What good is a garden if you are not feasting from it come harvest season? We are, and have been in harvest season for some time people. I kind of got involved in a major project the last few weeks so the garden was a bit neglected, of course it got watered... this is not the kind of criminal neglect that some of the amateur gardeners out there are use to laying on their rookie plots.. I'm talking about the general maintenance... the gentle eye monitoring progress, the constant harvesting and finger tinting that comes with supper preparation. Me, i was high up on a ladder fighting hurricane winds protecting an investment so to say.
A garden is an investment, but more of a lifestyle investment. Many people put more money in a garden than food they get out of it if you look at the raw economics of it, given your time and all. But time spent in a garden is good time, a kind of Zen peace, a footprint model on how to live the good life. Less trips to the produce store means less passes through the salty snack food isle.
Tonight i made chili and when i got to the part where it asked for a can of tomatoes, and i had none, for a moment i thought i was in trouble... and then i realized i had many dozen ripe tomatoes all over the place. My problem was solved before i even knew i had it... i solved that problem i would have in the fall last spring... pretty smart I'd have to say.
This weekend i see a bean and chard feast, a Greek salad and another round of kale chips. Kale chips are pretty good even thought i thought i hated them before... it was the people making them i hated only because i wanted to learn how to make a cob house and when i got there hippies were making kale chips and very happy about that i might add. I saw it as a blow to progress, and i also saw kale as an inedible shade creating menace. i have met many people who claim to love kale, only to later dig out mounds of brown juiced soggy kale from the crisper. Oil and salt and spice that kale and bake it to a fine crisp (don't fucking burn it) and it's like that tasty seaweed you can get in your fine asian markets, minus the radiation. It was only a nuclear reactor spilling into the ocean... what could possibly go wrong. That's why i am against Nuclear energy... as a human that naturally fucks things up i like to look ahead at my losses. When this goes pear shaped what do i lose? But remember we live in a world where the economy, or some shallow views of it, rule the day. Maybe if people could go to space and look at the earth as an entity a light might go one and they might think "holy shit, let's not fuck this up".
Did i just go off on another one of those tangents? When shit get's you down and you start felling the hate walk away, find your love in your hear let it stay. Ahh lyrics, my bible.
And we've got to get back to the garden...
I think this is a melon... after those bastard slugs murdered my first round of squash/ melon's, because of course i let them... i wasn't out there @ 3am in a killing frenzy, i was stupidly trying to live my life... that won't happen again. Anyhoo it's getting late in the season so i did this:
I pinched off all of the extra flowers from the plant... the idea being, let's try and bring a few of these melons home. Never mind trying to produce 30 melons just let me sink my fangs into a few. For example, as i spoke of before, i believe i spent $3.99 on this plant from the local Portland nursery. I knew it was late and the garlic was coming to an end in this part of the garden so it was kind of a hail mary pass. The question is: Will i get a melon from this plant? Cause i could get a melon at the store, one that i chose for less than that. A minor economic question that deserves consideration, but for me plants are my pets, just as squirrels are my nemesis... the time i spend gardening is as good for my soul as a $15 yoga class or a $25 hockey game.. they are just all different.
I take it personally when things in the garden don't pan out... as Rodney once said "i go down with my ships".. like a true captain. What is life without passion? Remember blind rage is just misdirected passion, or perhaps passion that is politically incorrect to flow with. Speaking of that, isn't politically correct one of those things that makes no sense? Everything is incorrect about politics, so to be politically correct would be wrong... right?
Little hot Thai chili peppers have a king hell fire to them... i guess i should figure out a way to dry some of these little reds. My kids have a thing about hot peppers... my bad.. they love broccoli however because no fucking hammerhead has ever told them kids shouldn't like broccoli.
Speaking of broccoli i am getting some in now, after that bastard squirrel ate my whole plants i had to start fresh again with a Portland Nursery special. I have definitely not got my money's worth yet but then again broccoli can go long into the season... we shall find out what this Oregon fall brings us.
