Friday, June 22, 2007

Exhumed and Expired

We pulled up two potato plants, or maybe three, hoping for some larger potatoes than the marble-sized tuber we exhumed several days ago. David wanted to wait, but I am impulsive and impatient (and suggested, "We can just plant more!"), so we did it.

Ignorant in most things potato, we were disgusted to find the sloppy, gooey rot on this plant. (I just shivered writing about the memory.) I was sure our crop was ruined and that the four bugs we had noticed a week ago had demolished our stores.

I instantly thought about those poor Irish people who found every one of their potatoes looking like this. How dreadful.

After some panic, we figured out -- at least enough to satisfy ourselves -- that the rotted potatoes are the ones that we began with, the seed potatoes. The rest of the little buggers seem healthy, albeit small, and we'll cook them up tomorrow. How exciting!

Slowly but surely, more and more of our meals include delicacies from our own garden. It began with lettuce and herbs, but now we have beets and potatoes and peas. We should see some edible cucumbers and squash in the next week or so. I have no clue how long our beans will take (and where the SECOND crop I planted has gone -- are birds stealing them??!) , but garlic will be ready mid-July. The tomatoes -- will the day ever come? -- are blooming (so many different sizes and styles of flowers!), and we are planning a Tomato Harvest Festival in August to celebrate.

In less lively [ha] news, Finley killed a bird yesterday and a chipmunk today. If she would eat them, I wouldn't feel so bad, but then I don't want her to eat them. Eating wildlife is probably how she got worms last year. Ugh.

Anyway, I was on my deck, reading in the sun, and heard a robin shrieking. I glanced up to the left, saw a robin in the branches, and thought, "Poor little thing. He sure is upset." Two seconds later, Poochina runs up the steps with a baby robin and plunks it down right next to me! I am not generally freaked out by such things (except for that pigeon Sawyer brought home through the window in Dorchester), but I absolutely lost it. Maybe it was because I didn't have many clothes on or because I was prone on the lounge chair, both situations providing more skin area that Finley could touch with the dead thing.

I screamed and David ran out and Finley ran in and then Sawyer ran out and then in again. Finley left the scene so quickly, she must've forgotten her proud prize. When David went outside to document the scene, the cats returned and inspected the creature.

I imagine the chipmunks and the birds in our yard talking amongst themselves about this Cat Plague of 2007, when they lost quite a few of their number. I hope this baby's mama doesn't have a long memory.

I hope the coyotes out back aren't making their plans on the cats of 2007.

--Camille

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Catching Up

Today is David's last day of school, a full eight days after mine, and he is beat. I remember being in his place two weeks ago, when I couldn't muster up excitement that the year was nearly over. I was swamped with 87 final exams and 50-something Huck Finn papers, so the tunnel was long and dark.

Exhausted, I left my classroom a wreck and returned just yesterday to start cleaning it. In the afternoon, I sunbathed on the back porch and read Finn, a new book by Jon Clinch that is a sort of prequel to Twain's classic. (It's deliciously sinister, by the way.)

Ahhhhh...finally, I truly feel On Vacation, my visit to school notwithstanding.


The garden is gloriously in bloom, and David has been diligent about upkeep and documenting it (by photos, not by blogging, obviously). Our Team Bernstein concept was shipwrecked for awhile when I was in my first trimester, scarfing down ginger ale and saltines and acting like a zombie. David was left to make all five raised beds, fill most of them himself, and rototill the soil until it was was sweet and smooth. I did a lot of the planning and planting, but he definitely played first string this year.

We worried that the "organic" compost we bought from a colorful and loquacious character in Franklin was more like mulch -- huge pieces of bark and wood -- but it seems to be doing well, especially after the addition of some good humus, compost, and fertilizer, then mixed together with the de-rocked original soil. We haven't tested the soil, and we did little to vary it for different vegetables (except for the potatoes' spot, to which we added sand). (Those purple flowers are from the purple potato plants.)

My niece Emma asked what other vegetables we grew (I'd sent her a photo of our first potato -- a marble-sized tuber), so I made a list:
garlic
eggplant
zucchini
yellow squash
acorn squash
butternut squash
15 types of tomatoes (34 plants in all)
3 types of potatoes
4 types of beans
peas
onions
8 types of lettuce
parsnips
carrots
swiss chard
celery
beets
paprika peppers
blueberries
catnip
herbs (basil [four types], oregano, marjoram, chives, cilantro, dill, lavender, rosemary,
chamomile, tarragon, parsley, and thyme)
The catnip took some strategizing, because last year, Sawyer and Finley (and several neighborhood cats) lounged all over the human herbs as they munched on their special treat. This time, we got smart, planting two catnip varieties away from the other plants, and spaced about a foot from each other. At the rate Sawyer is currently catnipping, it's a good thing: one plant can recover a few leaves while the other gets devoured. In a seed mix-up, I planted butterfly weed and catnip together and planted them both in the herb bed. The private stash is now blossoming, free from feline marauders, and I hope Sawyer doesn't notice. When he eats down his stores, we'll transplant the secret plants.

David says his favorite garden chore is collecting suckers from tomato plants, and he performs this task every day after school. Hands smelling of tomato leaves (there's nothing like that scent!), he is pleased to control the wayward growth of our favorite crop. It really has made a difference, I think, in the quality and size of our plants. They are the largest and strongest we've had to date, now that their energy is focused on producing a central stem and fruit. The tomatoes have varying lengths of time they need to produce a harvest (the shortest is 68 days, I think, and the longest almost 90!), but we already have a good many little green tomatoes and tons of flowers).

Here is a series of shots, taken approximately one week apart, of the same bed of tomato plants (June 7, 14, and 20th, respectively):


Friday, June 8, 2007

Embarrassing Lapse






If I wait around until I have a good chunk of time to post something worth the wait of a now month-and-a-half of silence, I'll never post.

We have not abandoned the garden. In fact, David has been tremendously busy transforming our backyard into an oasis (and a farm, practically). I have been on the couch, eating saltines and working hard transforming genetic material into a baby. (I am now 13 weeks. I am now feeling human again. The baby is now looking human.)

We did plant most everything. This weekend will be the last push, with melons and pumpkins and winter squash (and replanting the pole beans which were eaten, we think, by the birds we enticed to our house all winter). I need to get to school and give a final exam, so I can't list the myriad vegetables and herbs that are now growing, but I will (I will!) in a later post.

Until then (which can't be much longer, as I have only THREE DAYS OF SCHOOL LEFT!), here are some wonderful shots David took. I love the one of Sawyer devouring his second patch of catnip under the watchful eye of a dragonfly.

--Camille