Pictures!

Here's what's going on in the garden right now. Some of these pictures are out of focus because I can't seem to take a good picture with Nathanael's camera. These are the Accidental Poppies. I planted them last winter on a whim and then thought they had dies. As I was weeding the spinach, I realized that there were a whole lot of this one weed and they seemed to be where I had planted the poppies. Smoke started coming out of my ears and I realized the truth. This picture doesn't capture how gloriously red they are, and how they seem to float in the air when you stand at a distance. Next time, I will plant them in between something else because they kind of fall over without support. They've been blooming now for weeks with no signs of stopping. Those spikey things in the next bed are my garlic and shallots which are almost ready to harvest. This is the Rainbow Chard. Hopefully you can't see how blurry the picture is. Behind the chard are two tomatoes, some lettuce and to the left of the lettuce is mache or corn salad, a lovely little green that can take the cold and has yet to bolt during our 80 degree days. There's also a great big florance fennel that will hopefully bloom soon and attract wasps to kill the army worms that are beating up on my cabbages. These are the blooms on our Owari Satsuma. Our Kimbro Satsuma has already set its fruit so Owari is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately, but the blossoms are just beautiful and the fragrance is intoxicating. Roses don't got nuthin' on citrus blossoms for smell. This is the Giant Red Mustard. I got the seeds from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a great catalog that specializes in stuff that grows down here. In person, their color is really magnificent, varying from lime green veined with purple, to purple veined with red. They're also delicious and we've been eating them at least once, sometimes twice a week for at least 6 weeks. You can see some lettuce in front that we've cut for salads at least three times already and it's still growing. Behind you can see the scarlet runner beans growing up window bars that used to be on the house when the neighborhood was rougher. The taller thing is our smallest fig tree and way in the back, around the corner of the shed are the poppies but you already know all about those.
Ok, this is Kitty sitting amongst various members of the Curcurbit family. For some reason, nothing has germinated well in this bed and I just can't figure out why. What you see is maybe one fourth of what I actually planted. Anyway, there's a lemon cucumber, two Charentais melons, one zuchinni, one yellow crookneck, 4 watermelons (woohoo, one Cheyenne Bush pumpkin (not shown) and three plants that are either weeds or the yarrow I planted. so far, I can't tell the difference, but here's hopin. On wednesday, I mulched with the live oak leaves from the front yard with newspaper underneath to keep down the grass. I'm hoping to get some okra in the bed in the next couple of weeks. In the background you can see the herb bed with cilantro that's gone to flower and also the famous mating lawnmowers which now serve to hold up the clothes line. Here we have the mighty dill that is beginning to put out it's yellow umbels. Every one of these little flowers will produce a dill seed for my pickles. It's hard to tell from the picture, but these flowers are almost as tall as me and hopefully they too will attract some good bugs to the garden along with the cilantro flowers. Last weekend I made blackberry jam: You just take a bunch of berries and a bunch of sugar and magically produce jam.
Tada!








My adorable neighbor Naden has been learning to love blackberries this season. He started dancing around in the yard when I said I was going to take his picture. Can you see all the blackberry bits on his face? Behind him you can see my collard greens, strawberries, Calemondin Orange, and a pinapple plant.
These are the men in my life: Aren't they adorable. Ok enough pictures. Mr. Courtney, for whom I used to pick kumquats, gave me a basket full of mayhaws today so I have to try to make jelly with them.

I am so tired of listening to the sound of the aquarium that Alex left in our hallway

I have decided that, perhaps tommorrow, I will set the goldfish and the sucker fish free. They're already gone wild in the fish tank which I refuse to attempt to clean. There is so much algae that I can't tell if the sucker fish is still alive because I can't see it. I have been feeding them. There used to be four sparkly fish (tetra?) but we went out of town over christmas and it got really cold and I think that killed them. A couple of days later, I saw an ominous fish skeleton at the bottom of the tank. This was gross but also hilarious and one reason why I don't like having fish as pets. If your pets could potentially eat eachother, it's a good indicator that maybe they shouldn't be your pets.

