It appears that Americans are gardening more now than they have in the past 10 years. (This is according to a survey conducted and published in the journal Random Musings, Vol. 1, issue 1.) What are we all growing? I think that it’s safe to say that most people are keen to grow their own tomatoes, and I am no exception. I have been wondering what varieties to try.

Last year tomato growers up and down the East Coast of the US suffered mightily by excessively wet weather that led to a tomato disease called BLIGHT.  There are two types: EARLY and LATE. And the name of the this plant disease is pretty misleading. The blights are not the same fungus, but actually two different ones.  Either way, EARLY and LATE BLIGHT are bigtime plant killers that affect both potatoes and tomatoes.

I anticipate that BLIGHT will come again this year. Why? Because it is necessary to take certain garden sanitary precautions to prevent its return. With all the novice tomato growers out there, they are unlikely to bother. If they don’t their ground will harbor blight spores. Which are airborne.

So to protect my crops, I’m looking into preventative measures. For one thing, healthy soil with good drainage. Another is to plant my tomatoes in the sunniest locations available to me.  Finally, I aim to clean out my garden beds and mulch with fresh mulch.  As a last resort, there are organic copper-based anti-fungal sprays which can also protect plants from the blight.

The blight sounds serious and it is serious. Apparently, the great potato famine in Ireland was caused by this wide-spreading destructive fungal infection, as it affects both potatoes and tomatoes alike. Growers beware!

So delightful is the warmer spring air,

as it slips through and under every little gap,

so bright and cheery are

the yellow crocuses in the garden,

the honey yellow  sunshine with its friendly fingers,

the tulips poking through,

their tops are green curled with life and tinged with red like

fingernails they scooped through the ground,

and me with my piles of things

like housework (gah!)

or yardwork (mmmm)

and pausing casually to read

the seed catalogs in the mail.

Yesterday I managed to put more plants into the ground, in spite of the hungry bunny patrol that has once again hopped through and under the fence around the garden. Damn those cute little bunnies!

Apparently they like petunia blossoms, as well as little baby sunflower plants. The “sonic spike” which buzzes every 30 seconds apparently has no effect on bunnies. Well, it was worth a try. I think I might have to go with a hot pepper spray on the ornamentals to deter bunnies. I’ve also started to add a layer of chicken wire around the fence, in hopes of closing up the holes a bit more, making it more challenging for the little critters to enter the garden.

I’d LOVE to be able to just go and do more garden work, but the club where my community garden is located is not yet open full time. It is only open on the weekends until June 22, or thereabouts. So far, I’ve put in 3 varieties of tomatoes (Early Girl, Roma, Yellow Pear), four varieties of basil, three peppers, cucumbers (seeds just sprouted!), sunflowers, petunias, marigolds, cauliflower, watermelon (seeds), green beans, yellow wax beans, and swiss chard (seeds). I’ve filled about two thirds of the space!

I also have eggplant and okra which I’d like to grow, as well as cantaloupe. I also want to add nasturtiums, but don’t have any plants or seeds as of yet. I read that nasturtiums are good for protecting / helping melons. I would really, really, really like to see my melons succeed this year – both cantaloupes and watermelon. As I recall, the bunnies are pretty fond of watermelon vines as well as the tender petunia flowers that they gobbled up so far.

My mind could get full just on garden thoughts alone.

Yet there’s so much more going on in my brain right now. There’s tax issues to be resolved with the city (again?!?). There’s summer camp, which I’m running for two weeks, (one week from now, yikes!). There’s shopping to be done for Carla’s horseback riding camp (she needs some low boots.) There’s the never ending housework — and the house currently is a real wreck. UGH!

There’s so much, I’m overwhelmed. I do wish it was just time to think about the garden and nothing else. There’s also the yard and the hedges, and the gardens at home which need attention. I’d happily give it to them, too, but for the other house work which needs doing.

I also have to get a large amount of book-keeping, billing, and bill paying done for the small biz that I am putatively running. You can’t pay bills if you don’t send out the billing, and you can’t send out the billing if you don’t enter the book-keeping information. And you can’t keep track of bills if you don’t enter the expenses into the computer! ARGH!

Nasturtiums. I need nasturtiums.

