"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -H.G. Wells, The Outline of History

2 things have happened w/in the last few days that are worthy of documenting. 1. we found the book of what/where we planted everything 2. if we hadn't found the book,the plants that we were (very poorly) guessing were eggplant plants were, in fact, tomatillo plants. don't even ask me what we were thinking. probably just wishful thinking as there is NO REASON that eggplants shouldn't thrive,but we have not been able to grow a single one, despite planting dozens.
either way,tomatillos. weird,but yay. i will seriously salsa verde-up this place.

it also looks as though a few of our heirloom tomato plants are tomato-ing!

we've gotten a bunch of potatoes this week and took in all of the garlic and a couple onions.

i made scallion pancakes the other night, which, despite what my spidzer-mom thinks, one does not eat w/syrup. they were exceptional.

i gave myself 2 blisters from "frenching" green beans, which is really the only way that i like to eat them.(i don't know why. they're just not as overwhelming) Jake got a mandoline for his birthday but i'm too scared of cutting various fingers off to ever use that,i will just deal with blisters. weird. maybe i hold knives wrong?

b/c a lot of the garlic was split and we want to be able to preserve/extend it,i chopped a bunch of it up and put it with olive oil in a jar, to be used for cooking, which is very garlic-y.

this week, we'll get the rest of the onions and will probably slice/freeze the majority of them.

greens and lettuce. lots.

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. -Chinese Proverb

super-rainy-summer. good for the garden...i suppose. makes me annoyed at myself that when it's not raining, i really do not spend enough time out there.

a few sunflowers have blossomed! one of them is of the red variety! yay. i specifically planted about 6 on the far-side of the garden fence,nearest the road,but still over 20 feet from the actual road and about half of those have been to all appearances,chomped in half. no more top. nothing. and there's no evidence of anything. in my head, it's some 'Lost'-like scenario that is half-ing my sunflowers! good thing i still have at least a dozen that planted themselves from last years sunflowers.

snap peas are currently sustaining us, food-wise. while any actual peas continue to be less-than-exilerating

also, greens such as lettuce, spinach and radish-greens are fine and have the potential to make me entirely sick of them if i wasn't so satisfied with not having to grocery shop for produce.

as i have previously mentioned, a lot of tomato plants were victims of blight, but there are a couple that we might get a tomato or two off of...grumble grumble.

also finally! eggplant plants?!?

corn is still stunted. all squash,pumpkin and melon plants have blossomed w/in the last day or so. cucumbers are...only 2(of 6) survived, but have not blossomed yet.

one nasturtium (flowered)...amazing that more did not survive as i previously have been known to consider them indestructable as they were THE ONLY THING that survived in PDX.
though, the only ones that i planted this year were from seeds that i saved from last years plants, so...

onions and garlic are almost there,but are really just miniature-versions of actually edible, exciting food. so i think that we'll give them another week or so to continue growing.

dahlias have buds but have not blossomed yet.

more string beans than ever. might can some. might. could freeze them too, we'll see.

"He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie." -Anais Nin

ok, i lied, it only takes between 10-15 snap pea-plants to produce more-than-enough snap-peas. i have about an entire smarty-pants of snap peas...and there are at least that many more on the way.

green beans(of the not-green, but yellow and purple variety) are totally going to be in full effect in a day or so...

lots of greens and salad-y items...

some tomato plants appear to be trying to do something after appearing to have given up...

pumpkin plants look good. i'm vowing to make more pumpkin-ravioli than anyone could EVER NEED, this year. plus, can or freeze the puree for middle-of-winter pumpkin pies...

i'm excited to see the mystery-dahlias as they have budded but have yet to bloom. hopefully pictures to follow.

so many marigolds. mom started no-less than 6,000 and upon saying that i wanted them all around our porch,to ward off mosquitoes, and she keeps gifting me with them...

our corn appears to be stunted,much like our tomato plants appeared...i dunno.

cucumber plants are touch-and-go,really, at this point...we were totally going to "pickle" them this year, if we got as many as last year,but it's not looking so good.

