Some poor soul has accidentally found their way to this little blog. Now I'm actually going to have to write things.
Welcome!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
First harvest
or,
THE $95 CHERRY TOMATO
Our garden has produced food. The fruits of our labor have finally ...erm...borne fruit.
There are a lot more of these on the way. It's a good thing I've lined up three families to take tomatoes of my hands, because I'm going to have huge numbers of them on my hands in a short while. I'm afraid I picked this one a few days early. It was just a touch green, and when I ate it, it was a little sour. But it was delicious.
We also have a green pepper ready to go, any time I want to pick and eat it. We re-planted green beans, in the hopes that they would sprout before the frost. The package said to expect sprouts in 7 to 14 days; in 3 days, 90 percent of our seeds had sprouted. It's AMAZING. They have flowers, like three weeks later. Hopefully they get enough sun, as the days get shorter.
THE $95 CHERRY TOMATO
Our garden has produced food. The fruits of our labor have finally ...erm...borne fruit.
There are a lot more of these on the way. It's a good thing I've lined up three families to take tomatoes of my hands, because I'm going to have huge numbers of them on my hands in a short while. I'm afraid I picked this one a few days early. It was just a touch green, and when I ate it, it was a little sour. But it was delicious.
We also have a green pepper ready to go, any time I want to pick and eat it. We re-planted green beans, in the hopes that they would sprout before the frost. The package said to expect sprouts in 7 to 14 days; in 3 days, 90 percent of our seeds had sprouted. It's AMAZING. They have flowers, like three weeks later. Hopefully they get enough sun, as the days get shorter.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Effing mosquitoes.
At the beginning of June, one of our local TV weatherpeople was answering questions from viewers. (I heard about this second-hand. I have no use for our local news. It's just like the national news, only smaller and more depressing.) Someone e-mailed in, "Why are the mosquitoes so bad this year?" The weatherperson responded, "Excellent question. The worse the moisture is, the worse the mosquitoes are. The average rainfall for this time of year is 4 inches [or something like that; I don't remember the exact numbers]. So far this year, we've had 13 inches of rain." That was like 8 rainstorms ago. The mosquitoes are, for the first time in my life, keeping me indoors.
So I'm adding to my wish list a mosquito trap. I think the plan this year is to suffer through August and September and possibly October, at which time the mosquitoes will winter. I'm going to hang a bat house, so it's ready to go next late spring, when the bats are looking for new places to live. And early in the spring, I'll buy a mosquito trap. (Current finances don't permit such a major investment. Those things are expensive. If there were any justice in the world, giving out mosquito traps to anyone who wanted one would have been part of Obama's stimulus plan.) So while this year, one of the wettest years in recent memory, will continue to be a misery, we should be well prepared for next year. When we're likely to have a drought, and a mosquito shortage.
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| People say that fish eat them. So I can't REALLY declare genocide on them. |
Friday, August 6, 2010
My new favorite machine
What possible purpose could this serve, except to kill zombies?
Pole chain saw
Pole chain saw
Thursday, July 15, 2010
In the garden
Apparently, a lot of the food we eat comes off of plants. All I'm saying is, if somebody had told me when I was 9 that apples were just the birth sacs of apple trees, I'd have eaten a lot fewer apples.
Since we have space, we decided we would plant our own plants, some of them for eating, some of them just for looking pretty. At a first go, we decided to plant tomatoes (which I love, but C. only really likes in sauces), green peppers which C.'s mom gave us (which I love, but C. doesn't really like), green beans (which we are both very fond of), and raspberries (who doesn't love raspberries?). Preliminary results are in:
We've done okay at the tomatoes. We were concerned that we got the seedlings into the ground too late, but they look like they may do all right, after all. They're starting a little late, I think, but you can see a tomato nub, there in the center of the picture.
The peppers are a mixed bag. The green pepper plant is doing terribly. (None of my "manky leaf" pictures turned out.) The orange pepper plant has a little pepper on it.
After a few false starts and two raspberry plants left for dead, we have a flourishing raspberry plant. No raspberries this year, but maybe next.
This next picture is of the place where the green beans entirely failed to come up. No, it didn't look like that when we planted the beans.
