The Mono

Why oh why do I let people dump 60 pounds of fruit on me every autumn?* First pears, now feijoas. Still working my way through the backlog (I'm glad they're keeping so long). Boy.

In other news, I harvested sweet potatoes larger than my two fists; the total usable crop fills a six-gallon bucket, with only one split one. It was a good year. Fortunately, sweet potatoes actually like neglect...



*Hint: it's because they're tasty.

After the baking marathon yesterday, I didn't have enough sense to sleep all day today. :) Instead, I went gardening.

( workety workety )

I have an orange-fleshed (Garnet) sweet potato in a pot here, and it's going to produce many more slips than the ten I need. Is there anybody in the East Bay who wants rooted slips to plant sweet potatoes this year?

They're easy: plant at the same time as tomatoes, and lighten any particularly heavy clay with leaves or compost, then water until established. After the vines take off, they just want occasional water, enough to keep from wilting (drip works quite well)... dig them when we start getting the first really soaking rains in late October/early November, so that the tubers don't split. The hardest thing tends to be curing them after harvest -- if you want them to keep more than a month, you'll need to put them in 95% humidity at 95°F for 10-14 days (I wrap them in damp towels and put them in a bucket over a heating pad). Then the roots will keep for nine months to a year in a cupboard.

They need more potassium than nitrogen, really, and Bay Area soil is generally quite adequate by itself. Lighter soil or a raised bed makes them easier to dig (chiseling them out of clay is no fun, believe me.) The vines are also quite attractive, looking much like their morning glory relatives; the flowers for this variety are white edged with purple.

I'm about two weeks behind on my friends list, without a lot of hope of catching up; if there's something important in your life that you haven't spoken to me in person about yet, please let me know.

Quite a bit has been going on, but I haven't had much chance to post. School is good, labwork is good, home is good. The garden is slowing down after a patchwork year. Free time is at a premium. ( Some highlights: )

How is everybody?

I woke up at 8:45 this morning, well-rested. I went out to the garden, tied up tomato vines until about 11 or so, put out some sun-tea, took a mattock to the fountain-grass smothering the winter garden for another half-hour or so, investigated why the garden was so dry and fixed it (the wall-wart for the watering timer had fallen out of the outlet again, sigh), took a shower, pulled my scale aside for cleaning and new batteries, found my two-piece exercise gear/swimwear for Impact next weekend, corrected my Fastweb scholarship profile, and started work on a scholarship application. This after yesterday's half hour in the blazing heat (twisting caps off of bottles so that we could hand them to the recycling people) and resulting heat prostration, hauling a twenty pound box of peaches six blocks, bringing the borrowed mower home, watering the garden, and planting four more tomatoes (with setting up their protection from the sun).

Any one of those would have been all I could manage for most of a day last week. I couldn't have picked up the mattock at all. Hell, I had been stymied by the effort of going out to the shed and looking for one more little nozzle cap so that I could turn on the last water distributor. That's done now.

Looks like I'm back in action.

I have planted cucumbers and melons, sowed popcorn, and dug another tomato bed today.

For the rest of the weekend, ( these need my attention: )

I hope everyone else is enjoying their weekend... I made the decision to drop any parties, social obligations, or plans to go out, and I'm spending the weekend at home by myself. I don't regret it at all. There was one small thing I was going to go to Friday night, but it got moved to another weekend, so I spent the evening reading (both published fiction and my own work). It says something about my improved state of mind that I have enough brain cycles to get interested in my own stories again, pulling them out and reading them to visit the "friends" that live in my head. I'm not feeling quite up to writing again, but I'm getting there.

Today I have repotted my orchid, gotten my usual set of comic books and groceries, failed to connect with my brewer friend (oh well), worked on the front yard trench, dug out the first tomato bed in the garden, weeded around the fruit trees out front, ordered seeds, fixed my Fastweb profile, and looked through a bunch of scholarship/fellowship offerings. I need to fix my FAFSA for this year, but otherwise I've gotten everything essential out of the way.

( Down in the trenches )

Meanwhile my brain has been working out a way to make a drought-tolerant, wind-resistant, heat-loving front yard for very little money -- I've got 90% of the place solved already for about $100-120 and a few weekends of reasonable work. As if I didn't have enough challenges. I've never claimed to be sane...

I'm at the point that I'm counting the tomato sprouts in my light rack twice a day.

It's a good thing I've grown all but one of these eleven varieties before... otherwise I'd be worried about the fact that Kellogg's Breakfast hasn't shown any activity at all, while every single one of my Black Krim seeds is up, and I have one Sudduth Brandywine sprout out of six seeds. After a few years of this, I know that 1) Black Krim is very eager, 2) Kellogg's Breakfast comes up late with weak seedlings susceptible to leaf crud, and 3) Sudduth is irregular but ultimately fairly dependable at germination. It'll all work out.

