Still a hippie

Picture here taken during a relative thaw; whole operation still
under eight inches of snow and ice

Just updated the Yaybook profile for our goddam community garden we started...five years!  Actually, on opening cleanup day I should set up a P.A. and blast "Five Years" for the entire day.  But then I'd have to bother Cory to get the P.A. back.  Maybe play it from the truck?

Or Metal Machine Music.

Work tomatoes

Here are some glorious tomatoes from my work garden, which were donated to a nice pay-what-you-will restaurant nearby.  No effects on photo, just that much red!

Yes, that's one zebra huddled at the back.

First fruits

This huge pepper was just sitting in the garden waiting to be picked.  Crazy!  This really is the best year for gardening yet.

A preview of one teensy bit of my upcoming crammed-to-the-gills weekend

Oh, there will be followup, believe you me.

It was Big Daddy Kane who said that he was "so full of action/my name should be a verb."  And I, of course, identify with this sentiment.  If I told you all the crap I do, you would wilt in the hot sunlight of your shame.  So I only give you a mere transverse slice (thanks, N. Baker) of my days, for I don't wish to be the cause of your sense of defeat and ultimate resignation from life.  Not me!

Anyway, sorted through the seeds last night that have been perched on the porch since the 1780's.  Seriously, some of these go back to before we even gardened*!  What?  SELL BY 12/31/2007.  Huh?

So, to be added to my list of wee activities for Saturday: get some sort of metal strongbox/filing case for remaining seeds.   Then I can sit up alone on cold winter nights when the wind howls and ice is flung at the windows, sort and resorting the seeds in amazing combinations and taping/gluing seeds to mapped-upon graph paper.  Or some such.

Rah!

* I do know where they came from, just being sort of vague to make things more inherently fascinating

Basil baron

A co-worker chuckled in a way that passes for wryly around this godforsaken sewer yesterday as he heard me yapping on the phone about whether the person on the other end could use a "pound."

"No, after I get the stuff to the other people, I will be pretty done until next week...no, no...well, let me check if I can sort you out something...."

I was talking about BASIL, silly geese [collapses in hysterics*]!



* c an p Chris Heath

Rabe ordered

Before you go shaking your loved ones awake to show
them how cute this package is, this was NOT the actual
label on the brand I purchased.  When mine arrive,
I will, I dunno, scan them so you can see.  Calm the fuck
down already.

I got two packets of broccoli rabe seeds for like six bucks delivered.  Sometimes SHIT WORKS OUT!

Lovage, anyone?

Here is a lovage plant from last year that survived the winter and is going nuts at my work community garden.  This is more lovage than is consumed worldwide in five years (estimated).  Still, I am going to find a nice fish recipe that calls for some and make something using this forgotten herb.  It tastes like celery crossed with parsley, pretty much.

Mildness

Here is the Oldest Man Alive at the little work community garden which was his doing.  Picture for some green award thing.  So, so old.

Garden blather

Map graphics scientifically formulated to make
Chris Glass insane

This post?  I wrote it this morning, before I took the afternoon off to fill the beds at my work community garden I built.  Because I am just that sort of wholesome asshole, willing to fill garden beds in the rain.  No matter!  What I wanted to mention was: every bed at SPUG is claimed!  Amazing.  Best year yet for signups (this is year four) and we are fully booked up before May 1, even.  Very happy about this.  Also, cleanup day tomorrow and topping of participant beds for those willing to face the mid-40's temps.  Then the Goodbye half of the Crusher/Goodbye amalgam plays at Omega for Record Store Day.  Then pizza. Then Kim forces everyone to play Celebrities.  Then I fall into a deep - and possibly eternal - sleep.

Friday Night Gardening

Two-can Sam

Ready for finished compost.  We'll see how the
rosemary shrub that survived the winter does.

An old, old man tends to his tasks.

Wednesday Night Garden Prep

The Bride, hard at it in her Elastica costume

Then there's the earth closet:

Eww!, yet interesting

Had never heard of this, or, at least, one such as this, patented in 1873!

Like Scarlett O'Hara visiting Rhett in jail,

my hands are getting all rough and tumble (?) here in the summer.  Like a jackass, I fail to wear gloves all the time.  The blister here, incurred while shoveling/turning compost, has the hot sting of lemon juice on a hang nail.  Fun!

Garden Readiness Alert



Before



The back yard is almost ready for planting, which is great, because with this faboo End Times Meteorological Wonderfulness upon us, tomatoes would fully grow and come to full fruition inside 48 hours! It's very natural and typical! Okay!

Anyway, got the back yard in some order...the rest of the week I will get ready to clean up the garden I started for my Corporate Overlord Employers and Saturday is the cleanup at our thirty bed garden downtown. Still, I've lost about three lbs in as many days by shoveling. I've said before: I would be great on a chain gang!

Leaf mulch to the left, manure to the right

Compost that's been under a tarp since September, I think?

Tomato box ready!  Cement brain back for Year Two!

Green!

Did I mention we made $520.00 in the garden this year? Selling basil and the like.

Next year a thousand! Particularly since the baby will have to help to earn his damn keep.

Frost!

Not the insane snowfall of the east coast, but all the garden is finally decimated!

A pound of habaneros

And the habaneros have gone crazy. Seriously, here pictured is a pound. Still on the two plants (which have grown together into a sort of bush/copse o' heat) are literally hundreds of peppers, in various states of ripening.

Fortunately, one of our restaurants we sell to has a "pepper mash" sauce that they make and so can buy some of these insane things.

Soil preparation advice that only SOUNDS naughty/dirty

"Don't put a ten dollar plant in a one dollar hole."

Potato lady

Oh, boy - remember the potatoes we planted. Well, they're done!

Don't think for a minute that I am not anxious to bust out some graph paper and plot next year's furtherance into zero turf-ness! Potato tires will be stacked, and lettuce bed extended by about twelve feet!

Isn't this interesting?

Full bloom 7

Warning: you are welcome to pop by to look and I may even give you some produce to take - but you will be made to work. Pregnant women no exception!

You missed a spot there, O-Lan.