Summertime will end when it's over

My tomato plants are stomping balls... trying to focus on the positive and not mention the "S" word... Let me tell you a fine heartwarming story.  Lets say there was this guy Mr. Schnrub... and say Mr. Schnrub went to Home Depo to pick up some bamboo stakes for garden support, because Mr. Schnrubs'  wife Mrs. Screetch likes to think tomato cages and hockey sticks are ugly... anyhoo we are getting off topic.  Schnrub goes into the store with a pack of maniac children to grab the bamboo, and notices one stack seems a bit fatter, so he just grabs that one, out of natural habit and checks out.

It's not until he is in the backyard later that he realises he bought 9 packages of bamboo for the low low price of one... they were all just taped together... Schnrub went looking for the receipt to rectify the system but ran into a beer, and then another, and next thing you know he was giving lectures to the local wives on "neat ways to stake your peas"... he gave away a lot of bamboo that day.

Mr. Schnrub had no bamboo left when i was poking around looking for some. Being a man who discovered that his tomato plants are killing it, i was in need of stakes.  Enter happy Sam... one of the guys on the other side of the street.  Actually back up to the other day when i was tying the grape vine up the telephone pole with my dwindling twine collection, and i lost the tail end of my twine collection... gone somewhere into the soul of a healthy vine.  Happy Sam is always happy to help out... Hell i still have his tree saw and he is loving my presence.. I ask him for bamboo stakes and twine... he comes up huge with the biggest smile on his face... he had twine in the trunk of his car and the motherload secret.  Earl has bamboo.. he gave me a few stakes from Earls plants.  Earl had planted the bamboo as a bit of a privacy wall but now the forest was descending... so when i went to ask Earl if he had any surplus Bamboo his face lit up and asked me if i wanted to prune for him... pretty much the answer i was hoping for.  Harvest your own Tomato stakes.  Bamboo is amazing stuff... I've never gardened it, but i was a bit intrigued.  Considering how expensive bamboo stakes are, i had visions of going to the Farmers market selling "artesian tomato stakes" at a grossly inflate price.  The selling point would be that these artesian tomato stakes have a series of 1/2 inch leave stock stems which will help to maintain twine line verdical from installation to harvest.  It's funny when you start dealing with sticks... you get a full plant specimen and you cut it down to what you need, and then for the first time, when presented with options you realize the possibilities... the kind of thought pattern that can really throw you into one of those "why are humans so fucking stupid mind tirades"... and then you snap out of it and remember to BE the change you would like to see.

But really a fine moment in community.  I was faced with driving a car out to a store to buy something when i realized i could harvest a better version of what i needed from my neighbours backyard doing him a service as well.  One of my aliases by the name of Ziep Poberson has an album cover titled "everything you ever need you already have", he never made the music, but the music is right there... the answer is learn how to find it, or recognize when it is there.

So i guess I spent the day sorting the tomatoes with a sidebar into custom stake building.  It's true i did break out my high powered radial arm saw to make the cuts... i was using the clippers but we were getting stress fractures on the bamboo walls...and the saw kicks ass.  Tomatoes like to collpase on themseoves... well they probably don't actually like to but they do as a result of gravity.  Stake out the branches finding a balance between space and light and the future. The plants in the pots are so thick i had to find new places for some of them, which i had having eyeballed the sunspace on this new land i farm.

Speaking of tomatoes, my old Man Garden took 10 or so new runt tomato plants that the good people at Home Hardware on Commercial drive gave to Gardener Pete.  They charged him for stakes but figured that the tomatoes are kind of late so better to get them out of the store and into the ground somewhere and hope for the best. I think if they get regular regimented watering they will produce some fruit... you never know... one may receive a nice Indian summer (hot september-Mid October).  Once those tomatoes get moving... they like to move it move it!

And i had some of Brian and Ann's tomatoes in a diner today... you see I am on water duty and there were a few ripe tomatoes, so of course i took them.  Was i being greedy taking them?  NO NO NO! This is important... you need to harvest ripe fruit to sent the signal to the plant that it's original mission to reproduce has failed and it needs to make more fruit...  you need to exploit this biological trigger for greater gain in the long haul.  You plant food to eat food... don't be one of those hammerheads who plants food to say they plant food and then have that food go to waste because you just didn't pick it in time.

