son of a gun

I had such great hopes for this here blog, funny how the summer can just slip away in a blur of events, and then flinchers rob your ass and stomp the shit out of your garden killing all your seedlings to where you get to the point you think there is nothing to write about but savage failure. But there is always a lesson.

Lets face it, life ain't fair in the natural world... it's a stomp or be stomped game out there... not really but i just like the word stomp. Who cries for the fly that hits the spider web and soon ceases to exist? And in the front yard a bald faced hornet and a yellow jacket are locked in a death battle (my money is on the hornet)... sometimes they both lay stunned for a while on the ground waiting for a bare foot Robertson to take a nasty foot sting. And then life goes on... i bet you there are a few hundred other insects in the area that are just blending into the surroundings, and nobody knows that they are there... these guys don't dig the "stomp or be stomped" vibe... they are more of a "why don't i just blend into the background and do my feeding" kind of insect.

fuck it... what is positive?

I have some nice sunflowers in so what to do?

You see with all of the Salmon feasting that has been going on on the west coast these days we have been having a lot of dinner parties that feature a BBQ salmon and in one of the dishes that arrived was a salad with sunflower sprouts. It was insanely good... so i shall save the seeds and make me some sunflower sprouts this fall. My father made alph-alpha sprouts when we were young, i will carry the torch with home grown sunflower sprouts. My method will be to put the seeds in a small layer of water and let them sprout and then eat the bastards... beware of mold... don't freak out over it but be conscious and observe as a good scientist would.

My plantings that got stomped by tomato and corn flinchers might have been for naught as my neighbour in the garden, lets call her "old cook old sport" to keep names hidden, planted some bock choi and it is small and is starting to flower... she was very distraught... I am wondering if the declining daylight hours are sending a signal to the plants to flower and seed now because the end is near... which is most excellent for some horticulture experiments... My earlier spinach advise might have to be revised, but time is the hunter on that one.

My meeting with Old Cook old sport worked out for the best however as she has no tolerance for wasted food. I have kind of been scared of her lately because the dandelions have been building up in my garden and she has a low tolerance for weeds.. she is on the case and will always point out the fact that i need to weed... i agree.
But none the less in an effort to turn her attention away from my bean, pea, tomato, celery, beet and weed pile i started to point out other neglected gardens and she went bananas... "this is bad you have to pick it now or it will get worse" she cawed... "they wasting money" she exasperated. It was much like having a cheerleader urging me to pilfer neglected gardens.. she even did some of the picking. As a matter of fact she wouldn't not let me pick food from neglected gardens... i loaded up on some neglected peas that were rotting in a pile (but once shelled were fine) to add to my curry, i flinched tomatoes from a garden that looked like it hadn't been cared for in a month (many were on the ground rotting). So there is me loading up with old cook old sport saying things like "you need to pick, it bad for plant you need to take and eat now".... it was king of like one of those old cartoons where the devil was in the characters ear telling him what to do and why to do it, and being a victim of flinching i was weary, but being a member of a garden for 3 years i have witnessed the incredible waste of food that rots into the ground because people get busy or leave town. My policy on this is maintenance... if a plant is full of ripe fruit and below the plant is rotting fruit it probably means this is a situation of gross neglect and i ask myself the question "if i was a gross neglector what would i want to have happen?", and i realize that i would want to be taught a lesson.... just kidding, kidding because the lesson won't be learned because the neglector doesn't know what they are losing. i never take it all just a few so that less fruit will hit the ground so that fewer slugs will populate the region and balance can return to the garden.

And what about my strawberry failure?

A classic Robertson failure which sees our hero doing maximum labour for a negative return. Before i get going on this you know what pisses me off? the fact that right above me labour as in "the word' has a red line below it saying YOU FUCKED UP.. but i didn't in Canada (Man Country) we spell labor labour... labor has no red line under it... i though i set the god damn preferences to Canadian English. Oh well not to worry... many glaring English mistakes around here anyways. So my neighbour... son of a bitch! neighbour now has a line under it but neighbor doesn't... both of those words should totally have the "u"... there is no countries anymore just corporations so can we fuck this "neighbour" "neighbor" horse shit because i have a story to tell about strawberries... Thank Christ that word isn't spelled strowberries in some American dictionary or i just might lose it completely. So my neighbour had an old laundry tub he was getting rid of and i thought it would make a great planter to keep the strawberries contained as strawberries tend to scatter like a pack of 3 year olds after a chocolate treat, so i lugged this dog out to the garden at great effort to myself and then proceeded to counter sink the bastard which took a whole day of labour from a man with 3 kids a band and hockey playoffs, and the strawberries he enjoyed were probably less than 10. The problems... poor drainage, fucking slugs, strawberries just shoot over the edge and scatter anyways, fucking slugs, loss of prime real estate, fucking slugs... you get the picture... I have money i can buy strawberries what i don't have is an appetite for failure. For the record I'll try some hanging strawberries next year.