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.

Mysteries that lie beneath the porch

I wasn't going to write anything until the end of the week, but this warranted a post.

As you could perhaps see in the pictures I put up of my weed-choked garden, a few of the leafy sprays mixed in among the common weeds were actually strapping young saplings, mostly springing from their safehaven beneath the porch and forcing their way up through the latticework around the edges. This worked out great for them-- not only did they get sunlight and protection from shovels and hedge clippers, they could dream freely of the day when they would grow large enough to rip the porch clean off the house and carry it away with them as they reached for the heavens.

Those dreams were the very dreams I set out to destroy today.

Really, I had my heart set on weedwhacking the grass barrier surrounding the edge of the garden, but the little nylon string that does the actual "whacking" was missing from the contraption and I couldn't find the replacement roll. So trees it was.

In order to accomplish my mission, I would have to crawl under the porch and scoot my way around the edges, digging out trees as I went. Naturally, this was a distasteful chore in my mind. I pictured the under the porch region as dark, dirty, spider-infested, strewn with the bones of our cats' conquests, etc. But it had to be done. I tucked my shirt in to try and keep ticks off (I pictured a tick infestation as well as a spider infestation), took my hand trowel and garden clippers, and ducked in through the break in the latticework at the far side of the porch.

The first sapling was right inside. Fortunately, the ground was somewhat damp which, combined with the shade cast by the porch above, lulled the unsuspecting maple into thinking it didn't have to reach its roots deep down into the ground. That is to say, I got it up without too much trouble. As I went in after the next one, I happened to glance up and noticed the distinct lack of spiderwebs. In fact, even the ground seemed pretty bug-free. Maybe this won't be so bad, I thought to myself.

As I crawled deeper and deeper under the porch, the damp, muddy ground gave way to an even coating of moss. The shade was pleasant. By the time I reached the third or fourth tree, I realized I was in a different world. Strange ferns I hadn't seen even out in the woods grew between the slats of some long abandoned latticework wood. Somewhere, something dripped. Yeow-Yeow (our cat) lounged in the spots of sunlight that snuck in. There were at least four bowls that had once been water dishes for our cats strewn about. The lack of spiders persisted, and I started to not even mind that the dampness had seeped into the knees of my jeans.

This was probably how the folks in The Lost World felt when they first found their way there-- the wonders! The mystery! How did the water bowls get down here? Why is there a big plank of wood under the stairs? What is this big coil of wire for? No thought of dinosaurs at all. (Actually, I've never read The Lost World. Maybe it's how the explorers in Journey to the Center of the Earth felt? Right before that last scene, with the lizard with the tongue. Yeah.)

Anyways, I've decided the rest of this post is going to proceed in the fashion of a choose your own adventure. Here we go!

You find yourself crawling commando style among the forgotten wonders of the land under the porch, which for the sake of convenience, we'll call "Cat Land", because another cat has appeared and is lounging about in the available sunlight. You have a hand trowel and a pair of clippers, and have successfully vanquished all but the most formidable of your foes. Well, maybe there are a few small fries still standing, but really, the toughest looking one is right under the stairs. It looks a lot like a final boss. You don't know what kind of tree it is. An elm? A shrub of some kind? Whatever.
Do you go take it on?
If not, well, you go have lunch like a normal person.
If so, continue to the next paragraph.

So you've decided to face the creature! You crawl forward so your elbows are on the mysterious plank under the stairs so you can reach the base of the formidable looking elm/shrub/tree. Only then do you realize your true peril, for when you look up, you see not only one wasps' nest, but three. Only one wasp is present, and two of the nests appear to have fallen into disuse. However, it's only two feet at most from your head. What do you do?
If you retreat until you get ahold of some wasp spray or something, you're obviously not me.
If you decide to take on the sapling anyway, head on down to the next paragraph.

The ground is still pretty damp under the stairs, even though it gets a little more sunlight than the rest of Cat Land. The swaths of mint surrounding the space might help. In any case, this makes the fight a bit easier, and soon you've dislodged three or four long, snaking root tentacles from the earth. (One snakes right under the wasps nest, so you pull carefully to keep from showering the wasp with dirt and making it angry.) Now it's time to dig, dig, dig. You don't have a great leverage point, and the root goes down farther than five inches. While you shove dirt out of the way, you hear a buzzing and look over to see that another wasp has arrived and is fighting with the first one. Whoops! What do you do?
If you use your common sense and back off, good for you.
If you pull your T-shirt up a little higher to protect your neck and keep digging, go to the next paragraph, you stalwart soul, you.

At last, you've gotten the root down as far as you can. You pull out your clippers, click the safety lock off, and dive in for the kill. The tree flails its root tentacles at you and (peripherally) at the wasp's nest, but in the end, you get the best of it. With a final pop! that makes you accidentally jam your knuckles into the bottom of the stairs, the tree root gives way, breaking off where it starts to thin out.
While it's not the whole root, it's certainly cut the tree down to size. Triumphantly, you re-traverse Cat Land to the entrance where you accidentally run your face into the crispy remnants of last years bean plants as you emerge into the sweet Virginia sun once more. Victory is yours. There are no more trees growing under the porch-- the garden is one step closer to being tamed.