Harvests sneak up on you... have you bagged your garlic yet?... you better cause it's about to go bad in the ground... get it up and get it drying in the sun, this can garlic your kitchen an provide you for starts for next years crop.

I hum in B... which makes sense now that i see it, and the mouse clicks in F.  I know this because i happen to have a tuner hooked up to the mic on my desk.  Just more facts, take them or leave them.

a tale of 2 gardens

Should we go with some slug killing tips first?  After all, knowledge is power and power corrupts and that's good... right?  Sorry quoting Knockin' Dog songs again... and the song never even got recorded, so it's even more obscure.

So i broke out the slug scissors... you see i inherited about 9 pair of scissors, so i dedicated one of them "slug scissors".  You can just snip the bastards, although some mend and the head half tries to make a getaway.  It works well... you get an effective easy kill, but I'm kind of partial to crushing them on a rock.  You see i like my slug carcasses in one spot because slugs like to carnivore the dead slugs, so if i have all my kills on a rock in a known place then the slugs will then come there to feed on the dead slugs and then whamo! A second round of crushing or snipping.  I'm not crazy about just snipping a slug, say that's on a bean plant, and having it's carcass fall to the base of the bean plant.  The reason for this is because the carcass will just encourage other slugs to come and feed at the base of the bean plant and then of course when that food is done maybe the slug just move on up to the bean plant.  It appears that slugs are creatures of habit... if you see a plant with lots of slug damage in the day then there is a good chance that the slug will be back on that plant in the night.  Come back at night and, as Dad would say "bump them off".

I had a neighbour over who has enlisted me to help with a garden at her aunt's house down the street about 50 blocks... a good bike ride and an excellent destination.  Big yard, shady play area for the kids... all the right things we need for a good time.  She was in my yard the other day to drop off a map shortly after a squirrel ate my whole broccoli plant... i showed her the holes where the peanuts go and what was left of the broccoli.  Her words... "holy shit, i would be seriously pissed" and then "SHE FEEDS THEM!"... and then "you have to get more traps up".  Perhaps my insanity is justified after all... if a loving mother can feel that, then a man gardener is not a savage for thinking the same.

The grey bastard squirrel ate the whole broccoli plant... Hopefully we win our hockey game in Sherwood tomorrow... maybe i will stop at the pond on the way out there to smell the beautiful flowers, hear the birds, feel the sun and take care of other minor business.  You want to be dead sure that your pests don't come back.

So we were at this garden out by 52nd and Woodstock in the fine city of Portland. I of course forgot my camera, but fortunately somebody had a cell phone with a camera so i could take a photo and email it to my desk for the report.  The only problem is that i can't email a photo from a phone... i got into all kinds of strange menus after i tried to change "2" into "@".  I'm a natural Luddite... do people actually have small enough fingers to type on those slide out keyboards?  I'd rather become proficient on the mandolin.

OK back to the garden... Apparently this garden has been a garden for like 60 years... there was a grandfather working the land years ago who wasn't shy about dousing the soil with chemical herbicides and insecticides...  Old school like.  I remember my father actually had DDT for his garden, but he didn't really use it being a man of cautionary paranoia, and a fan of peregrine falcons as well.   I remember he did say "it works really well".  Here's to hoping the soil has returned to a more "organic" nature... apparently they have been working the land for a decade (chemical free), so it's probable that they have eaten all the toxins through the garden vegetables.  Have no fear... there will be no shortage of toxins in the future... shall we say all elements (air, earth, water and tire fires) will be ripe with toxins.  It's is a guarantee, make no mistake, in fact the economy dictates that it must be so.  There is nothing you can do, but you should still grow food... it's a good think to know... things might collapse... it might come in handy.

The soil in this garden is a dream for sure... beautiful stuff.   Old Clay Robertson's cement garden has a long way to go, but fortunately Robertson has the will to change the land. They have added a lot over the years, and I'm sure the tilling and growing of roots for the past 60 years has been excellent.  I did a fair bit of weeding in this beautiful soft soil and then started to tend an old neglected lilac tree by the garden, and then i threw in some beans and did some solid pruning on the tomato plants (cutting away the lower and browning tomato leaves to help keep disease at bay).  This garden is up and running pretty good... tomatoes booming, beans a blasting, grapes and raspberries beets, lettuce.  I think its a matter they they are busy so more people tending can help assure the garden will get the best care.