It’s here, my week off from work. But I don’t feel happy and relaxed. I feel stressed and pressed for time. I have a bunch of things that I would like to do, and I don’t know where to begin. At the same time, I want to curl up under the blankets and nap all day. At the same time, I want to go see 3 films today, it’s the last day of the Philly Cine Fest. And there’s approximately 75 loads of laundry that need to be done. Because Carla has no clean pants to wear. She’s literally walking around the house with nothing on her lower half. And it is chilly. We had HAIL earlier for dog’s sake. And we’re out of cat food. And there’s meat in the fridge that needs to be cooked into something. And there’s a pile of dishes the size of Miami in the sink. And the living room needs painting. And the garden needs tending. And there are accounts to be balanced. And. And. And. And.

And the kids say I should make crafts with them. And go to the zoo. And. And. And.

And I have my period. And I’m out of tampons.

We’ve decided Enough is Enough!

We’re moving to a small farming community in a rural area. Our new community is cooperatively raising chickens and ostriches for meat. We’ll be helping to grow an all-organic garden for the family’s consumption. I’ll be home schooling the kids, but mainly they’ll be schooling themselves along with the other children who live on the communal property. There are about 5 families already doing this who have kids close in age to Carla and Annie.

Reading books and doing hands-on projects around the farm will be their education. We’ve simply had it with the complexities of life in the city, and dealing with education in a school environment. We’re tired of the daily grind, running around, with meetings at work and school.

Done! We are done with all, and we look forward to our future life of simple, hard work.

Labor Day. September 1. Hard to fathom, but here we are. Not that the summer is technically over, as in, the fall season hasn’t really begun yet, but… well, I cannot deny that in just a few days (and we are counting them down!) school will finally begin again. Thursday.

But before we are launched into that most busy season of the year, of learning once again how to get up early, and be organized, and packing lunches each night before bed, and of homework and working and planning and all that… I’d like to take a little time to reflect on this summer. I’ll punctuate my usual b1tching and complaining with photographic evidence of all that was wonderful this summer.

The summer started for me as no other summer has ever done: with two solid weeks of mayhem, running a summer camp. I’d never run a summer camp before, but I would like to think that it went over as a success. Nobody got (seriously) hurt; no child was lost on a field trip. I don’t even think anyone threw up! In fact, one parent told me this week that when they asked their child what they favorite summer experience was this year, they said it was going to my summer camp program. That’s pretty high praise, really!

Just this week I managed to negotiate not only an increase in pay for camp for next summer, but also retroactive pay for having done camp this summer. This was better than I’d hoped for, really, as the school is pretty strapped for cash, they were not inclined to pay me anything extra for camp at all. I am really proud that I stood up for myself, that I was assertive about what I wanted. I used the word “exploitative” with a straight face.

Really.

July was packed with trips to the O/T, and the happy result of all the shlepping is Annie has mastered using a tripod grasp on pens, pencils, markers, paintbrushes, you name it! She still has some difficulty with opening doorknobs, but then again, our house has some old, sticky and stubborn doorknobs. I think it’s the inconsistency that gets her, too. Sometimes our bedroom door won’t stay shut, and the cats have no trouble at all barging in. Other times, even Carla has trouble getting the door open. “Put your butt into it!” I’m known to holler.

Carla’s big summer accomplishment was banishing her fear of the water and learning how to swim. Now that she knows how, she LOVES it, and has entered the “Watch me!!!!” phase of childhood. I remember this well from my own childhood. It was as though my parents just HAD TO SEE how INCREDIBLE each jump into the pool was, each somersault in the water, each handstand, dive, loop, belly flop, back float, etc., was. Because each trick was incredibly clever and daring and I knew they just HAD TO SEE IT. I don’t grudge her desire to show off her new set of skills. I actually am impressed, and I marvel that she can finally do this. I’ve been trying to convince her for years that it’s really fun to go underwater. But like all of her accomplishments, she did this on her own terms, when she was ready, and in her own way. This is one kid who just won’t be pushed along.

Which is why we didn’t quite get there with my other goal for her: learning to ride a two-wheeler bike. I got her a new bike (shiny! purple! butterflies!) for her eighth birthday, and a new helmet to go with it. She was game to try to learn for a few go-rounds, but after nearly crashing into a picnic table, and falling off a few times, she asked for a break. Then she didn’t want to try again. We’d been practicing this at our swim club: there are big grassy fields where she preferred to learn, and very little traffic. So, of course, once swimming was on the agenda, any thought of wasting time falling to the ground was certainly off the table. So to speak.