Then you see at least three more shoots of leaves still sticking out from the lattice work. Must have been hiding in the ferns. Looks like it's back to Cat Land for you.

The End.

Well, really in the end there was another wasps' nest, a couple more saplings, a tick that I tried to kill with a woodchip, and Rainbow, our gray cat, who tried to rub all over my face while I was hunting down the trees with my clippers. Maybe she wanted to see them rip the porch off the house when they got bigger too? I also forgot to rescue the cat bowls.

Anyways, I showered very well after that one.

In other news, the composting site is well under way (I've recruited my brother to help me finish a tub of rasberry sherbet so I can use it for a kitchen compost container), and I washed the hammock. Well, one side of it anyway. No more moss! I'll plan to put up some pictures on Saturday.

For now, I think I'm going to lie on the floor for a while. Good times.

A Tale of Love, Loss, and Gardening.

Consider the title of this post for a second. Cheesy? Yes. My blog description? Yes. I thought it might stave off mental images of giant alien vegetables overrunning the U.S., but maybe that's doomed to happen anyway. On the off chance it really will stave off those images, I'm leaving it up there, hiding in the grass under "Okra of Doom". (Blogspot just really wanted the font to be gray, so no one can read it.)

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle the progress of this whole gardening thing, and to keep in touch with my best roommate ever, Hana. (Hi, Hana!)

And now, without further ado, here's a picture of the beast:


See the strip of ground right along the port? Looks like a piece of the yard that's just not doing so great, right? Well, that's the garden. Yay, getting home from college! Personally, I have half a mind to tear it all up and start over, but... well... I'm stubborn and lazy and one more year of being half-wild won't hurt it too badly, I figure.

Here's the other half. We have this all right up next to the porch both because deer love our place, and because dad doesn't want a little floating island of garden to have to mow around. Ah well. This is what happens when you go to school and leave things under the care and supervision of your family. Or at least that's how it is for gardens and my family.

Despite its wastelandish appearance, some rare specimens have managed to survive, yea, and thrive in the harsh jungle climate of Powhatan.

Observe, for instance, the famed Okra of Doom.

At least six inches long and brimming with seeds-- serves everyone who hates okra right for not harvesting it after I left for school.

Also present in the back corner is the elusive Didn't-This-Used-To-Be-Broccoli? plant.

Maybe I just don't know much about broccoli plants, but I was pretty sure they didn't grow beans. Maybe it's having some sort of identity crisis? I don't know.

This is the mint patch beside the porch stairs. Notice the wildness. Also notice the small tree attempting to grow out from under the stairs. I think next week I'm going to have a "destroying small trees" day where I get rid of all the little guys that have taken root under the porch.

Moving on, here's the side garden. Sometimes we have flowers in it, sometimes it looks like this.

There is a pretty nice peony growing near the wall, and I think that other thing (you know. The green one) is an iris.

Here's the rest of that little patch. There's a bucket with some oregano growing in it back there.

And that's a the garden. As if the summer wasn't going to be long enough, here are my other project spots:

The swingset. Otherwise known as Japanese honeysuckle heaven. (Maybe the giant umbrella is there in case the heavenly rays get to be too much?)

You can't see it in the above picture at all, but there's actually a potato plant growing in a tire buried under the vines. It's also under a mesh of chickenwire that's been crushed by a fallen pallet. (Don't ask.) Here's a closer view.

This is a happy thing. Last year, I found a bag of red potatoes that had sprouted and grown through their plastic bag and were reaching for the light that seeped in under the pantry door. "Living in the yard couldn't be too much harder", I thought, and planted one in the garden and one in a tire over in honeysuckle heaven. The one in the garden sort of died halfway through the summer (I dug up a red potato a little bigger than a quarter), but this one apparently lived through the winter even! Or at least is growing back.

This is my future composting site. I'll be putting down some plastic to keep tree roots from growing their way into the soon-to-be compost pile as soon as I clear a little space for it to sit.

Also, I'll be doing some work on the trails in our woods. Here's the trail head:

Can you find it? It's kind of like an I-Spy. A really, really hard one where everything is green.

This whole forests edge is an extension of honeysuckle heaven, by the way. Here's a shot with a little more perspective:

Look what lovely things we have hiding in the brush! Poison Ivy destruction day will come soon after little tree destruction day.

On the plus side, I'll be here the whole year now! No going back and forth to school, no studying in Japan, or whatever. Nothing to distract me from helping this garden grow like crazy. (Well, almost nothing. Sort of. Maybe. Probably. It'll be fine, I'm sure.)

Also, I'm turning into a dragon:

A white, rust-proof dragon.

I'll try to post again next week-- maybe some gardening will have happened by then. Or maybe I'll have sprouted scaly white wings (in which case I may be too busy outrunning the government to post).

You never know.