It was really nice to see a garden not so fucking savaged by squirrels.  No holes beside all the plants, no chews, no peanut shells, no unearthed seedlings dying in the hot sun.  It was like a dream garden, big and open and full of sun, just remove the little weeds around the big plants and let them roll.  We put a few bags of compost soil around the plants for nutrients and further soil amendment and it was all good. Grow plants rather than the fighting pests to keep plants alive.  I looked into some pepper spray to put on the plants so the ass hole squirrels won't eat them, it was pretty pricey stuff at the high end nursery, so i will try a SR jones special pepper concoction.

Make a pepper spray by mixing 1 tsp. of mild liquid detergent, 1 gal. of water and 1 small bottle of hot pepper sauce. Mix these ingredients in a gallon jug, then transfer to a spray bottle. Spray this mixture on plants.

A watched garden seems to not grow

Kind of like that watched pot will never boil thing.  Of course it's all rubbish...  a pot on the heat will boil at the same rate whether it is watched or not... being watched has no affect on the equation.  The watching is not stealing heat energy away from the aqueous dihydrogen oxide.  It is the perspective... the impatience of the observer... the person who wants so much for something to happen and happen quickly that they perceive that it is not happening and never will.

I was away from the garden for a week and upon my return i noted how everything has grown so much.  You often don't notice these things day to day but week to week is another matter.  I also noticed that the weeds got a foothold and began competing, and that new slug damage is clear and evident, and clearly the squirrels have been having a free and easy good time in my absence.

I spent a good day weeding... good for the soul, i believe i have explained that before.  Labour that goes on and seems to be going nowhere, but then when you step back an see the big picture you realize you have accomplished a lot.  We need to see that in our lives.

It's 12:35 am, and i will shortly go out for a slug murdering session... word has it that there is a guy in the neighbourhood who talks and laughs to himself in the middle of the night with a head lamp on... i wonder if it's me?  Kind of fits my description, but kind of appears more "crazy" than the "forward thinking" angle i see through my lens.

I slashed a squirrel off the fence with a hockey stick after the bastard bit off a cluster of blueberries from one of my duke blueberry plants.  Some new squirrels have moved in since the last ones seemed to have (sing it with me...) Disappeared!

On the good news front it seems like 2 of the broccoli have made it out of critical condition, and the peas are producing wonderfully... carrots and beets are strong and the berries are coming in.  Things to worry about are...  some of the beans by the back fence are under savage slug attack as is the chard. The melon is now an ex melon and the squash and zucchini aren't really thriving, but that could be an arctic weather phenomenon.

The tomatoes really took off and i had to do a fair bit of tying them up. There are flowers and small tomatoes, the only real problem is the usual... ass hole squirrel burying peanuts (put out by the idiot neighbour) in the planters the tomatoes are in thus causing root damage and hindering growth.  I missed a hockey game in Sherwood on Sunday and a chance to increase the Sherwood squirrel population by one... crimminy.   Perhaps this is getting out of control even my kids are having a blast at the idea of buying me a carved wooden squirrel to haunt me at night... they think it's funny... wait a minute... perhaps i could get the brain damaged neighbour a wooden squirrel carving and perhaps that might fill some void, where perhaps she might come around and agree to go and live in a heavily supervised group home... worth a shot i say.

Just back from a slug run and i caught a massive snail devouring a bean leaf... smashey smashey... i bagged a few slugs as well.

Probably time for a second planting of beans... did i mention i threw in another rhubarb, and it is doing well... slugs snails and squirrels don't seem to have a taste for rhubarb.

Late night gardening

Late night gardening is a great time for gardening, no scorching sun, peaceful and you see what's going on.  Sure there is the odd accidental stomp to a good plant that became randomly placed in the wrong spot as a result of a whole series of errors with their accompanying salvage techniques... but you can't win them all.

The good news is that i couldn't find any slugs in the garden... and of course that is the bad news as well.  i know there are a significant amount of juvenile slugs in the runt, bolting and insanely planted lettuce.  I mean, what kind of a moron draws a hockey team's logo in the dirt with random lettuce seeds and tries to call it a victory salad?  Let's call a spade a spade, it is a failure salad!  It is a fertile slug colonization ground... a safe haven which they can use to attack the rest of the garden.  And there is dumb ass in the kitchen sink thumbing through each little lettuce leaf to make sure it is slug free for 45 minutes to make a salad nobody really had any interest in eating.  It's amazing, i know these things but yet i walk into failure time and time again... isn't that the definition of insanity?  To repeat the same failure year after year?