Speaking of pets, I saw a headline the other day that the FDA has approved the use of Prozac on dogs who experience "separation anxiety". This annoyed me so much, and the reason for my annoyance seems so self-evident to me that I can barely figure out how to begin writing about my annoyance. The reason for my annoyance is, however, obviously not self-evident to thousands of people, so I'll proceed. I think it's best to begin by stating that nobody can legitimately argue that anybody who made this decision actually cares about dogs. The drug companies want to make money and apparently, dog owners want to have dogs but don't want to deal with them when they actually act like dogs, and bark a little and maybe poo on the floor. It's bad enough that they're keeping a member of another species in an unnatural habitat and treating it like an accessory to enhance they're lifestyle. It's bad enough that these people approve of the idea of shutting out part of the range of life experience and its attendant emotions because they just don't want to deal with it, because it actually requires some effort to grow as a person and learn coping skills and develop wisdom (all of which are potential results of pain and suffering). But to put these two things together, that is, to project onto animals the human idea that we must medicate emotional suffering, is not only idiotic, and annoying to me, but sort of unethical, and brazenly profiteering. Why can't these people busy themselves with finding a vaccine for malaria or spend the money that was going to go toward Fluffy's meds on a nice statue of a dog, which incidentally, will not need any pills to get it to be quiet. Bleck. Or better yet, send that money to me, or some other worthy charitable cause. You could fill a book with the moronic things people waste their money on, like gigantic aquariums in my hallway that essentially employ animals as decoration. I am so annoyed.

jammin'

Today, I made 13 beautiful jars of strawberry jam. t's strawberry season down here in Mobile and Nathanael and I went to a U-pck farm and got five gallons of beautiful strawberries for me to make jam. To make this beautiful jam I had to use pretty much a whole bag of white sugar, two boxes of fruit pectin, and about two gallons of strawberries. One of the jars just popped! I can hear them in the kitchen. It was actually really easy. After you mush up the fruit, you mix in the pectin, cook it for a bit and then mix in tons and tons of sugar. Then, you put the mess into jars, close them, and boil them to seal the jars. Then, while they're sitting on the counter cooling, they pop as they become sealed. I like the noise. Nathanael has been making a batch of strawberry mango sorbet which I believe will be very good. I'm not allowed to eat t yet because it isn't all the way frozen. Nathanael also made meatloaf tonight on a whim and it's really pretty good despite being a shoebox-shaped hamburger.

I'm getting excited about filling up my shelves with beautiful colors in glass jars. This is my first full season since I learned how to can and I plan to can as many of my favorite things as possible, when they're cheap and in season. After strawberries, it will be time for blackberries and then peaches and then tomatoes and pickles. I'll make mostly grean bean pickles I think, but if we get some nice peppers in the garden, I'll pickle some of those too, and maybe some squash for the hell of it. I will never, ever pickle beets because I think they're nasty. Last year at the farm, Kyle, my fellow worker, was known from time to time, to drink beet pickle brine. Upon seeing this, I remember Mike saying "That's GOT to be good for you," as if trying to convince himself. Good for you? maybe; nasty? definately.

Late in the summer there will be figs, but I don't really know what to do with figs. I'm especially excited about the blackberries because they're 100% free. A few weeks ago they were blooming and the vines grow wild everywhere. Literally. Blackberry jam is my favorite so I'd be a fool not to try to save some of this bounty. It's weird to think that people used to spend 90 percent of their time doing work related to feeding themselves. I imagine it wouldn't seem so fun if there was no other choice. What is fun, is letting the seasons guide my appetite, spending a month or a couple of weeks gorging on a particular vegetable, and getting really tired of it so I won't want it again till next year. The only thing I can't wait for is fresh tomatoes. That, and come August, I will really want some lettuce, which is hopeless in the 100 degree heat of that time of year. After reading this, I'm sure everyone can guess what their christmas presents will be this year.

comments

Dear all (Will),
I changed the settings so you should be able to comment now without being registed with Blogger. yay!!

busy bee

I've gotten alot done over the past couple of weeks. Some of my vast accomplishments include:
-learning to like peas
-totally getting over my job
-warming up to my job again
-deciding I don't like my job anymore
-remembering why I like my job
-finding out Daddy reads the blog (Hi daddy!)
-finding a place to have my wedding
-having a nervous breakdown about my job and crying alot, to which Nathanael responded "I don't understand." before gently rolling over to face the other direction
-doing my taxes on the interwebs in about 10 minutes (bee-atch) and getting a pleasant return
-having a good day at work today and being genuinely impressed by one of my girls' ideas about "having a fundraiser where we make a play and sell tickets so we can raise money to buy our trampoline" and touched by a couple of other girls' weird desire to play with my hair
-picking out flowers for my wedding and being disappointed that a farm I found to grow my flowers organically didn't know the difference between corn and blue corn flowers *sigh*
-eating alot of easter candy
-proudly setting up a clothesline that goes from fig tree to mating lawnmowers to sprinkler stand to fence gate, hanging up a load of laundry, and promptly watching it get rained on by what was, incidentally, the only rain shower we got for a month
-eating some of nathanael's easter candy
-seeing my precious niece and nephew who, along with my sister and the mother she is becoming, make me so proud
-eating two ripe strawberries right out of the garden
-discovering that there are 8th grade girls in Mobile County who honestly don't know how babies get made, either because the school system doesn't bother to teach sex ed (which they obviously should) or a bunch of lazy parents are leaving the actual parenting up to an impoverished school system.
-feeling like a big fat cliche looking through book after book of wedding cake designs
-remembering that I love Nathanael and I'll love him when he's old and even skinnier than he is now and it really doesn't matter what our damn wedding cake looks like (except that I want it to be different, and really express who I am as a person)
-almost curing a certain fungus among us with tea tree and aloe gel. Take that tough actin' tinactin!
-making the best white gravy of my life

