Category Archives: garden

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.

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.