OK so I'm insane... i mean we all are, I just happen to be one of the few who can admit it and break it down in a blog or 3.  Failure is a great ally of course, and not the toxic mind freeze that our fickle society makes it out to be.  i have a song out called "failure" or "I am a failure" as it appeared on the album "The ocean is life", that has caused me some problem in  discussions with people over the idea of "negativity".  I don't find it negative to point out failures and go over why losses happen, rather, i find that positive.  As well i find assessing a failure as a success because you tried, but yet failed to see the big picture, but you are a good person, and you are feeling a little achy and tired now, and perhaps given time able to shift the pieces of the puzzle another way so that the story reads YOU DID NOTHING WRONG...  I find that annoying.

So after not finding any slugs in the back vegetable garden, i went to the front yard where i did a significant amount of weeding today... berry gardens, tomatoes, poppies, grapes and a stack of rogue roses always ready to stick me and hogging up some good blueberry growing turf.  Out there i killed a few massive slugs, and half a dozen snails.  It was pretty good... always good to bump off garden pests that start with the letter "S".  This no killing thing is a bit flawed... a perfect example of how absolutism is bad for anything.  Extremists i like,  absolutists have too many barriers in their mind.  Killing is bad... but what if you are killing an invasive species... if you could kill all the pine Beatles that are destroying forests, would you do it?  Would you kill zebra muscles if you could stop them from wreaking havoc in the great lakes?

A crazy person sent me a note about living with squirrels... it was cut out from a newspaper, how gibberish like this gets published i don't know... It starts out by saying squirrels will not be thwarted... I disagree!  If you mean to say that if you thwart a squirrel,  another squirrel will move in to it's territory to start doing it's thing, and then you will have to thwart it... and so on and so on... that i could see as accurate... but i like the sport of a good thwart.  So the article goes on to say that you can have a squirrel feeder away from the area where you don't want them... WTF?  And then it goes on to list things a squirrel likes to eat...  A pine cone filled with my organic peanut butter? and then the person who got paid to write this pap finishes with "Make it as easy as possible for the squirrel to access their feeder"...  "THEIR FEEDER" ! What's next i have to sleep on the hardwood floor cause a hard done by rat could use a good sleep in my bed! These are solutions to my problem?  Silly me, i thought my problem was that the neighbour who should be living in a heavily supervised group home but rather is living with a family of squirrels and feeding them peanuts which they are burying and digging up killing all kinds of plants... Oh but wait, we have a new solution!  Hold the fucking presses, I'll just put a new squirrel feeder out there... then i can start paying for the things the squirrels bury in my garden... what a great solution!

When i was a kid, dad put up a bluebird nest box in the yard at the cottage and we got a tree swallow pair nesting.  It was great to watch the birds being raised, and then one day a red squirrel climbed up the pole chewed through the entrance and ate the young birds... let's knock this squirrel sympathy bullshit off.

My plants are coming back since the dedicated slug murder started earlier this week... there are plenty of slugs in the pacific northwest, they will just be an endangered species in my garden.

One reader wrote in and mentioned a dedicated pair of slug scissors... excellent idea, a precise quick snip... saves you having to grab them before crushing them with a spade, cause you get that slime that is hard to get off your hand, and it is toxic, and it might have salmonella.  I have also been hunting out slug hiding spots during peak sun... under rocks, under planters.

I think i might have messed with a bee unfortunately.  By my chard i saw a few slug holes (always look for the plants that are being decimated).  I couldn't find a slug but there was a burrow at the base of the plant so i kind of fucked with the hole and then i heard a bee zoom by me.  One of the things recommended to do is to get rid of your "lawn" and plant plants that will give bee's natural habitat.  Most bees are solitary creatures that live in holes in the ground... i will be more careful next time.  But since we are on lawns, the idea of a lawn started as signal of British upper class wealth. Having land meant that you controlled power, and could waste perfectly useful crop fields for a useless product that had nothing to recommend it other than it looked good. Lawns also take an inordinate amount of water... to waste that much water is another signal of wealth. I would say, he who has the most bees to pollinate the crops is the wealthy one.

