Chicken and Sponge

Start of this years garden (bonus feature: the loss of Mick's sanity, the joys of autism)

OK.  Last year's picture---too early for the trees bloom yet, but I think we're all ready for when they do. 

While we were in Salem today I thought it would be a good idea to go to Home Depot and get some things I would need for some vegetable starts. Silly me. Why would I think that anyone would have stuff for me to be able to do what I want. All they could tell me is it would be a couple of more weeks before everything would start to arrive at their stores. I don't want to wait a couple of weeks so I improvised a little.

 I'm going to use empty toilet paper rolls and cut them about two inches in length to make little peats for starting seeds. Fill them up with potting soil and there you have it. Another feeble attempt to live a little green and recycle what I can. When I went on the porch to get some soil, what did I find? Jiffy peats that I thought I had and couldn't find before. I will use them up before they accidentally get wet and swell up without me knowing it. I'll still use my toilet paper roll peats too.

Since I started this post, 5 days have gone by. I know. Lame,lame,lame. No excuses here. But I do have 3 little sprouts coming up. I'm sure the rest are to follow. I planted early girl tomato,red romaine,broccoli,and a variety of herbs. I always get excited when things start to pop up. Enough about that for awhile.

Now I am going to fill you in on my weight loss. I have lost 3lbs. Doesn't sound like much but I'm damn proud of those 3 lbs. I figured I wouldn't lose anything for 2 weeks until my body got on track with the lifestyle change I'm attempting. So every lb. I can lose while this transition takes place is all a bonus as far as I am concerned.

My exercise regimen consists of the Biggest Loser Weight Loss Yoga and Last Chance Workout. Both dvds run about 55 minutes a piece with the warmup and cool down. I alternate them every other day. They propose a good challenge right now but in a couple more weeks I will be powering right through them.

You can't believe what just happened! Sam was in our room watching tv or so I thought. All of a sudden I could hear water running. I went to check on her and she had the shower running and the sink running. I looked down and the floor was flooded. She had the stopper in the sink stopped and water was pouring onto the floor. When I looked up at her I then realized she had the garbage can filled to the brim with water and she proceeded to dump it over her head adding to the already 3 inches of water on the floor. What a mess with all the garbage mixed with water. It took a dozen towels to soak the water up. Just what I needed was more laundry.

This is the kind of thing she does when she is not in school. She gets bored and then she does something that looks like fun to her and complete BS to the rest of us. We have a big pow- wow on Monday with the school to try and figure some way to get her to go back. Hopefully we will be successful and my sanity will return to almost normal levels.

caption by Vicki:  Mick asked me to pick pictures for his post and I really like this one even though it's a year old. Why do I like it? Sam has that rather mischievous expression on her face that lets you know that whatever she's thinking, she's up to no good.  Also, as proof that she's up to no good, this is one of the photos on my computer that she got into and started messing with using her paint program.  Note:  she does not really have one large pink arm.  And yes, Miranda, too, is being kind of an uncooperative nut.
 

Gophers--4, Mick--0 : The Battle Continues

While the carpet looks like the dogs are guest staring on That 70's Show, they aren't.  And though they may look like they've been out hunting gophers, they weren't.  They were simply getting filthy for their own selfish fun.

They lost my sympathy when they totally decimated my sweet potato plant and ate the evidence.  All further evidence of them in our little personal eco-system makes my jaw clench painfully.  The sweet potato wasn't the first fatality, of course.  It's just that the sweet potato was so glorious and magnificent and ready to harvest. I had babied it and admired it all summer. There were, of course, the six cauliflower starter plants that just completely disappeared from the garden in the dark of night.  Not to mention about five broccoli starts and honestly, I can't remember what else.

The gophers still have Miranda's sympathy and somehow, we can't seem to help blaming her for their continuing existence, despite Mick's best efforts.

We aren't trying to live-trap.

We've had it.

All except Miranda.  And the dogs, who frankly, aren't doing their jobs, not earning their keep.

We have lost about $200 worth of tulips and other spring bulbs.  THREE TIMES NOW!  This last spring we thought we had them beat.  The gophers are so much smarter than we gave them credit for.  And we are less smart than we credited ourselves.  Obviously.

We have had tulips planted in the two long beds that run parallel with the front and side border of the vegetable garden each spring.  Every year, we think "This is the year.  This is the year that the tulips will multiply and we will be able to split them up and continue with two more borders, and encompass the vegetable garden with a mass of spring color.

But as I weed those beds each summer, I discover--NOTHING.  Not a bulb in the bed.  Not one.

So we thought, mistakenly, that we were smart last fall.  We bought rolls of window screen and Mick emptied the beds of dirt, lined them with screen, covered each end, put the dirt back in and we planted our bulbs.  The tulips were gorgeous this spring.  And the bulbs had completely disappeared by early summer.  It turns out that those little miscreants, when encountering an obstacle, the equivalent of prison fencing, will wait until no one is looking, leave the safety of their tunnels, walk over to their desired feeding grounds and DO A SWAN DIVE!  And eat.  Eat non-stop.  Not a bulb left.  Once again, $200 gone.  For those of you not keeping count, that's about $600 worth of gopher food.