As for our other big summer catastrophes, they are all working out in their own ways. Our car was approved to be repaired rather than totalled (YAY!) and will go into the shop tomorrow. It is such a close call that our adjuster suggested we hold off on getting a rental car until we’re sure the body shop will agree to stick to the estimate. Otherwise the costs of a rental might just make this claim go over the edge into the realm of total loss. Yeah, I know, what a pain. But hey, at least no one got hurt (except, of course, the poor deer.)

Being sued by the city was super fun, too. We wriggled out of the (two!) lawsuits, paying a mere $82 per lawsuit, and springing for a certified accountant and company to help us though it. The lawsuits were settled, and our back taxes are filed. I am not sure, however, if all the back taxes are paid at this point or not. We are truely chastened for our flakiness and I sincerely hope that we will be able to file the rest of our taxes in accordance with the normal schedule like anyone else.

Finally, there was the annoying thing of me hurting my ankles. First, I stupidly clonked my left ankle with a hammer while trying to pry up a tent stake, leading to a trip to the ER. I was impressed by how mellow things were at the ER, and it was good to know that my ankle was not in fact broken. A month and half later, I stupidly jumped off a dock into too-shallow water, bruising my left foot while simultaneously badly spraining my right ankle. In spite of my apparent attempts to cripple myself, I can now walk (almost) normally. My left ankle sports a tiny scar where the hammer’s claw scratched it, and my right ankle is only slightly wider than my left. But the main this is: it mostly doesn’t hurt to walk even though going down stairs can sometimes twinge.

This summer was beautiful in many ways. It was wonderful having so much time with my children. They each grew quite a bit, and entertained one another and myself endlessly. They created endless “experiments” by stuffing old socks, string and googly eyes, and drawing their other facial features. These not-sock-puppets are then “charged” by placing them in a slinky, after which time they become basically alive.

I did a fair amount of gardening, but need to remember some important things for next year, if I do in fact try to garden next year. I don’t think I’ll even try for pumpkins next year. The vine borer insects were brutal– and I just don’t think I can avoid them. However, a bit more care on my eggplants might be good: the colorado potato beetles can be controlled if I’d be a little less wimpy about squishing these guys. Better staking will keep my tomatoes high enough that the dumb ground hog can’t chew them. I will put down some kind of animal repellent — it is worth a try, at least! I need to space my plants a little more carefully, too — my basil might be a good companion to my tomatoes, but I shouldn’t squish them so close that the basil doesn’t get sun. I need to add more compost and composted manure to the soil. I don’t think the soil was amended enough this year, nor did I mulch it sufficiently. I think a layer of newspaper would have helped keep the moisture in. A bucket of compost tea would be a good idea, as well. And, finally, I need to remember to start my tomatoes, and watermelon, and any other plants earlier in the season, at home, so I have something good and feisty to set in the ground early on.

This year’s garden, which was twice the size of last years, was ironically much less prolific in its output. I think we’ll go with just one plot next year, unless the kids want to garden again. Poor Annie — her patch produced nothing except one nasturtium blossom! She tried a leaf of nasturtium, and pronounced it good, but too spicy for her tastes. And Carla’s patch did produce a continually leafy lettuce snack… which the bunnies enjoyed tremendously, I’m sure. Her sunflowers were short, but pretty, having been stunted by rapacious japanese beetles that ate all the foliage, while her purple greenbeans were also merely rabbit food. Frustrating gardening this year– enough to give us all second thoughts about doing all that work again next year.

But I will. In fact, I agreed to be the coordinator of the community garden next year. While our co-operatively run swim club is in bad financial straits, we are optimistic that there will be at least one more year for the club to exist. It’s extremely sad that this wonderful place could really be in danger of going out of business after 40+ years. So if having a garden coordinator is helpful at all, maybe that can be my small contribution to the club’s future.

This summer was also a trial period for a new anti-depressant for me, setraline (brand name is Zoloft). It took a while to adjust to it, but for now I think it’s working well. I am not noticing any side effects, and I haven’t felt too down, and not at all suicidal all summer. I’ve been a little lazy, but not to the point of missing appointments or being late (like to OT, for example).