What to do what to do...There is a bean poking up... I'll buy my lettuce from the farmers market and focus on beans, peas and tomatoes...  Cary, who had the slug scissor idea has also offered to give me tips on what to grow in Oregon... perhaps we should take this show on the road and check out her garden... can't hurt.

Back to the garden

We do need to get "back to the garden"  and off of our various rage tangents... not to underestimate the power of a good rage tangent, but it occurred to me the other day as i was frothing on about the squirrels, it was in fact the slugs that were hammering away on the melon, zucchini, peppers, chard, strawberries and other lesser vegetables and fruits.  It's the problem with rage gardening, you become too focused on one thing, which creates opportunities for others.

I have been on a fairly aggressive slug killing frenzy for the last few nights.  There are two tuna tins countersunk into the garden full of beer, there are 2 melon rinds sitting as bait and i go out every couple of hours into the night to squash and kill.  As a bonus when you crush a slug on a rock it then becomes food for other slugs, or a decoy so you can easily go out and crush it turning 1 carcase into two.

I also ripped down a lot of the vegetation at the back of the garden as it made for a nice shady area for the slugs to hide out in the day and use as a base to attack the garden.  I will need to put a barrier up to the overgrown and unattended yard that is kitty corner to the garden... in time.

A classic case of failure being good, or at least the threat of failure being good.  It all came down to the broccoli... you see as a pacific north west gardener, broccoli had always been one of my most productive crops... in fact i only threw 3 in the garden because i didn't want to overdue it... as of now one is dead and the other 2 are on life support, so then i thought well perhaps i will try squash and melon (farther south)... might work.  But the slugs went to town and woke me up... yes this is war... the melon might not survive, i think the zucchini might.  Now that I'm an active participant killing 3-4 slugs an hour into the night for the past 5 nights, i am seeing a rebound of the plants.  With decoys and traps, a headlamp and a jovial spirit of trash talking slugs as you terminate their existence, a Man gardener can have a good time rounding the corner on a problem he has.

Too much work? Nonsense!  All of life's reoccurring problems are that way, and they take regimented discipline to overcome.  Probably why religion works for some.. stay focused, do what needs to be done.  I trust myself to do the right thing, and in the event i do the wrong thing i trust myself to find my way out of it.  I almost used the word "weasel" instead of "find"... it was a little joke given that weasels are farmer pests, but the weasel comes across as dishonest, or "snake like", when in reality if you fuck up you need to make amends... you need to right the wrongs and you don't accomplish that on sly actions.

Peas are doing well, and it might be a tomato kind of town... in bad news category we have this... spinach is bolting... little runt spinach plants bolting.  Is it the clay, or are they two densely planted? I think it's hard to get water in clay soil so whatever the signal is (stress of some sort), the plant thinks it's a goner so it tries to make seed with it's dwindling time on earth.

It always pays to be a patient man planting... space the dam seeds out.  Give each plant some real estate to live thrive and survive.  If i'm the man i say i am, i will have to thin tomorrow... meaning i must pull out plants so that each plant has space to thrive... if i fail to do that then i am a sissy.

Red onions have taken a fair hit... squirrel issue i believe. Garlic might need better drainage but seems to be doing well... no garlic has yet to try to flower.

I filed in a whole pile of random beans... a package of seeds to be exact the other day.  I just went random... i avoided the random squirrel holes.  In reality, I'm trying to find out what will work in this garden.  Beans, i would think will do well, but i have been wrong before.  At the same time i have been putting in some pretty big efforts on the night defending lately.  It was about 45 minutes ago i was in the garden... i shall go out there now and lets do a tally.

OK these are the facts.. 1 am: It's rained since last time i was out there, and i found one massive slug on the melon rind and rather than crush it i tossed it into the beer filled tuna dish.  i then did the rounds and when i came back the slug has escaped and was heading towards my melon plant that is on life support.  So i crushed that slug on a rock and i am now dead sure it won't be a problem anymore.

it's a strange life but somebody has to live it.

Is it gardening blog night?

