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.