago I didn’t do it until November. But it’s been such a big disappointment this year and it’s not doing much. If I took care of it now it would be one less thing to deal with out in the yard. I’ll have to go out there and take another look. Maybe I’ll pull up everything except the two biggest tomatoes.

For my power hour yesterday (in the yard) I hacked back Rhodies. I don’t know how healthy these plants are. The one out front looks mighty peaked and the super tall one in back — I’m trying to whack it down to my height which means I’m going to have nothing but sticks when I’m done. Yesterday was our 6 yr. anniversary and Bob took me to see Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and we had a nice dinner.

So can you tell that I have these major dry periods where I can’t think of a thing to blog about?

Well first, I think this opinion column from The Onion says it all: “while watching The Empire Strikes Back, the second act of which is practically all Yoda, not once did you wonder what he looked like naked?” And even though I think the article is hilarious — I have to admit, in all my endless wondering about Star Wars things, I never once wondered about Yoda naked.

In other news, Bob bought a digital camera this week. He’s already made a couple of movies which he showed me yesterday. One was “Bobman makes iced tea” and featured music by Topaz from High Sierra. Another one was called something like, “What my kitchen looks like, blurry.” Tonight he went to the Jazz Fest and train tracks for more footage. Yay.

My garden has finally kicked into gear — better late than never. Last weekend was my first tomato harvest — I got 6. (My early girl remained a single stick all summer long until I finally pulled it out to save it from complete embarrassment.) Today I got about 46. Last weekend when I saw Mom she gave me about 10 lbs. so yesterday I made pasta sauce and today I made minestrone with the leftovers. I think I’m going to make some pizza sauce and some salsa and get caught up for the rest of the weekend. Gardens have a way of making you hate them.

Finally, my cousin Kathy gave me an Obi-Wan Kenobi bank. You put money in (or press a button) and it lurches around with a light saber and says stuff about the Jedi. Then you can wave your hand in front of it and it will keep going. Now I have a Darth Vader phone (rings like the Darth Vader theme), an interactive Yoda with light saber, the Obi-Wan *and* and Darth Maul action figure. I take everything out of the box and actually play with it. Screw this collector stuff.

Oh, also we saw Great Big Sea, The Young Dubliners and Seven Nations on Tuesday night and it was super fabulous.

My garden is pretty pathetic this year. I picked tomato number 3 today — not counting two tiny romas about the size of my thumb. There’s one puny cucumber out there and it looks like 2 turnips and a whole bunch of beets. My most successful crop is something you don’t want to eat by the bushel. It rained a bit yesterday so I used that and the mild weather as an excuse to not water. The watering is getting very tedious. I hate to complain. I mean, what if I had to depend on my garden to survive and I had to haul buckets of water uphill? That would suck.