Friday, May 14, 2010

Super gardenblahblahblah. Prepare thyself.

It's been all of five minutes since I last yabbed about the garden, so my thought was why not start up again?

Everyone's super interested in the color status of my cherry tree and how big the tiny tomatillo #1 is getting and are the beans on their lines yet obviously so why make you wait?

I'm glad we have things like this in common. It makes my unending yabbing seem more interesting since we can share in the joys of WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THE JELLY MELONS.

I'm sure you agree.

And while I'm assuming that everyone is exactly like me, aren't you pissed you used that weird hair product yesterday and your hair is so gunky today that it had to be ponytailed?

I KNOW, RIGHT?

Ugh. Annoying. Not annoying like I was going to get up extra early and wash and blow dry my hair on Hair Does Not Get Washed Friday, but still, it's annoying. And, I'm sorry to tell you, but you look like a Jack-O-Lantern when you ponytail your hair. Just saying.

Thankfully, the garden was much more photogenic this morning when I went out there to see if some miracle had happened to bring forth the much anticipated arrival of the jelly melons.

I took this picture on 4/30, but it looks exactly the same today, so I figured, why bother pushing the button on the camera again. Waste of time is what that is.

And also thankfully, I passed a bunch of other plants on the way to the Jelly Melon Failure that were doing impressive things that made me feel like less of a Garden Failure.

Because there's no failure on the cherry trees.

And, while it's not food, I love lavender when it's getting ready to bloom. And when it's fighting off the advances of the overbearing Santolina to do so. Fight fight fight!

Also in the "Not Food But Still Good" category is this Penstemon I picked up a natives nursery. It's all alive and shit.

Here are a few artichokes we haven't eaten yet. But their time is coming for sure since we've been on a mad artichoke frenzy. Meaning, we've eaten them for dinner 3 nights this week. I also realized that WHOOPSY I planted two different kinds of artichokes which is weird because I didn't realize that there were different kinds of artichokes. Hmpf. Neato, I guess.

I'm what she thought she was getting. The other one is the weird one.

The apple tree continues to impress with its monkey ball-sized fruits hulking out in five or six different places on the tree. They're fuzzy like monkey balls, too, which is fairly amusing. Not that I've touched a lot of monkey balls in my day. Or, come to think of it, even seen any in real life, but my imagination is a wondrous and inappropriate place and remembers stuff it sees on the Discovery Channel when images of Mike Rowe aren't crowding everything else out. Thexy.

*cough cough*

Jeff is looking about the same, likely because I haven't given him any new tires to grow into and have basically stopped paying attention to him. Not that he needs my attention, mind you, but I feel guilty for holding back additional vertical acreage and don't do much inspecting or rummaging around his leaves. I figure, as long as the leaves look healthy, he'll be OK and whenever he decides to flower, I'll knock him over and steal his goods.

Kindly keep your hands off my goods, ma'am.

The Black Krim tomato, along with the two Better Boys, are doing exceedingly well and have reached the tops of their small inner cages. How people ever managed to contain tomato plants with just these weeny cages is beyond me. I put them inside the big Real Deal Tomato cages and they disappear in a few months. I mean, I totally heard one of the plants making fun of how short its cage was the other day.

Seriously, he was all, "Hey, Mike - I like how you're wearing your cage as a belt now. Really slimming!" and Mike (the tomato, obviously) was all, "Yeah, Tim, this thing is a total joke. I'm SO the boss of this cage. Try to contain me, will you!"

Why are they named Mike and Tim? No idea. That's just what came out when I hit the keys with my fingers. Funny though how it totally works - am I right?

We're mouthy tomatoes and we've outgrown our inner cages. Beware.

Now, yes, it would probably make sense to call the tomatillo plants, Tom, but for some reason, to me, they're girls. Which also doesn't make sense because of the whole "two to tomatillo" thing that would imply that one must be a male and one a female in order for natural biological physics and things to happen properly, but I've told you how my head is a bizarre little wonderland, so for now, they're girls. And they don't have names. But they're pretty and they're growing a lot and I'm in love with their lanterns.

Again - bizarre, inappropriate, etc in my head.

We grow our own ornaments. Too bad we're not around at Christmastime.

Plus, how can I pay attention to naming these plants when they're doing incredible shit like growing tomatillos inside of these adorable lanterns? I can't, is how. I am very easily distracted.

It's hard to tell, but this is way bigger than a few weeks ago.

It's also easy to get distracted when a plant is tickling your ass. And how do I know this? Because the nasturtium have grown through the seat of my Garden Spying chair and *tickle tickle* I keep swatting them away thinking that they're a bug trying to burrow into my anus while I watch the beans.

Totally disturbing.