So there are the vegetables, the tulips and other bulbs ( they leave my gladiolas alone, though, poor lonely glads), but that is not all.  Oh, no, because there is the yard.  Or in our case, yards.

I don't water in the summer and we have an ugly proliferation of weeds anyway, but I do mow.  Thanks to the gophers I get to mow through mounds and mounds of dirt piles ( yes, yes, I try to even them out, but you know that is only going to do so much).  I get to abuse the poor lawn mower and I end up caked in dirt, my teeth gritty.  Thanks to the gophers.  As I mow, dust clouds float around the yard, looking like their own weather systems.

Mick hates these gophers.  He would poison them, but as mentioned before, our dogs will never be commended for their brains.  Their brawn, their gladiator spirits, yes, but brains...it's kind of like trying to find summer tulip bulbs in the flower beds.

I honestly don't remember what-all Mick has tried to eradicate our gophers.  I know we had garlic sticks for awhile.  And I know we still have gophers.  The latest has been a set of four traps ( he found them on the internet and it sounds like it was quite the sales pitch, but...).

The gophers had been busy totally screwing up what we refer to as our "immediate back yard" (as opposed to the far back).  It is unsightly.  Worst than that, it's insulting.  Those gophers are insulting our intelligence, mocking us, and they are winning.  So Mick started baiting and setting his four new traps in the immediate back yard.  Trial and error.  Reset.  Reset.  Reset.  Not one dead gopher.  Not even a maimed gopher.

And then I came home from work yesterday to find that Mick has gone mad.  One gopher, (whether it is alive or dead, I don't know, but Mick swears it must have crawled off and died somewhere and I think it is watching him from some secret vantage point and smirking), ran off with one of the traps.  Mick went to check his traps and now there are only three.  So he dug around.  And now there are still only three.  And when I got home, the neighbors had pulled chairs up to the fence and sat watching my husband use their metal detector and dig and search and dig and search and dig and search.  Mick found many nails, screws, and scrap metal. He didn't find, however, any trace of a fourth trap. Or any dead gophers for that matter.

I am afraid that it is going to come down to explosives.  I'm afraid that I'm going to come home and find that I'm married to Elmer Fudd and he is chasing the wabbit.  I am afraid.

Garden Pests

Baby sweet potato plant.  This picture was taken in mid-August, before the growth spurt.  Two days ago this same plant was probably ten times bigger than what is pictured here.  A big, beautiful plant.

I love sweet potatoes.  I was so excited when I went to Walmart this summer and there were two different varieties just sitting there, waiting for me to bring them home.  I bought both and planted them.  I babied them, watered them, weeded them, and thought benevolent, loving thoughts.  I loved those sweet potatoes.

The plants themselves were beautiful.  One was green and the other, as you can see, was purple.  No idea what the potatoes themselves looked like.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  So they were beautiful.  They would have made wonderful, ornamental plants all on their own, without the added bonus of food growing beneath the surface.

I had visions of eating sweet potatoes throughout the winter months.  Baked, mashed, scalloped, stuffed...you know where this is going, don't you?

The green sweet potato plant began to look odd in August.  The foliage looked flat, like it was just lying on top of the soil.  That's because it was.  Mick broke the news to me and got rid of the remains.

I broke the news to him this morning.  Kind of.  Heart filled with dread, I headed off to work and Mick headed out to the garden.  I'd just returned from the garden, quickly picking a few things to give to a new co-worker.  That's when I saw the evidence that my worst gardening fears were realized.

When I got home, Mick broke the news, "Not a one.  Not one sweet potato left."  When his shovel went in the dirt, it sank in, sank into an elaborate labyrinth of gopher holes.

I hate those damned gophers.  I do.  I hate them.  I hate them.  I hate gophers.

I'm an animal lover, always have been, and probably always will be.  I like rodents and gophers are rodents.  I don't even hate skunks.  I don't even hate skunks even though Louise smelled like one for over a week with four baths and a trip to the doggie beauty parlor.  I don't hate skunks even though that incident caused me unbelievable stress and fatigue, about $60, a head-ache, bad dreams, and shriveled nostril hairs.  So I don't hate skunks.  I wasn't happy with Louise for sticking her nosy face in skunk butt.  I wasn't happy with Zeus for faking me out and acting like he needed to go out and pee at 1:00 a.m.  But I don't hate skunks.

I DO HATE GOPHERS.  I'M JUST A HATER.  Go eat somewhere else.  That was my family's food.  I hate gophers.  I have to go now.  I think I'm going to cry.  And then I'm going to pout.  For a long, long time.