Who knows what night is is around here with respect to blog updates... The super Robertson entity is like a random glob moving in various directions.  Be able to laugh at yourself: that's my advise... if you want another hot tip I can give you "don't spend money you don't have".  I got that one from a 3 minute commercial from a radio in a bar, but i distilled it for you... the add was kind of strange... some dude with an annoying clear voice going over various ways in which you can go into obvious financial ruin.  It was strange for sure, you see i set out to try to see the third period of game 2 of the Stanley cup finals... not an easy thing to do in this town... there was a playoff basketball game that some people seemed pretty concerned with... but i did end up finding a TV that was in a room with  blasting rock music and full of dirty tables, but the god damn hockey game was on. No sound just loud radio...  At one point, i believe a Nickleback song was blasting... something about "everybody wants to be a rock star", and Pierre McGuire was talking, and for the first time in my life i found myself longing to hear what he had to say.  Write that one down.

Earlier, our family did eat a full hearty Victory salad... the one i planted in the garden back when i was trying to put spirit omen energy into the biosphere for the Canucks to come up big, but clearly my calibrations were off a bit and the energy went to Vancouver's formidable opponent the LA Kings, who just went up 2-0 in the finals.  I tell you one thing, watching hockey in Portland is almost harder than keeping a peanut fed squirrel out of a peaceful garden.

OK let's talk garden, since this is a gardening blog, or a Man Gardening blog for that matter... remember good living philosophies and Hockey and omens for that matter are all part of Man living well.

What do we have in this photo:  It is a stake i made from a stick to hold a plant line for a row of beets... and it is sprouting!

You see a tree branch had fallen in the front and i needed stakes for plant lines so i snapped off that and stuck it in the ground.  Now it is sprouting... what can we learn from that? 1) SR is very consistent with the water hose. It is really the single most factor that determines how well a garden will grow... if you can sprout a stick that you stuck in the ground to hold twine, then , well you are not bucking for the bronze in the watering competition.  And the other thing... 2) I would say the power of life is strong...  life finds a way to live, cause that's what it does.  In some ways it's good news with respect to the massive, ill fated, short sighted, money grubbing manor in which the human population lives.  Life will go on... it will just be lacking genetic diversity, and clean water, filled with pollution and random mutations.

This next photo is a good one... it's of a little girl in her pyjamas  waving a hockey stick in the air shouting threats to the local squirrel population.  A most excellent way to start the morning.  I always make sure to tell the kids not to grab the squirrels, because they are swine bastards and will turn tail and bite you... much better to try to hit them  with something firm.

At one time there were 2 Kohlrabi plants here now there are one.  I believe what happens is that the brain damaged neighbour puts out the peanuts and the squirrels grab them and look for a plant to  bury them by (as a marker) and then later when the squirrel wants a peanut and it's too fucking stupid to walk back to the never ending supply then it just digs up the plant and has a peanut.  It can bury the peanut by the plant and keep the plant alive cause it knows it needs a marker, but yet it's such an ass hole when it wants to dig it up... perhaps that's it... may as well kill the plant so we don't think there is a peanut there.  At least a crow looks and knows it is evil... these squirrels try to pretend they are all cute wining over the hearts of the mentally challenged.

It's important to remember that if we did go back to the garden, as Joni Mitchell sang about in the song Woodstock, vermin are really the big threat.  sure sure, easy to forget in our new world order of oil spills and insane companies spraying the earth with toxins... that's just a money thing, when it's a food thing one has to remember everybody likes to eat.  talk to a chicken farmer about a fox and see how much sympathy he has toward the cute fox.

What about snails and slugs?

Hot damn it's 1:13 am, time for our fearless leader to get out there with a head lamp and murder some invertebrates.  It actually looks pretty clear out there... nothing eating the broccoli, but then that large snail i found loitering in the rocks is no longer... aloha sucker!  I could probably have done a more thorough search but since we have suffered such a high concentration of squirrel plant murder from the terrorist squirrel population i have things oddly planted and since i saw no slugs or pests on any plants before i stepped on a cherry tomato plant, i figured I'd cut my losses.

This is garden with Garlic, peas, greens, roses, tomatoes, strawberries and plum tree (left to right), in the pots are more tomatoes to replace terrorist squirrel murdered plants.

We like our garden, the girls picked a salad tonight and peas will start in a few days... all i need is a red tailed hawk.

Now let's try to focus on the negative...

Never underestimate focusing on the negative.  It's true that good thoughts breed good thoughts and good actions... but it also breeds wordy hammerheads trying to sell you self help manuals.  Sorry, just calling it like i see it... there is always some fuck up who can't get their head out of their own ass chirping off about how to live right, and you find yourself thinking if you would just shut up i would live better instantly.