Since we have space, we decided we would plant our own plants, some of them for eating, some of them just for looking pretty. At a first go, we decided to plant tomatoes (which I love, but C. only really likes in sauces), green peppers which C.'s mom gave us (which I love, but C. doesn't really like), green beans (which we are both very fond of), and raspberries (who doesn't love raspberries?). Preliminary results are in:
We've done okay at the tomatoes. We were concerned that we got the seedlings into the ground too late, but they look like they may do all right, after all. They're starting a little late, I think, but you can see a tomato nub, there in the center of the picture.
The peppers are a mixed bag. The green pepper plant is doing terribly. (None of my "manky leaf" pictures turned out.) The orange pepper plant has a little pepper on it.
After a few false starts and two raspberry plants left for dead, we have a flourishing raspberry plant. No raspberries this year, but maybe next.
This next picture is of the place where the green beans entirely failed to come up. No, it didn't look like that when we planted the beans.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
This is the sort of crap I'm talking about.
Two weeks ago, I set out to remove four old fence posts from our yard. Today, I got the first one out.
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| From Home |
Seriously though, WTF?
The posts were used to hold up a welded-wire fence, and stick out of the ground about 4 feet. The cement bases stick into the ground about 3 1/2 feet. Why would you do this?
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| From Home |
What did the former owners keep here? Zombies?
The fence was designed to hold chickens. The fence posts were designed to withstand a rabid chimpanzee attack. The corral was designed to hold--I don't know. Rabbits would burrow. Small dogs would get bored. Big dogs wouldn't be able to defecate and lie down.
So I dug the first one out with a shovel. It took me forever, because I never guessed how far down either the post or the concrete went. Then (eventually) I pulled them out of the hole I dug by grabbing the posts and lifting. Yes, it is as heavy as it looks. No, I didn't herniate anything, thanks for asking.
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| From Home |
While digging this hole, I found water. It could have come from one of 3 places: a.) It's been raining a lot. I started digging this hole and let it sit. It might have collected during the storm. b.) The posts don't have caps. It could have leaked out of the post into the hole I dug. (By the way, you see those roots? They weren't fun, either.) c.) Do you know what a "water table" is? 'Cos I might have hit it.
I did manage to get out two posts today, before I started to worry about dehydration. I'll take out the next two--some other time.
Also: Why does my dirt change color and get a lot harder about 14 inches down?
Friday, June 18, 2010
Introductions are in order
Dear reader,
I grew up in the city. Not New York or Chicago, but the city. Or a city, anyway. In a residential neighborhood. We had streets and stores. I didn't have to walk too far to get to a bus stop to get on a bus that would take you nowhere you wanted to be. The air never smelled like manure. (Except for on Burrito Night at Big Jimmy's.) I went to college and got a degree in something that involved reading a lot of poetry, not all of it in English. I was pretty sure I was going to live and die in the city, and that suited me fine.
Then a couple of funny things happened. First, I got a job in a rural community. I didn't think they made communities this rural in this country anymore. And to my initial surprise, I loved it. After not too long, I stopped thinking about it as a "rural" community, and just started thinking about it as a community.
And then I was tricked into buying a house. No, that's not exactly right--I knew I was buying a house. I was tricked into buying this neighborhood. See, this neighborhood looks like the neighborhood I grew up in. There are some trees, but not as many as you would expect. People mow their grass and put tacky things in their front yards. The houses are fairly close together. You can walk to the nearest liquor store and back in case of emergency.
My first indication that all was not as it should be was the suspicious number of riding lawn mowers. In my parents' neighborhood, if someone had a riding lawn mower, they were either 70 years old or legendarily lazy. But all of my neighbors have them. And one of them is ALWAYS mowing. The people across the street have mowed their lawn twice a week since the snow melted.
My next clue was the expectation that I would have a gun, a chainsaw, or both. I didn't have either one of these things: fueled by video games played indoors, I thought these things were used more or less exclusively for killing zombies. I do have a hammer--two, in fact--but they belong to my wife, who uses them for framing and hanging her artwork. I have heard people firing guns in a manner that suggested they were trying to stop an army of undead deer slowly advancing into my back yard.