So with a fond adieu, I release the summer. I am letting go of this wonderful period of time, still savoring its flavors, the fresh fruits and veggies, the scent of a crackling campfire, the time spent in lakes and with mountains around me, the wonder of a glimpse of a bald eagle, heron, or a paddling of ducks. I will remember all the happy dunkings that I gave to Carla, and received in return. I will keep these thoughts warm in my heart, even as the weather cools and the darkness claims my evenings.

Onward to the fall, and lunchboxes, and after school activities. Here’s to life, and all its mysteries and mayhem.

It’s been a three week hiatus from writing here. Two weeks of paradise in the beautiful lakes and natural beauty of the Adirondacks, and then back to my regularly scheduled summer. I’m adrift now, here at home, with school starting in about a week. I have done some organizing at school, which was fun and satisfying. I set up a mini library in my classroom, making my small collection of kids books a little more organized and enticing to the kids. I am looking forward to having a regular routine and having life be structured once again.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to do at once. No, not at all. I have a TON of things to do. It overwhelms me and I’ve therefore squandered much of this week at home. (I need to play a game of “What CAN you do?”)

I’m overly hyped about the presidential race. I really support Obama. I think he’ll be a good president. But I just can’t stand the news… the way that they induce tension and anxiety… the wise pundits and the stooopid comments…. the inflammatory email messages that get forwarded around… ALL of this is really having a negative effect on my emotional state.

Meanwhile, I have to put my car in the shop because my father in law hit a deer with it while we were on vacation. A pain in the butt, sure, but thank goodness the insurance company was willing to do repairs instead of totaling my car. And yes, that’s right, NO ONE WAS INJURED. Well, except the deer.

I also managed to badly sprain my ankle while we were away. The combination of having a sore ankle and no car next week is not a good one. However, it is healing well and I CAN walk again. Whether I’ll be up for the walk to and from school (.8 mile) remains to be seen, but I think there is a good chance that I’ll be fine. I’d wanted to make WALKING our main mode of transportation to and from school, so this car in the shop thing is a blessing in disguise, right?

So upon returning from vacation, I found my garden to be in pretty good shape. A friend had watered it at least for the first week of our trip, so it wasn’t too parched. Dry, yes, but not suffering horribly. My big beautiful tomatoes are being very slow to ripen, but hopefully they will start to change from the bright green that they are, and when they do, mmmmmm mmmmmmm good. There was one ready when we got back, and that was all so far. Plus a bunch of sun gold cherry tomatoes, and some of the red sugar cherry tomato plants, too. The tomatillo plants are the stars of the show, however, growing taller and setting lots of fruit compared to everything else. This year the ground hogs are apparently very well fed, as they’ve eaten all my squash and chewed up my pumpkins and cucumbers beyond recognition. Hot and sweet peppers are in good shape, though, and I will have enough cheyenne chili peppers to make extremely hot food every night for two months. Not that this is a desirable ability, or anything. Lastly, I have one tiny little watermelon, around which I’ve put up additional fencing in hopes that it won’t be dessert for the ground hogs, and there’s a cantaloupe about the size of a baseball. I hope the ground hogs don’t find it!

This post has been disjointed and kind of boring to boot. They can’t all be fascinating, right? Still, it’s good to be back.

Seems that Mondays are when I do the running around. Making a lot of stops with my two gals in tow is tiring under the best of circumstances. Doing so in 90 degree summer humid heat is really tiring. And doing so after a long (very fun!) weekend at the beach is really, really, tiring.

No wonder I am sitting here feeling utterly wiped out. We picked up our CSA delivery today, and oh my! What lovely freshness! What beautiful produce. At long last, the tree fruits are hitting their stride. We received five pounds of peaches and two pounds of little sweet plums this week. Tomatoes are in, and we have two beautiful pints of assorted cherry / grape tomatoes along with four generous slicing tomatoes.

The squash are here and threating to take over the fridge. Good thing I managed to make Carla into a squash lover, simply by not calling the stuff “squash”. She refers to them by fancier names. For example, she’s OK with eating courgettes but definately not zucchini. She loves Crookneck but not so much plain yellow squash. She’ll eat Straightneck, too. She was very hesitant to eat PattyPans but came around once she realized they taste just like crookneck.