The Burned-Out Novice Gardener or Dumb-Luck Gardening

This is what I picked out of the garden yesterday.  I didn't think to take the picture until after I mailed Jon a box of anaheim peppers.  They were in the top of the grocery bag.  What is left in the grocery bag is a bunch of big, beautiful tomatoes.  That zucchini is not a Photo-Shop trick; it is my honest mistake.  It's a mistake that I've made over and over this summer.  Some people never learn...

My neighbors are done.  They have mostly finished their harvest, tidied up their gardening space, and called it a year.  Not so at the Shockey household.  I envy the neighbors.

Green Acres fantasies aside, this is an awful lot of work for just one woman.  Miranda helps some when prodded or threatened.  I don't know now that school has started.  No homework yet, but she is studiously involved in the after-school activity of watching the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD.  I'm lucky to get her to unload the dishwasher.  Sam?  Oh, come on.  You know the answer to that one:  "Oh Way!"  She's not going to help me in the garden unless her class at school starts a garden project AND she actually takes to it.  Likelihood of help from Sam?  Unlikely.  And Mick...well, he isn't here, is he?  And he's the overseer via phone.  Well, someone has to be the slave driver.  I just wish it was me.  When I get done here today I'm going to start his chores list for when he gets home (September 30).

Yes, I just want to be done and I'm far from it.  Far, far.  I kind of forgot that after tilling, planting, watering, and picking, a person just isn't done.  We can't eat fast enough to take care of all this glorious food.  And let me tell you, it's magnificent.  I've no idea just how we managed it, ignorant novices that we are, but these tomatoes are spectacular.  They are better than any tomatoes that I've ever bought at the store.  The anaheim peppers are fun--and damned hot.  Not compared to hot peppers but compared to other anaheims that I've eaten.  Last night, out of Miranda I heard, "Mom!  What did you put on the green beans to make them SO HOT!"  That was not excited pleasure in her voice.  Disgust and outrage would be more accurate.  Well, I just chopped up a few anaheims to saute with the green beans.  Sorry.  The green beans were from the garden, too.  I'm not a huge fan of green beans, but they looked healthy and they were good for green beans.  I'd have loved to saute them with chopped up bacon, but if Miranda was outraged over anaheim peppers, I don't know a word to describe what my vegetarian would have said about bacon in the green beans.

That's not all.  I'm just plain tired of cucumbers and now I have so many lemon cucumbers that they're just kind of rotting on the vine.  I'll keep some, force myself to eat a few, and then I think I will feed the compost the rest if Mick's family doesn't show up to take some.  Spaghetti squash is ready for me to make it a home somewhere ( I need a root cellar, but am going to make them a home in one of the sheds).  It was quite a crop.  Two watermellons are still growing.  The two cantaloupe plants exploded into a production frenzy similar to the spaghetti squash.  I'm not sure how many there are.  I haven't counted yet, but we definitely have cantaloupe.

Zucchini.  Ah, zucchini.  My former favorite vegetable.  Why, oh why, when I Iook at the plant and think "just a day or two more", why, oh why, don't I just pick it then?  Look at the picture at the top of this post.  That is MY stove top that the zucchini is on.  It isn't some child-sized play stove.  I need to weigh that thing.  Ok, I just did.  That zucchini is 6.8 pounds.  I repeat, 6.8 pounds!  Folks, you're not supposed to let your zucchini grow to 6.8 pounds.  You're not.  It's just not that appetizing anymore.  What am I going to do with a 6.8 pound zucchini?  Feed Cambodia?  I'll tell you what I'm going to do.  It's what I do with all my many zucchini mistakes.  Shred, shred, shred and make zucchini bread.  This body doesn't need zucchini bread, but I'm sure I'll eat some.  The plant is still producing, too.  There are two or three growing right now.  They'll be ready to pick in a day or two...

So I've got zucchini, tomatoes, and anaheims I need to do something with.  I'm flash freezing the zucchini and I'm going to blanch, peel, chop, and freeze the tomatoes.  There are still lots, and I mean LOTS of tomatoes to come.  So, I'll be doing fresh salsa and this winter we'll have lots of homade tomato soup, spaghetti sauce, and who knows what else?

It doesn't end here, though.  I have starts.  Yes, that's right.  As weary as I am of the whole process, I have some Fall crops already started ( romaine lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and more green beans), and I have starts ready to go into the ground ( patty-pan squash, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and spinach).

Even though I'm burned out, mainly from doing most of this by myself while trying to do other projects, I'm going to be looking for ways to turn this tiny garden mecca into a cash crop.  At the very least we are feeding ourselves into the winter and eating much healthier.  But if we were making money, too, I might not be so weary.  I also wouldn't have 6.8 pound zucchinis.  Probably.

I just mailed good neighbor Jon a whole box of anaheim peppers yesterday.  As the season turns into definite Fall in Pelican, in that lovely Southeast Alaska way ( cold side-ways rain, gail force winds, inches of rain a day), Jon will at least be able to warm up his insides.

Now I must finish writing and get the water boiling, the cutting board out, and the grater ready.  It's harvest time.