The commercial seedling mix packs down a little too much for my taste, but I do seem to be keeping it moist enough: no sticktight seed coats yet this time. Trying to ease the coat off the leaves without beheading the whole thing is always tough.

Four out of five Vorlons so far. It gets to compete with Woman's Name Starting With A for which one gives me the first slicing tomato. The race is on...

I feel wonderful. For the first time in who knows how long, I just feel great.

Not only have I had two weeks out of contact with 409 -- I was being exposed on a weekly, possibly daily basis up in Davis -- the antibiotics I got for my sinus infection seem to have wiped out the low-grade infection in my tonsils (for now). My immune system is standing down. Add to that lots of fresh air and rest, and wow. More energy = more things done in less time = less stress = happier system = more energy. That's a spiral I can get behind. :)

( What I got done this weekend: )

I'm astounded. I haven't gotten a huge amount of homework done, but my stress level is way down; I feel less rushed, like I have time and ability to get the work done by the time it's due. I feel so much better about being caught up on gardening -- I can start digging any time it dries out enough, and I'm going to sow seeds right on time.

I'm enjoying this. I hope it sticks around for a bit. :)

I want a trowel with a grip that doesn't become slick when it gets muddy, so that I'm not having to rinse off both it and my hand every few minutes to keep it from trying to twist out of my hand like a live thing.

I want a trowel where I can push down on it like sinking a shovel, without straining my hand because I'm gripping it at right angles to the force I'm applying.

I want a shovel with a narrow, 18" long blade, so that I can dig trenches without "losing" the top portion of the shovel below ground level, where my foot can't push down to sink it further. It's really hard to dig an 8" trench deeper than 1' with a trenching shovel.

Oh, and I want a pony.

When it rains, it pours: I went to the comic-book shop, and after about five minutes in there I realized they had to have put in new carpet. (New tile, too, as it turns out... argh.) Oh, well, what's one more exposure to add to the pile?

Fortunately, contrary to my belief that it would be beyond my capabilities when toxed, weeding the garden has been the best therapy I could possibly have. Light exercise in fresh air for a couple of hours a day, while resting my brain. ( Garden rambling )

I've said it before, I'll say it again: alliums are the toughest crop plants ever.

I've known for some time that the way to get green onions for your garden (should you like such things) is to go crisper- or dumpster-diving for that old, bedraggled, abandoned bunch that no one wants. Wash off the rotten bits, stick them in the ground... a few weeks later, they're thriving. A few months later, you have colonies.

Garlic? Grab a wrinkled, sprouting head from the back of the counter, break the cloves apart and stick them in the ground somewhere. Nine months later you have more garlic. Shallots are the same way. Onions, being biennials, are a PITA, but you can still get lovely flowers (and seeds for next year) by "rescuing" old onions that have sprouted in the pantry. Once established, chives will survive a nuclear holocaust.

Leeks take the cake, though. I had a yogurt cup full of leek sprouts that had been in my light rack for four months, with only a little bit of nutrition (I hit them with Miracle Gro a few times, but the mix was just perlite and vermiculite), erratic water, and all their leafy comrades dead of neglect. What were they doing? Putting out new leaves to replace those that died during the last drought. (I was a little too busy for a couple of weeks.) I stuck them in pots today, six per five-gallon bucket. I expect they'll take off rapidly, without ever holding a grudge for past treatment.

The single rule for alliums: white end down, green end up. If you break that one, they'll usually manage anyway.

it's pouring. When I was out there fifteen minutes ago, the empty fountain had caught nearly 2". That's just this afternoon.

The reason I was out there was to frantically scrounge up as much plastic as I could to cover the garden beds. I was supposed to dig them up this weekend, to prep them for planting, as this is the first free weekend I've had (and maybe the only one this month). With every drop of rain that fell, I kept envisioning the soupy mud I was going to be dealing with... unless I could cover it over. But I haven't bought any more plastic dropcloths -- hell, I thought this storm was supposed to be showers, nothing more.

Between the air mattress that was outside to be cleaned (now it needs even more cleaning, but that's okay), a couple of soil bags I open up flat and keep around for such purposes, and (yay!) one last dropcloth from last year, I covered the relevant areas of the garden. Finding rocks to weigh them down was almost unnecessary -- the water pooled so fast they weren't going anywhere. The ground was horrible: still dry and hard from summer, impermeable, it collected a lot of standing water and finished it off with a thin film of slick mud. I didn't fall (miraculously) and I'm now getting warm and dry again. Hopefully the soil will be somewhat moist but not wet by Sunday.