The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal - it's also the reason they hate birds. ~K.C. Buffington

so, "gardening things" have been A LOT of weeding and getting sunburned(despite my constant application of sunblock)(yay! Team Paleforce!) and awaiting the arrival of no less than ONE ZILLION beans.(mom bought a "frencher," which is the only way i've ever liked to eat green beans. they taste better that way. it's probably something about the surface-area and the brine-y salty-ness.)

i have recovered about 5 pea pods,leading to the conclusion that if a person wants to do anything like-eat a serving of peas, instead of-add them to a stir-fry, that person needs to plant no less than 50 pea plants. our 15 or so, do not make for good eating. but the flowers are pretty, if nothing else

of the 6 pumpkin seeds planted, 5 came up and are growing and despite being outside of our garden-fencing, have not been eaten by deer. mom and Stan planted their entire former-alpaca-grazing-area with pumpkins and deer cleaned it out. oops!

been talking to some people a lot lately about elevation and how apparently vital it is to take into consideration. example:less than 2 miles away it can be fine,weather-wise and here, it will be blizzard-ing. this mostly only matters when, say, you're driving and all of a sudden the road turns to ice and you have to be pulled from a ditch...but! when you've been very careful to repeatedly check last-frost dates and want to preserve your lovely heirloom pepper and tomato plants that you very carefully started indoors,and then they are all frost-touched, less then 2 weeks later, it's annoying,to say the least.

that said,we have a very short growing season,here. one stupid reason that we a.)can't grow sweet poatatoes and b.)need a greenhouse. (anyone want to gift me w/a million dollars?)

using the ever-faithful fallback of google,i've concluded that the elevation of Cayuta,NY is about 1060-ish ft. who knows what part of Cayuta that measurement was taken,but it's approximate. compared, Elmira is at about 984ft.

deer,elevation,bugs,blight(whatever THAT is)-all factors to consider,when gardening. as well as rainfall,freak-wind storms that uproot entire rows of corn and cats (and neighborhood dogs)who ignore the fence and use parts of the garden as their litter box/personal lavatory.

the Dead Animal Count for this week is: one huge robin, 2 baby mice(still in wrinkly,fetal-position!), and two adult mice. my favorite being the fetal mice, one being dropped in the middle of our bed and one being batted underneath the couch. Stan's building us a bat house(at my request b/c i'll do anything to stop the onslaught of mosquitoes) and i just hope that we can find a place out-of-the-way enough so that Euronymous doesn't catch ANYMORE bats...

happiness is garlic

spent much of the morning weeding and being attacked by various forms of the insect kingdom. now it is raining,which is good for the garden and to stop bugs, so i am pro-this rain.

there were a couple of pea pods! it's very exciting.

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other than that and tons of weeds, not much else is happening yet.

garlic scapes are good, kinda creepy-looking,but, you know. might try making some garlic-scape pesto...

there are so many friggin' ways to use garlic! i love it! garlic-lovers unite!

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." -Tennessee Williams

got the first 'fruits' of the garden,yesterday. 2,yes 2 radishes. i hate radishes. but they grew! and Jake likes them.
the pumpkins have sprouted!
i'm excited about the dahlia bulbs that someones gave Jake. they are actually doing pretty well! it's an exciting mystery since they can look a thousand different ways,and these are rumored to be red!
raspberry bush transplants also happened.
as well as mom building a small rock wall around the lilies and other random flower-bed, spidzer mom.

rock gardening 2009

planted about 10 pumpkin plant yesterday. one couldn't really imagine the amount of rocks just below the surface! it was crazy-hard.

also found,when loosening the dirt in the last two rows that sunflowers from last years seeds have planted themselves! this is very exciting. now i just need to be careful not to squish them. and i hope that they are the red ones. i saved a million of the regulars, but the red ones were incredibly hard to extract/find the seeds on and i like red...

it's not so windy today,but kinda freezing.

i'll wait for the temperature to go out and finish preparing the final pieces of garden,then i have to decide what to actually plant there...