Success! Shortly followed by less success.

So, last week, I was all set to take pictures and put an update here and all that. And you know what? I charged my camera's batteries, took pictures, and put off updating until the morning. Everything looked great. In fact, here's a look at just how great it all looked.

Okra!

This squash is not an acorn squash, even though I only planted acorn squash. It grew at the same time and in the same place as the other acorn squash, but...
Not an acorn squash. (We're thinking it's a spaghetti squash. Maybe a volunteer? That was inspired to grow right where I planted the acorn squash? At the same time as the acorn squash? Maybe it's really a mutant.)

Here's the other half of the garden.
Camouflaged squash~
Meh, this guy got attacked by a boring bug. As in, it ate the vine from the inside and killed the plant, not the bug itself was boring.

This is a cantaloupe. Healthiest sucker in the whole garden, I think, but there are only signs of baby cantaloupe so far.

So I'm working up to a tragedy, and this picture is probably a good show of it. The evening after I took all these pictures, it poured rain. The rain must have washed away all my soap (a.k.a. deer deterrent), and, subsequently, all the leaves below the red line were eaten off of this bean plant. Also, all the cherry tomatoes (and a lot of the plants' leaves) were eaten, and the tops of all the pepper plants got bitten off. Also, all the squash in the corner got destroyed by those boring bugs except for one kind of sickly looking plant that the bugs don't really seem to be interested in.

Last night, the deer took off all the top leaves of the mutant squash. The yellow squash itself remained unharmed. Seems it's time for me to put out some more soap.

Sad news mode: off. Happy news mode: on. Just in time for potatoes!

After two years of that potato plant growing in that tire, these potatoes have emerged. Or, well, I dug them up with that little trowel in the corner of the picture. Did you know that rolly-pollies eat potatoes? There were a lot of them inside of that eaten one.

Also...

And a tent stake. Not sure how that got in with the potatoes, but whatever.

Also, I forgot to mention, neither deer nor bugs have touched the okra. I'd put up a picture of the creepy black and yellow flower one plant has put out, but that would mean taking pictures of the rest of the garden again, and I'm just not motivated to do that right now.

To date, I've harvested two and a half acorn squash (one was kind of tiny, but the vine died, so...) some tomatoes, green peppers, banana peppers, maybe cherry peppers, a couple of beans, those couple of potatoes, and (as of today) that mystery squash. Not too bad, when I think about it.

By the way, the compost is coming along, even though it looks like a huge mess in this picture:

I think a possum's been snagging most of the kitchen scraps I throw in there, even though I try to bury them pretty well. (Uncle Stephen, I'm seriously considering your compost suggestion with the barrels. As soon as I get some barrels, I'll give it a shot.) Today I went out and weighed the edges of the tarp down a little better, so hopefully it'll be a little harder for the critters to get in after stuff. (But considering the persistence of possums, my hopes aren't exactly reaching any new heights.)

I still need to get under the porch and do a little more wasp-destroying/tree-uprooting. I also probably need to weedwhack along the edges again. Can't have the deer-ravaged remains of the garden looking too scraggly.

Anyways, here's to hoping the next post will be full of tales of cantaloupe, heaps of harvested beans, and a resurgence of tomatoes. Cross your fingers for the okra too-- so far so good on that front.

Under the influence (of Samas Aran)

I'm back from Ukraine! It was a fantastic time-- the more detailed version of the story is in a note on my facebook page.

Now, without further ado, here's what the garden looked like when I got back:

Actually, these are just pots. Here's the garden:

It looks like the lawn is taking over, but that's better than dead, in my books.


And! Good things were hidden in the grass. Christine has been watering for me this whole time, and the fruits of our tag-team labor are starting to show.

Very exciting.

This is one of the acorn squash plants. Well, maybe it's actually a clump of three. A huge clump.

Unfortunately, the presence of so much squash in one place has attracted the attention of some rather nefarious predators. That is to say, squash bugs. They suck the life out of innocent squash plants faster than a mosquito sucks blood. Actually, they might suck at the same rate. Squash bugs just attack in greater numbers.


This is an asian cabbage. Pak choy? Bak choy? One of those. Something's trying to eat this little guy, but I haven't quite determined the culprit yet. If it's the same thing that ate the eggplant mom planted (they were mostly devoured before I got back from school), I may have yet another formidable foe on my hands.