Soon the maple tree will shed it's leaves and i will mulch them into the clay and triple mix soil that i have in an effort to make it better. It takes a long time to get your garden soil just right, that's why it's best to not move every 5 years, but every negative has it's positives. In the end it's all just memories and the memories are of the great yields one has from season to season.
A garden is an investment, but more of a lifestyle investment. Many people put more money in a garden than food they get out of it if you look at the raw economics of it, given your time and all. But time spent in a garden is good time, a kind of Zen peace, a footprint model on how to live the good life. Less trips to the produce store means less passes through the salty snack food isle.
Tonight i made chili and when i got to the part where it asked for a can of tomatoes, and i had none, for a moment i thought i was in trouble... and then i realized i had many dozen ripe tomatoes all over the place. My problem was solved before i even knew i had it... i solved that problem i would have in the fall last spring... pretty smart I'd have to say.
This weekend i see a bean and chard feast, a Greek salad and another round of kale chips. Kale chips are pretty good even thought i thought i hated them before... it was the people making them i hated only because i wanted to learn how to make a cob house and when i got there hippies were making kale chips and very happy about that i might add. I saw it as a blow to progress, and i also saw kale as an inedible shade creating menace. i have met many people who claim to love kale, only to later dig out mounds of brown juiced soggy kale from the crisper. Oil and salt and spice that kale and bake it to a fine crisp (don't fucking burn it) and it's like that tasty seaweed you can get in your fine asian markets, minus the radiation. It was only a nuclear reactor spilling into the ocean... what could possibly go wrong. That's why i am against Nuclear energy... as a human that naturally fucks things up i like to look ahead at my losses. When this goes pear shaped what do i lose? But remember we live in a world where the economy, or some shallow views of it, rule the day. Maybe if people could go to space and look at the earth as an entity a light might go one and they might think "holy shit, let's not fuck this up".
Did i just go off on another one of those tangents? When shit get's you down and you start felling the hate walk away, find your love in your hear let it stay. Ahh lyrics, my bible.
And we've got to get back to the garden...
I think this is a melon... after those bastard slugs murdered my first round of squash/ melon's, because of course i let them... i wasn't out there @ 3am in a killing frenzy, i was stupidly trying to live my life... that won't happen again. Anyhoo it's getting late in the season so i did this:
I pinched off all of the extra flowers from the plant... the idea being, let's try and bring a few of these melons home. Never mind trying to produce 30 melons just let me sink my fangs into a few. For example, as i spoke of before, i believe i spent $3.99 on this plant from the local Portland nursery. I knew it was late and the garlic was coming to an end in this part of the garden so it was kind of a hail mary pass. The question is: Will i get a melon from this plant? Cause i could get a melon at the store, one that i chose for less than that. A minor economic question that deserves consideration, but for me plants are my pets, just as squirrels are my nemesis... the time i spend gardening is as good for my soul as a $15 yoga class or a $25 hockey game.. they are just all different.
I take it personally when things in the garden don't pan out... as Rodney once said "i go down with my ships".. like a true captain. What is life without passion? Remember blind rage is just misdirected passion, or perhaps passion that is politically incorrect to flow with. Speaking of that, isn't politically correct one of those things that makes no sense? Everything is incorrect about politics, so to be politically correct would be wrong... right?
Little hot Thai chili peppers have a king hell fire to them... i guess i should figure out a way to dry some of these little reds. My kids have a thing about hot peppers... my bad.. they love broccoli however because no fucking hammerhead has ever told them kids shouldn't like broccoli.
Speaking of broccoli i am getting some in now, after that bastard squirrel ate my whole plants i had to start fresh again with a Portland Nursery special. I have definitely not got my money's worth yet but then again broccoli can go long into the season... we shall find out what this Oregon fall brings us.
Soon the maple tree will shed it's leaves and i will mulch them into the clay and triple mix soil that i have in an effort to make it better. It takes a long time to get your garden soil just right, that's why it's best to not move every 5 years, but every negative has it's positives. In the end it's all just memories and the memories are of the great yields one has from season to season.
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