Category Archives: garden

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.

This afternoon I started dividing my irises. I thought this would be an easy job — I’m working on the big patch next to the rhodie. I barely made a dent in it and it took a couple of hours. I was hoping to get that job done so I could tackle the other side of the yard which is badly neglected. Oh well. I just keep chipping away at it.

We saw Minority Report tonight and while I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it either. I should probably give a better review but I don’t have the energy at the moment. There is a lot of great visual stuff and the story is mildly interesting — but at the end of the day it’s pretty typical Hollywood fare.

Stay tuned for the Wisconsin story.

I still haven’t fully gotten my act together yet. I have no excuse. I just don’t feel like sitting at the computer long enough to organize my thoughts. Tonight I was sitting out in the backyard and looking at the rhodies. The purple one is starting to fade and the pink one never did much — I think the ivy is choking it out. I guess I’ll hack back some ivy this weekend as a project. But ivy is so yicky and you never know what’s taken up residence in there. The thing is, I thought rhodies were close to indestructible. After the nuclear war there’d be cockroaches and rhodies. I have another rhodie in front — this was the one trying to bloom in October. It practically collapsed under the blooms so I guess it’s still among the living. I’m going to deadhead and give it a good hack this weekend.

I have a lot of ideas for projects this weekend, I’m going to have to prioritize otherwise I’m going to do that thing where I have so many things to do that I can’t start anything and end up in the house eating cheese and crackers and watching movies.

I’m on this quest to make my yard look better — but I’m not really making the time commitment. I’m on the half-assed quest to make my yard look better. I call myself “the 15 minute gardener” and see an infomercial on this sometime soon. On Friday I went and bought some more plants and various support materials. I put it all in except for one plant that I wanted to put in the backyard and sort of forgot about. (I was emphasizing front yard this weekend.) So at the end of the day yesterday I put the last plant in and during XFiles I realized I didn’t splash any water on the poor thing and even though I heard it was going to rain, you never know what that forecast means around here, so I ran out in the dark and watered it. About 1/2 hour later I heard the sky open up and it started pouring. The entire yard was swimming downstream.

All my shows are winding down for the season. I watched the XFiles finale last night and while I won’t ask for 2 hours of my life back, I’m not sure I was left satisfied. They supposedly explained everything and I couldn’t follow it to save my life. And I know they want to do movies, so I knew the end would have to leave the door at least halfway open. I have Angel tonight and Buffy tomorrow and then I’m done. I like having the summer off although usually I’m glad again in the fall when my shows come back. I think I’ll use summer for catching up on movies and HBO shows.

Last week when I was checking out of the Quinault Beach Resort I noticed they had flat screen terminals and it occurred to me that this is going to be one of those things someday very soon where we say, “remember when computer screens and TV screens used to be fat and gigantic?” Bob and talked about other things that are almost completely gone like black and white TV and record players. I can already talk like an old timer.

Wow, the things people put their minds to: this “McDonalds Collector” has been to 11,000 different McDonald’s restaurants. yuk.

Yesterday day I made amazing progress in the garden. I was so tired when I finished I thought I would have to be wheeled to bed. The garden part is all done — I put up the walls of water (“easy to fill” my fat ass!) and set the tomatoes out. I planted a row of greens and beets. I made a whole new bed and put out some cucumbers. It’s a pretty small garden, but I’m proud of it.

The past few days have been good yard days and I’ve been diligently putting in my time. Yardwork is not my favorite in case you didn’t know. I brought home two tomato plants from the farmer’s market and I’ve got the garden plot about 1/2 ready for action. I’ve been telling myself I wasn’t going to work back there today but I can already feel myself thinking I should finish what I started yesterday. My seed collection needs to be cleaned out too. I have all kinds of things that I’ve never opened or packets with only a few more seeds that I should finish up. A couple years ago I planted Cosmos which take over the backyard in summer — I’ve been afraid to plant them again. Everything goes to seed and then to chaos.

This afternoon this man knocked on our door and I’m not sure if he was insulting me or trying to help me. (ESL). He did convey that he thought my lawn needed to be mowed and I think he wanted to mow it himself. He was driving a white minivan which was parked in front of our neighbor’s house, door ajar, not quite at the curb as if he’d stopped in a big hurry. I told him my husband was going to do it, even though I don’t think that project is even on the radar at this point, because I wanted him to think that we keep on top of that sort of thing. I’m not clear if I made arrangements for him to return or if I informed we weren’t interested.

Last weekend I watched this movie called The Tao of Steve. I didn’t hate it. It had some funny parts, but the more I thought about it the more problems I thought it had. The protagonist is basically loser guy and gives little indication that he’s going to change, yet we’re supposed to root for him to get the girl. If my friend was dating that guy I’d be begging her to reconsider. Last night I was switching channels on the new a million channel cable and found Bring it On which is a stupid cheerleader movie and we ended up watching the whole thing because it was hilarious.

Yesterday I worked in the yard for the first time since … probably October. The whole thing needs a lot of attention. I can’t believe how out of shape my gardening muscles are — I was ready to keel over after about 1 1/2 hours. This morning I can feel my shoulders and back. Today I want to put in another couple of hours in the back — particularly the garden because I’m going to want to get that going soon. After last year I said I wouldn’t plant so many tomatoes, but I keep thinking, what if I get a dud plant that doesn’t produce much? I need at least 4 to make sure I have what I want. Last year I accidentally got a cherry tomato — not something I would choose on purpose. This year I’m going to get my tomatoes at the Farmers Market.