So remember the sprouts I thought were from the okra I planted?

NOT okra.
Now that I think about it, I should have taken a picture of the actual okra that's growing so you could compare, but whatever. Suffice it to say, the normal okra has big leaves and a big, thick stalk. This... well... it has little pods.

I forgot to collect photographic evidence, but I think they're actually buds that contain small, orange flowers. Maybe, once pollinated, they'll produce tiny, mutant okra? Or maybe all this time I've been fooled by a weed disguising itself as okra by growing in the exact places where I planted okra. Time will tell.

Let me preface this next part by saying I read the entirety of a two-volume Metroid manga yesterday and today. So this whole idea I had, which seems kind of terrible when I think about it, seemed totally normal at the time.

So you remember the whole mystic-land-under-the-porch thing, right? Well, if you could see in the little pictures above, some of the trees have decided to grow back. Or else I missed them. Whatever. It was time for another journey to that damp and mossy cavern.

I had forgotten one thing though-- the wasps. Last time I was under there, there were two nests, maybe three, all about the size of gumballs. Not too bad. Now there were at least four (I didn't look to see if the one under the stairs was still there), and they were all easily the size of golf balls, each complete with a home guard of five or six not-so-docile-looking wasps.

Several of them were attached to the underside of the porch right over where I needed to pull stuff up. Naturally, I wasn't so idiotic as to go in under them this time. Instead, I crawled back out and hunted down a can of Raid.

The only can I found felt a little empty, which added a rather large risk factor to my intended operation. Would it be enough to finish off the wasps I was going to spray? Not too long ago, I had a dream where I tried to spray some wasps that were hanging out under the porch railing, and ran out of Raid. In my dream, they chased me, but couldn't sting me because the collar of my shirt came up high enough on my neck to protect me. Taking a cue from this dream, I fished a long-sleeved shirt out of my closet and tied a bandana around my neck. Add a Miami Heat cap for good measure, and I was ready for action.

Armed and armored, I army-crawled back under the porch and proceeded to determine the best way of shooting the two nests that were most inconvenient to my gardening progress. Turns out the best position I could find involved lying flat on the ground directly under one of the other nests. So I grabbed a big rock that happened to be nearby to fend off any wasps that flew my way, and blasted my target with a heavy dose of wasp death.

Looking back, it would have been really, really bad if those five or six wasps had all come my way instead of flying out through the lattice to the sunlight like they did. It also would have been bad if a little bit of that wasp death had gotten to that nest above my head. Then again, I was prepared to duck and cover if that had happened. (The only danger then would have been if they'd flown up my pantlegs, or crawled into my bandana, but we're not going to go there.)

Anyways, the destruction of the first nest went great! I still had some juice left, so I crawled a little further and prepared to blast the second nest. At this point, I'm thinking I should be collecting bounties on these wasps. I mean, wouldn't you hire a daring young woman willing to climb under porches to exterminate wasps at great personal risk? Isn't it worth knowing your porch is safe from these insidious insects? Honestly.

On with the story, I fired at the second nest, and promptly went from shooting a stream of death to shooting a cloud of semi-discomfort. This was a little disconcerting, given the way the stunned wasps were winging about, but the initial blast and the discomfort added afterwards overcame them in the end. That is to say, I stayed put until they stopped moving, then I climbed back out with my empty can, ready to fight another day.

That was today, and these pictures are from a couple days back, but I didn't want to have a whole bunch of pictures at the start and none at the end, so here we go.

This is after a morning of gardening with Mike Breakall. We were weeding masters.

Oh, whoops. This picture (above) should have gone before the wasp story. Oh well. Here's a nice "after" picture for contrast:

See how weed-free that is? We kept coming across little bean plants drowing in the other plants. Now they're free to flourish!

Or else free to get eaten? There's a bean on this plant, if you can see it. (I forgot to do my magic in Paint on this one.)

And an acorn squash is growing!

This is a cantalope plant, I think. It's the one I found growing in the compost pile and just moved over to the garden.

The happiest looking bean plants are the ones in the flower bed.

Maybe the pink flowers had a good influence on them?

Also! Look at the size of this tomato plant:

Grape tomatoes. The smallest tomatoes, growing on the biggest tomato plant.