And then came the dead giveaway--the burning leaves. Every fall, my parents would have us rake all the leaves to the front edge of the lawn, and a few days later, they would be gone. My mom told me that a truck came and took them to a community composting center. But then, she also told me that the tooth fairy took my teeth and left me small change for them, so I didn't really believe her. As far as I knew, leaves stayed on the ground for a set period of time, and then sublimated, like dry ice. But my neighbors burn their leaves. I have a lot more to say about that, but for the time being, let it be noted that that's how I came to know for sure that, appearances notwithstanding, my house was not in the city.
Now I have all sorts of things to contend with that my upbringing never really prepared me for. Home maintenance and repair. Neighborhood relations. Tools. Leaf burning. In fact, my upbringing hasn't prepared me for much, except sitting on my duff reading blogs.
This realization led to the birth of this project. I can read blogs with the best of them. I understand things written in blogs. A moment's consideration, and hey presto! An idea. I'll put the things about living here I don't understand onto a blog. Later when I read them, I'll understand them. Maybe I'll go so far as to create another account so I can leave myself snarky comments about how everybody knows the proper etiquette when someone's Bobcat is blocking your driveway, and that way I'll be able to get helpful advice from myself.
So, if you've come along from the ride, don't be shy about tossing (please) politely-worded ridicule, or even better, helpful advice my way.
I grew up in the city. Not New York or Chicago, but the city. Or a city, anyway. In a residential neighborhood. We had streets and stores. I didn't have to walk too far to get to a bus stop to get on a bus that would take you nowhere you wanted to be. The air never smelled like manure. (Except for on Burrito Night at Big Jimmy's.) I went to college and got a degree in something that involved reading a lot of poetry, not all of it in English. I was pretty sure I was going to live and die in the city, and that suited me fine.
Then a couple of funny things happened. First, I got a job in a rural community. I didn't think they made communities this rural in this country anymore. And to my initial surprise, I loved it. After not too long, I stopped thinking about it as a "rural" community, and just started thinking about it as a community.
And then I was tricked into buying a house. No, that's not exactly right--I knew I was buying a house. I was tricked into buying this neighborhood. See, this neighborhood looks like the neighborhood I grew up in. There are some trees, but not as many as you would expect. People mow their grass and put tacky things in their front yards. The houses are fairly close together. You can walk to the nearest liquor store and back in case of emergency.
My first indication that all was not as it should be was the suspicious number of riding lawn mowers. In my parents' neighborhood, if someone had a riding lawn mower, they were either 70 years old or legendarily lazy. But all of my neighbors have them. And one of them is ALWAYS mowing. The people across the street have mowed their lawn twice a week since the snow melted.
My next clue was the expectation that I would have a gun, a chainsaw, or both. I didn't have either one of these things: fueled by video games played indoors, I thought these things were used more or less exclusively for killing zombies. I do have a hammer--two, in fact--but they belong to my wife, who uses them for framing and hanging her artwork. I have heard people firing guns in a manner that suggested they were trying to stop an army of undead deer slowly advancing into my back yard.
And then came the dead giveaway--the burning leaves. Every fall, my parents would have us rake all the leaves to the front edge of the lawn, and a few days later, they would be gone. My mom told me that a truck came and took them to a community composting center. But then, she also told me that the tooth fairy took my teeth and left me small change for them, so I didn't really believe her. As far as I knew, leaves stayed on the ground for a set period of time, and then sublimated, like dry ice. But my neighbors burn their leaves. I have a lot more to say about that, but for the time being, let it be noted that that's how I came to know for sure that, appearances notwithstanding, my house was not in the city.
Now I have all sorts of things to contend with that my upbringing never really prepared me for. Home maintenance and repair. Neighborhood relations. Tools. Leaf burning. In fact, my upbringing hasn't prepared me for much, except sitting on my duff reading blogs.
This realization led to the birth of this project. I can read blogs with the best of them. I understand things written in blogs. A moment's consideration, and hey presto! An idea. I'll put the things about living here I don't understand onto a blog. Later when I read them, I'll understand them. Maybe I'll go so far as to create another account so I can leave myself snarky comments about how everybody knows the proper etiquette when someone's Bobcat is blocking your driveway, and that way I'll be able to get helpful advice from myself.
So, if you've come along from the ride, don't be shy about tossing (please) politely-worded ridicule, or even better, helpful advice my way.
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