Marketing. I tell you, it’s all in the marketing!

So my fridge is stuffed to the brink with all these great veggies (lots of lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers, green beans, new potatoes) and so I need to plan for some good cooking. My own garden looks like it’s coming along at last, too, with some cukes, lots of basil, some purple green beans, and tomatoes are getting started.

Unfortunately, it’s so hot down in the kitchen that it really puts a damper on my excitement about cooking. I mean, who wants to be in the kitchen when it’s 90 degrees out? We have no air conditioning in the kitchen, you see. As a matter of fact, our kitchen is my least favorite part of our home. I fantasize about fixing it up someday, but it’s a big, big project. It needs a total overhaul. Walls need to be taken down. Floor needs to be replaced. Ceiling, lighting, cabinets, everything should be replaced.

We just don’t have the dough right now to hire a contractor for something huge like that; and we’re not handy ourselves.

So for now, I just make do with what we’ve got. And what I’ve got a is a lot of squash. Er, courgettes and crookneck, I mean. Yum.

This year I had extra ambition and rented two plots in the community garden, rather than just one. And they are bigger plots than last year, because when we tilled at the beginning of the season, we tilled right into the path. This is the path along the edge of the fence, so it’s no big deal.

I’d estimate our patch is about 23 feet by 12 feet. Big! Very Big! There is still one big bed that is basically empty. I put in tomato seeds, way late into the season. But who knows? Maybe these little seedlings will grow and give us a late harvest.

My free time to plan and organize this big garden was pretty limited this spring and early summer, and we got off to a late start.

So now that we are into July, I’m feeling a bit impatient and also frustrated by both insect damage and rabbits who seem to like bean plants, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and more. We are free of damage from deer this year, as far as we can tell. The new fence seems to keep them out. How else could I explain the fact that there are actually tomatoes on the vines?

We must have been invaded by rabbits last year, too, but because there was so much deer activity, we blamed it all on them. Now I know that bunnies are brutal.

Today I went to the garden to harvest my first cucumber, knowing it should be about ripe. I found that about half of it was left; the rest clearly chewed away by Peter Rabbit. There are three more still growing on the vine, within a few days they should be ready to harvest. I sure hope that the bunnies will chance to leave them be.

Bunnies also are responsible for chomping down little bean plants all throughout our garden, all except one little patch in my plot, where I am starting to see some little tiny purple green beans. (Purple green beans, you say? Are they purple or are they green? Well, they are a lovely shade of purple right now, but if you steam them, they turn green.)

Meanwhile, insects have eaten every bit of leaf off of the sunflower plants in our plot. Just really left nothing but stem, and the little buds at the top where the flowers will be.

I have several tomatillo plants that are coming up nice and fast. They are a quick growing item. I haven’t seen yet any signs of blooming. Part of me keeps wondering: gee, are these really tomatillo plants or just some clever weed that grew here instead?

My tomatoes are blooming, and a few have little baby tomatoes on the vine, and that’s encouraging. I’ve got a crookneck squash plant with blossoms. I’ve got great looking basil, and a few marigolds to brighten up the place. My cayenne pepper plant has peppers, and so does my jalapeno plant. I’ve got a few eggplants that aren’t blooming yet, but are growing taller and looking more promising. And carrots that seem to be growing, though slowly, their little curly tops visible by the pepper plants.

So there is a lot of life happening in my garden — many varieties of veggies, and clearly it’s going to offer me something for my trouble. It’s really pretty hard work maintaining a garden. I really appreciate how much work it is to grow your own food.

I keep thinking: WHAT DID THE INDIANS DO? About pests like insects, deer and bunnies. They probably did something smart like trap the little bunnies and deer and eat them. That is not something I can reasonably do at the swim club.

Meanwhile, the pumpkin plants are looking fiesty and strong (let’s hope vine borers don’t attack them) and the watermelon plants are just getting started. I can tell you, though, in another plot I saw a baby melon that a rabbit had gnawed in half. EVIL RABBITS! If you touch mine, I really will KILL YOU! Ok, maybe not really.

I think I will invest in another fence to deter the rabbits further. Maybe even put in a Hav-a-heart trap. And then eat the rabbits after I club them to death.

Kidding.

I think.