Now, on a completely different subject, this is my first successful non-recipe casserole.

I call it cheese ravioli broccoli surprise (mostly because I was surprised it turned out as edibly as it did). I would share the recipe, but I've forgotten it. I'm pretty sure there was alfredo sauce in there somewhere.

It might not look like much, but it was great over leftover Chinese fried rice. Next time, maybe I'll put the rice in the actual casserole instead of having to scoop it onto a plate separately.

Food network, here I come.

And, yea, obliviousness conquers all.

The garden is probably as weed free at this moment as it's ever going to be (until winter, when I'll probably till it all up. And spring, when I'll till it all up again.) Even that little patch over by the broccoli-beans is cleared out now. (I planted some bush beans there. Maybe they can encourage the broccoli-beans to choose one identity or the other.)

In other news, the trail is coming along. I'm at least several hundred feet down it, and so far it looks... only slightly better than it did before. But! I'm sure it's going to look amazing in the end.

Which brings us to our story of the hour.

Half past nine, the shrubs and saplings at the far end of the trailwork were getting nervous. They knew it would only be a matter of time before they too were pulled up or otherwise ravaged by the fearsome trail-clearer known as Katie.

They only had one chance. And that chance was poison ivy.

"When she sees it, she'll have to stop. She hasn't bought any disposable gloves to deal with it yet, and surely it's too hot out for her to consider wearing long sleeves anyway," suggested one of the random shrubs that look kind of like miniature blueberry bushes. "Poison ivy, won't you help us?"

"Sure," said poison ivy.

And so, this very morning, the forest waited as Katie approached, certain that she would see reason, certain that she would stop at the sight of the poison ivy lurking at the edge of the trail. They would be safe for at least another week, they were sure.

However, the fearless Katie began working, and, to their utter horror and dismay, with all disdain proceeded to pull up the poison ivy with her bare hands. All hope was clearly lost for the shrubs and saplings in the path of the trail.

So as not to end on such a despairing note, I, er, noticed I was pulling up poison ivy with my bare hands a couple seconds after I started doing it and had to go wash my hands. Once you've touched the stuff, you have about fifteen minutes before the oil bonds to your skin. So I went ahead and pulled up any little sprigs of poison ivy I'd been meaning to pull up on my way back to the house to scrub my hands off with soap.

Suffice it to say, I am a beast.

Non-garden update: Hunter

The news has long been out via facebook and me just generally driving around, but I officially have a car. (Well, almost officially. I'm picking up the title from the dealer this afternoon.)

Anyways, here he is:

Don't let the sleekness fool you-- he's a 1999 Honda Accord, manual transmission and all.

The other day, he earned his name at the expense of a directionally-challenged squirrel.
Hunter is, in fact, very fancy. This sunroof opens AND closes. As do all the windows, the doors, the trunk, he starts every time now that he's got a new battery in him... he even has a little button you have to press to make the gas compartment come open. Honestly, driving recycling trucks for so long had me prepared to drive something with mismatched doors, no speedometer, and a tendency to list to the left when driving over 30 mph. Hunter's like a luxury car!

Here's a picture of the stick-shift. Blogspot for some reason wanted to rotate the picture, which I'm cool with. This is what the inside of Hunter would look like if he were a spaceship ready for liftoff.

Note to self: in case of space travel, make sure to release emergency break.

Now I'm off to house-sit for the weekend. Updates on the garden (which is growing, miraculously enough) and the trail (which I've cleared about ten yards of) will probably happen eventually.

Too busy gardening to post.

Behold:

I think this crab holding this bar of Irish Springs soap would be the best advertisement for soap ever. (For the record, I'm trying to scare deer away with my overwhelming cleanliness. That, and they're supposed to be afraid of the smell of soap.)

All in all, things are going well. Here's the flower garden. Mom planted a lot of things she's had in pots for a while now.

And here's a few more pictures:

Red-orange is now the color of success...

Did I mention I went a little color crazy?

The compost kind of blends in with the leaves, but really, it's going pretty well. It's not too wet, not too dry... the pile needs to be a lot bigger, but that'll come in time.

And last but not least, my nemesis. You're time will soon come, poison ivy.

