spring harvest, Mr. Stingie and some other things

I am loathe to admit that we were at a large "big box" type of store today to load up on milk and other items and one of the things we were looking for was chile powder because i was thinking that chile was the thing to have for dinner, but there was no satisfactory chile powder so we re-planned and i got my head around a BBQ.

And then it was mentioned that we had no vegetables and i had to stop, take a breath and remind the youngins that we were in fact the beneficiaries of a MAN GARDEN.

Spinach, lettuce, beet tops, green onions, broccoli and Swiss chard are always a menu option. Truly amazing how people step into a store and forget where they came from, what they want and what they need. Put that one on your wall.

How to harvest:

Always good to look professional when you go to the garden... you need an aggressive look, a look that Say's "don't fuck with my garden you simple son of a bitch".



Takes me back to my Scarborough roots and getting ready for a road hockey match between the Conlins Road Canada Jays vs. the Bobmar Bobcats... if the game was on Bobmar street and our team walked over from our home turf on Conlins road we felt the need to intimidate before the game begins.

Let the kids worry about crazy old man Robertson in his double Mac attack, all barking on about how good it is that it rained today... it can work to take the focus away from the garden... the proverbial gold.



A good healthy spring harvest for sure, somebody is on the ball as a real man should be. But today's harvest didn't come without it's moments. The other day i allowed a woman to harvest from a Man garden and she apparently found a slug in the lettuce... who knows when and where and how, but for sure they are there. (notice the pro redwood tree in our front lawn). I Harvest lettuce and spinach by the leaf for just such a reason... what you are also doing is thinning and plucking mature leaves from the plants where space is becoming harder to come by. the plants will naturally fill space so if you are in tune with your garden you can have this in mind as you harvest. Again this is an example of the "garden needs love" philosophy and love is knowing what is needed... put that on your fridge in those little magnet letter things... unless of course you went all style on the cheap and got an imitation stainless steel fridge which is non fucking magnetic, which undermines the kitchen, which is the centerpiece and activity hub of the whole damn family unit. Don't cheap out on that shit get a magnetic stainless steel fridge or go old school white because a fridge door is a place for high art and quality reminders like "love is knowing what is needed".

The one leaf at a time plan also gives opportunity for proper inspection of quality and presence of invertebrates. Sitting on one of the leafs i was about to pluck was a hornet that looked at me with those eyes that said "sure i know its Sunday but I'm just aching to sting somebody into next week". The lesson of course is focus and being aware of what you are doing when you are doing it, another beautiful gardening/life metaphor. You need that hornet there because that yellow-man is feeding on the things that are feeding on your man plants, the hornet is your alley in the quest to produce produce. Hey man i just did it... i used the same word as a verb and then a noun... not quite as good as my original rage hero's quote "The fucking fridge is fucking fucked", but perhaps more tasteful... did i just work fridges from a different angle again... Whats the score here MULE... has the Man Nanning blueberry wine eroded my judgment?

I never worry about a wasp or a bee out in the garden... they do what they need to do, and i do what i need to do the main thing being not to grab them or trap them in my clothing. It's when a wasp gets inside the house i start to worry... surely all the signs of armageddon are flashing to the wasps reality telling the wasp "you have to sting what you can, while you can" (for smash). That's what glasses and hardcover books are for... or at least i should say that glasses and hardcover books together have a good secondary function of being able to trap (in a sting proof container) wasps so that they can be released back out to the garden.

And now for the Man gardening tip of the day... your spinach is riding high now, but soon the heat of summer will be too much... it's time to plant beans in that space, it will take a while for the beans to take over but then the spinach will be at the end of it's game and it will be bean time. Nothing beats fresh garden beans, and if you are smart you will have frozen some of your spinach for mis-summer lasagna or curries. And then in mid august you can shock in a few more spinach seeds for a fall harvest which will then again overtake the beans.

OK don't thank me just do it for yourself

and the BBQ... they said you can't BBQ in the rain:

fools



this is the Man BBQ central station... taken in early march... the Magnolia tree hasn't even bloomed and now a good beer brewing hops plant is going ape shit to the left of the Man BBQ station... fully weatherproof so that sissery never gets in the way of a proper BBQ. Always do what you need to do... never let the weather dictate your plans.

Etch that one in stone.