So the negative, and focusing on it as a positive.  True story:  I was at a tree planting camp (justifiable for a gardening blog) and i was about to quit a shitty company called Wilderness Reforestation because they had willfully screwed me in many different ways, but part of me wasn't a quitter and that part of me was winning the moral battle that was going on inside my tormented soul.  It was odd because there were 4 of us that were going to quit and my earlier anger with respect to the negative helped the other 3 decide we needed to move on.  Keep in mind we were in Northern Ontario, far the fuck away from anything, in a block of forest, or a block of land that once was a forest and is now, as we say in Portland, stump town. So at the 11th hour i begin waffling with the reason quitting is not an honourable thing to do, when Jason Potts comes over to me (one of the 4) and looks very seriously at me and says "you have to focus on the negative"... so i did and then i quit and then 2 days later i was in another tree planting camp a few hundred miles away in a company called Outland, that was filled with some of the greatest people i had ever met, we had a blast, made great money and made some connections that ended up landing me out west which basically set the stage for everything that has happened in my life for the last 20 years... my wife, my kids, my bands, my gardens.. here i am.

And so are the fucking squirrels.  Lets put it this way.. i have a hockey game in Beaverton next week and a few squirrels will look to find their new home out there at that time.  It won't be the easy life they are use to, but they are cunning little bastards, maybe they can survive out there.  It's not really the squirrels fault, it's the idiot neighbour's fault...  she feeds them non stop peanuts, lets them nest in her house... they are just like "shit man I'm so stuffed, well we better bury some of these peanuts in the crazy guys garden just for safe keeping... think we can waddle over there?"

As a result I have been over planting... it seems like 40% of the plants get dug up as a result of "collateral damage" due to peanut burying.  Why you should never feed animals, birds a possible exception (habitat loss), as they say in the wild a fed bear is a dead bear.  the reality being that if you feed a bear it will grow accustom to the easy food and become a menace and then rangers will come in and shoot the bear because it is mingling  in human territory and has become "dangerous" to precious stupid humans.  And it ends up dead, which is not ideal at all.

If the people who write for the show portlandia ever need a concept for a show look no further than some of the fucking loons around here that feed and harbour squirrels.  It's vintage shit... crazy too, i mean sure squirrels are cute, to some, but if you look in the city records of house fires you will notice that many a fires have been started by squirrels chewing wires causing houses to burn down... and perhaps a neighbours house too.

As expected, the marigold experiment didn't maintain the success it had in the first few days and we need to now focus on the negative.

The positive is that i replanted the bald spots with some of the many random "starts" i planted in the little plastic planters i have accumulated over the years.  I laid down a line of leeks, I collected a cash of Kohlrabi, i banged in a future bushel of beets, i tucked in three tomatoes. 

It's time for beans, but I'm running out of room... i think that means pole beans... I have always been a bush bean kind of guy, my father was a bush bean man, and as the song that never got finished goes "sooner or later we all turn into our fathers".  In fact the classic Dad vs Squirrel or Chipmunk epic battles are still to this day some of the greatest childhood memories... Dad would shut down the rodent and be just a glowing, and then the rodent would get around Dad's system, and Dad would be fuming, and then dad would adjust the system, watch the rodent fail and be in a state of glee until the rodent found a new way around the problem, which would then stimulate Dad to spring back into action.  Lets put it this way: 3:00 AM Dad is awakened by a chipmunk rolling acorns in the ceiling above his head at the family cottage... his son is then awoken by some serious pacing and the words "that bloody S.O.B!"... one of the rare times in my life where i actually liked to be woken in the middle of the night.  In the end there was sheet metal all around the area where the outer wall meets the roof of the cottage.

By the way, saw a neat potato planting idea a few streets over.  It looks like the dug a tough and planted the potatoes in there which will make for easier "mounding" in the future.  if you are going to "build up" why not start low.

Tomatoes: i hear through a "friend of a friend of a friend" (name the song lyric and win a 5 cd Canada Lynx records CD pack) that you should pinch off flowers of a small tomato plant so it gets bigger.  What the hell, i did it to my cherry tomato and my Roma tomato.. they say to do that with the blueberries too for the first few years but i just never had the heart.