Meh... and the picture is sideways. Ah well. You get the idea. With everything sort of planted, I'll be free to do a little more work on the trails. Or else I'll take a crack at honeysuckle heaven. Maybe both? And poison ivy control?

... maybe I'll just do some weed control for a bit.

Two things have been planted.

This week, I planted the okra. Well, first I collected a bunch of the pods from the three plants that grew last year. These are all from one plant:

Bear in mind, some of them were about as long as my hand. (Think twice about letting your okra get out of control.)

After lots of crumbling, peeling, and chasing after little round seeds under the table, I ended up with a cereal bowl full of seeds.

Note to self: next time I do this, do it outside. Not only were the seeds round and apt to roll all over the table, but there were ants and other little bugs living in the dead husks of the okra. Definitely not a fun thing to find out on the kitchen table. Oh well.

Now it's time to compare and contrast. Remember those first, horrifying pictures of the garden I put up here? Well, this is that SAME garden after a week:

You can see the ground! There's no massive hedge of overgrown grass surrounding it! The mint is still out of control, but whatever.

Here's a picture of two newly staked tomatoes, and some kind of pepper plant. Mom planted these before I got home, and I had to be very careful not to pull them up and/or weedwhack them down. I swear the green stuff you see between the porch lattice is either mint or those mysterious ferns. Not trees.

I planted a row of climbing beans right up next to the porch too-- right in back there behind the tomatoes. (You can't see exactly because they're underground.)

Here's the other half of things:

I had the brilliant idea of clearing this little patch without my glasses or contacts, which was actually quite enjoyable. When I finished and stood up, it was gratifying not to be able to see any weeds at all, even though there were about a zillion little ones sprouting up. Also, there was some moss. I've never seen moss grow up next to our house-- most of the time it hangs around the lower end of our field where all the water runs after it rains. I'm blaming the strange occurrence on the thick, protective mats of weeds I had to pull/peel-off from the ground.

While gardening half-blind had its advantages, I did have to develop a bit of a system. It consisted in two rules:

1) Check for desirable volunteers. These are the brave vegetable sprouts that come up in spite of being vastly outnumbered/outmatched by swarms of weeds. If you don't look for them, well... let's just say I lost a bean plant. Whoops.

2) Assume it was a beetle. When you're pulling up handful after handful of tightly meshed weeds, some living organisms are bound to up and run for better cover. If you don't notice them until they're in your blurred-sight range, just assume they're beetles. Or crickets. Never spiders. Even though you know wolf spiders do get that big and move that fast.

By the way, that section is now all planted with okra. I didn't even use half of the seeds, so if the first round fails, I've got a couple more tries coming.

Not much happened in this "beside the house" patch. Well, I ripped up all that grass growing between the sidewalk and the decorative garden border. That was pretty fun.

That reminds me-- I gained a new understanding of how blades of grass got their name. It's not just for the shape of the grass itself. (You know, if you pluck a piece of grass, it's tapered like a sword's blade.) No. Given a sufficiently stiff and determined piece of grass, these blades can and will cut you. Like, seriously, more-than-a-papercut, drew-a-small-amount-of-blood sort of cut. The side of my hand still has a small scab.

Here's the potato plant in all its visible glory. I'm in the process of piling random things on top of it to see how tall it will grow. Wouldn't it be amazing if, at the end of the season, it had grown a whole bunch of real-sized red potatoes? I would be thrilled.

A point of interest I haven't mentioned so far: the hammock. Unless I mentioned it being moss-covered. I can't remember if I have or not, but here's a picture of how it gets that way:

One good rainstorm is all it takes. If no one goes out and dumps it, well...

Note the lichen growing on the edge. I scrubbed the other side, so it's safe to sit on when it's dry.

Last but not least of the things that have happened this week, here is the compost pile:

In progress. Right now, it's a bunch of grass clippings and leaves. We've only managed to fill up the sherbet tub compost collector a couple of times so far. Hopefully no possums will nest in it or anything.

I'm house-sitting in Midlothian all this week, so I won't be around to supervise the garden or compost until next weekend. My dream is to come back and find not only bean sprouts, but okra sprouts AND an empty tub of compost. (Which is to say, I will be sad if the tub doesn't get emptied all week.)

Pictures will be posted to show the progress/regress that goes on in my absence.