I'm just glad that all my Bean Staring has finally resulted in a bean getting its slow ass on a line. Because the low germination rate and resulting begging-of-bean-seeds-from-neighbors was starting to get me down. I'm just glad that the beans succumbed to the shame of being outperformed by the neighborly donated beans and decided to get their act together. Because my idle threats weren't doing the job.

We are very impressionable.

The lettuce/bean/cucumber trio bed is actually starting to come along now. Which I know because I'm spending this weekend thinning the lettuce for salads and hauling away superfluous cucumber seedlings to new Forever Homes. And by Forever, I mean until the fall when they die of their own accord. If you live in the SF Bay Area and want a cuke seedling grown all haphazard like by yours truly, let me know. I may have a few left after this weekend's adoption fair. The lettuce, however, not up for grabs. We are going to start eating salad for breakfast.

Sorry, Bubba.
Take two, they're small.

Red leaf.


Green leaf.


Red and green leaf.

We're all about variety.

And since they're always some unexpected guests at the party, plus shit going on in the garden that I tend to miss while staring intently at the melon bed and making loud curse-heavy threats, I took a swing around the rest of the yard and was happy to find that the other plants are doing something.

I believe this *something* is called, Growing Kumquat Leaves.

This *something* is called, Taunting the Snails.


This *something* is called, Making Parsley Grow in the Spot Where the Sprinklers Overshoot the Lawn.


This *something* is called, Oregano Taking Advantage of the Cherry Tree's Soaker Hose.


And THIS *something* is called FUCKING RHUBARB HELL YEAH.

Sometimes I'm shocked by what these plants do when I am not around to supervise. Sort of pushy, I think.

Anyway, that's all I'll bore you with, garden-wise, right now. Though I should do a little update soon on how the front yard meadow is coming along because, um, it's coming along

Yay! I'm maybe not a total failure with meadow grass and wildflowers that shouldn't really need human help to grow properly! What an accomplishment!

*Sigh*

But Bubba said he really liked it and if his fancy lawn doesn't work out in the backyard, maybe he'll plant a meadow like my front yard one. 

And at the thought of planting hundreds more grass plugs in the much huger space in the backyard? There was nothing but the sound of crickets. Because...obviously. PAIN IN THE ASS.

9 comments:

  1. Fun fact: since we have been too lazy to actually mow the lawn yet this year and because Mother Nature insists on snowing one day (in fucking May) and then dropping three days of non stop rain on us in one week- the lawn? OUT.OF.CONTROL.

    But interesting- I discovered that my lawn is basically, at least 60% of it is a fucking strawberry patch. I am not even joking. I have strawberry plants all over my fucking back yard. I always thought my grass was weird, but never took into account it's a god damn strawberry patch. Yay. I don't even like strawberries. (shocker)

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  2. I'll happily take leftover cuke seedlings off your hands - and *try* not to let the friggin' snails devour them!

    I broke down and bought one of those upside-down not-a-Topsy-Turvy planter thingies. It needs a cuke or two.

    And maybe - just maybe - the snails will be too lazy to climb up it!

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  3. I love your garden updates. Mostly because your plants are so much more impressive than mine. But also because you're a Funny Gardener, which is my favorite combination.

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  4. gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh I am completely envious of your climate and thumb. ALL THAT STUFF growing is amazing. We currently harvest exactly four items: chives, rhubarb, spinach and tarragon. Can't wait for summery summerness.

    Also, you are real funny.

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  5. yup. really, really funny. i never knew a garden could be so hilarious.

    i actually AM 'super interested in the color status of your cherry tree.'
    seriously.

    and i cannot inspect new seed beds in my own garden now, without thinking "well...look who the fuck's up!"

    thanks.

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  6. Sara - You don't like strawberries. I can't get over that.

    IMQTPI- Well, the adoption fair went a little TOO well so let me see if the other cukes do exceedingly well and then maybe I can pass one of those guys off to you :)

    Kris - I like "funny gardener" rather than "bonkers gardener", so thank you.

    Dig - Do you have strawberries in MT yet?? What are you doing with all your rhubarb?

    cake - I'm glad I'm not the only one scolding my vegetables. Makes me feel pseudo normal. You show them who's boss!

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  7. I love these garden posts. You can't write them too often. I too love hearing about the veggies. Even the butt grabbers.

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  8. I've got 2 different looking artichokes on my plants, too. Someone told me they might be male and female...again with the sexes!

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  9. I'm not sure how I missed this post from a week ago (?), but after seeing your rhubarb, I am more convinced that my stuff is rhubarb. Can you believe I've been whacking at it and hacking away at it for TEN years? It must be resilient to withstand the torture of Lera.

    And I had to LOL at your fuzzy monkey balls.

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[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.