I'm very, very glad my raincoat came at the beginning of this week... it was raining at school this morning too. It's a better coat than the last one: the same length, which leaves my knees exposed, but still the consistency of a lightweight windbreaker, and this one has snaps instead of the two-pull zipper. I don't have to fumble to get it closed every time, now. It's also black, with lots of pockets, and fits well over a hoodie. (Someone in my Ento class recognized Pintsize... another QC fan!) Now I just have to cut down a tough yard bag to make a rainproof cover for my schoolbag. It's "waterproofed" ripstop, and there's nothing vulnerable to water in the top flap, but...

At least Gwen-Jenny can't complain about my neglecting to wash her anymore. The whole world is a car wash right now...

I took advantage of the shift in the weather (75 degrees in the afternoon!) to spend a couple of hours in the garden.

( Cleaning up )

It feels good to get back into harness.

I harvested half of the ten or twelve little nectarines on my tree today.

They're the size of plums, which I expected; a young tree barely four feet tall with a dozen fruit isn't going to make any whoppers. I do seem to have given it enough water, at least, which I was worried about. I've eaten two so far.

In brief: they're amazing. At length: Very good flavor, not bitter at all, a good balance of tart and sweet with enough richness to fill it out. What stuns me is the texture. I've never had a peach or nectarine -- any fruit, really -- which was delicate and tender without being mushy. The phrase "melt in your mouth" comes to mind. Astonishing. It may not have enough structural integrity to can well, but who the hell cares.

I hope it's a characteristic of the variety... I know Double Delight has won awards for its fruit, but I hadn't heard details. Maybe I've just gotten a glimpse of why.

First rule of gardening: if something you've planted makes you depressed, get rid of it. There's always something you can replace it with that makes you happy.

The damaged corn has now been torn out. I've never before pulled corn in full silk; I suppose there's a first time for everything. I dug up the bed again (easier when it's moist!) and re-amended, then planted another set of S1. I could smell the earwigs the whole time, their camphor tang sitting on the back of my tongue every time I exhaled... nasty beasts. I'll mess with the water tomorrow.

I also planted a bed of sweet corn for the_ogre in the isolation plot. It should be ready by the time I go back to school in late September... the challenge will be getting it over to the peninsula once I've started my five-days-a-week schedule. I'm sure we'll figure something out. :)

The season isn't over yet. Maybe the window for tomatoes is past, but I bought summer squash and (more) okra seed, and the bed is already dug for the cukes, ready for amending. I should talk to the new brewmaster about when I can pick up mash.

The sacrificial beans are not dying. I appear to have inherited the pathologist's imp of the perverse.

The perfect storm that was this spring has eliminated my garden for this year. I've already given up on it.

I was moderately busy with school. When I wasn't busy with school, I was sick. A lot. When I wasn't either focused on school or sick, I was trying in vain to catch up on all the other crap I had been unable to do because (all together now) I was busy with school or sick.

The result: I have three plots of popcorn and a couple of beds of tomatoes, and a prepped bed for the sweet potatoes. The sweet potato slips have finally gone into a glass of water to root; I don't think I have enough season left for them, but I'll try anyway, so long as they don't fry when I put them out. Four of my six tomatoes did fry, leaving me with a Vorlon and (I think) a Wisconsin 55 Gold. ( As for the corn.... )

Again, it's nothing that I can't re-do next year -- and if I get much further along in the season before planting summer squash I may have to wait a year for the seed increase on the zukes too -- but I can't tell you how really fucking discouraging it is to look out there right now. I'm putting a little of my energy into the Market Garden until August, since at least that's something green and growing... but I'm never quite right without a garden of my own, and I just don't have one this year.

Maybe if the heat holds off, and if I get a little bit of energy... but it's too painful to look at.

Yesterday I dug the Naked Ladies. (No, no, they're a flower. Amaryllis belladonna.)

( Into friendly hands... )

( Getting my hands dirty )

I've decided to make pâte à choux for the tea party Sunday. I've got about five minutes before I know whether this batch is doing what it ought. (I've made it twice before, and the batter behaves differently each time.) You can't peek without ruining them.

They're gluten-free, and when filled with whipped cream, they become cream puffs. Yum. semy_of_pearls may want to half-dip some in chocolate, too, though I don't really care one way or the other.

( more garden foo )

Out they came, medium-brown, shiny little balloons. I pricked them (twice, the holes seemed to seal up after a moment) and admired them. They aren't perfectly round, they never are, but who cares? They're cream puff shells we can all eat. Now more are in the oven, and I need to get my hands all sticky again for the round after that.

I need to learn to have more faith.