Yep, it's not easy living with the burden of so much abundance, but I'm doing my best.

more news on things that are growing

So todayI can report a most victorious accidental discovery. I was on my way to place an order for some seeds when I came across an entry in Johhny's herb catelogue: chickweed. I had heard of chickweed and looked at the picture. I gasped, looked again, looked up another picture, ran out into my yard, looked up another picture and I can say with confidence that Chickweed is growing all over my yard. It's just this soft-spoken weed, very unobtrusive, that I have been foolishly pulling up and putting in the compost whenever I'm out in the yard looking for something to do. Turns out, this stuff is basically magic. I looked it up and it is reportedly great for insect bites and skin irritation, as well as good internally for circulation and kidney support. You can also eat it on salad like spinach. Yay! One more excuse not to repare the lawnmower! Why on earth would I want to mow down the free medicine growing in my yard? I am also happy to report that I finally spotted a bonafide honey bee in the back yard yesterday. This was in addition to about seven wasps, two bumblebees, one stink bug, a shiny looking beetle tht may or may not be eating the mustard greens, possibly one cabbage moth, possibly one robber fly, definately one squash bug, and I think three hover flies, in addition to the standard army of roly polys and fire ants, and a couple of spectacular butterflys that have been visiting the wisteria. There are also dozens of some bug or other that I still cannot identify. All I know about this bug is that I saw one eating an aphid on my sweet potatoes last August so I know these bugs have my best interest at heart. I am still waiting patiently for a lady bug, just one lady bug, to join the backyard party, but am nonetheless heartened by the diversity of beneficial insects in the garden. The plan of course, is to go all summer with no need for pesticides, even organic ones. We'll see what happens when the squash get bigger, with their requisite vine borer woes, but I am still faithful that mother nature is perfect and will help a sister out if I don't go spraying poison everywhere. Nathanael and I have eaten at least one home-grown, organic vegetable every day for about two weeks now. I must say, I'm getting a little tired of the mustard greens, but soon we'll have our english peas, and some strawberries. We will have chard, about one and a half carrots, and the collard greens and lettuce are still going strong. Then it's on to the squash and tomatoes and the humidity and 112 degree days and maybe by then I won't be so happy about all this gardening.

Speaking of growing things, I watched a blurb about peak oil the other day that actually made it to CNBC. I was shocked to see a mainstream media source actually giving air time to a problem, that just last week I heard flat-out denied on NPR. I won't spend time talking about it here as there are plenty of better-informed sources on the web concerning this issue. I was reminded however, that we have very little time indeed to prepare for what will, I believe, be a world-changing event, a process that will change all of our lives permanently. Nathanael and I talk about it sometimes and I still have no idea what would be worse in the event of an oil-supply collapse: stay intown with all the crazed, scary people, or be out on a piece of land somewhere isolated from help. I think there's no way to predict which scenario will be the best, so I console myself with the idea that as long as I am continually building important survival skills, I am doing the best I can to prepare for whatever is coming. Skills are something that noone can take from you. So, no matter where I end up, I will be ok if I know how to take care of myself. I've decided that the next project will be learning how to make cottage cheese. They say it's among the easiest to make, and it doesn't require anything I don't already have, except rennet. I've read of some plants that produce rennet alternatives, and that might be a possibility. There are also cheeses, like the Indian paneer, that require nothing to curdle the milk but vinegar, so that is worth trying out as well. After that it's yogurt which is supposed to be easy to make as well. Maybe I'll have some made in time to eat with all the free blackberries that are currently growing along every single street in Mobile. The south ain't so bad after all.