2nd anniversary!

today is neil and i's second anniversary. it is also barack obama's birthday. great things come to be on august 4th, i guess.

neil does this really charming (annoying) thing where he tends to only take pictures of me when i have no makeup on, am in sweatpants, and/or i have had a few drinks. in the movies, ladies in their sweatpants are all dewey faced and perfectly coy yet endlessly beautiful. i am splotchy with multiple chins.

so we decided to set up the tripod and take some pics of us before dinner tonight. to be honest, the last good pictures of us were taken on our wedding day. so i suppose we are celebrating two anniversaies today. wedded bliss and single chin photographs.

how did we do?:










feel free not to answer that. i suppose i was asking for it by bringing the dogs into the mix but...well.....i love them.

i had intentions of writing about our amazing dinner at Duo. but that will have to wait until next time. i seem to have involuntarily sedated myself with exceptional noms.

i love my husband. i am sleepy. happy birthday, mr. president.

PeppersMS.

i think i have seasonal mercury in retrograde affective disorder. granted, it is summer and mercury is not in retrograde. but i am tired and forgetful and everything i say gets taken the wrong way and my peppers won't grow. the peppers are how i know it is not a PMS thing but rather more of a universal malfunction thing. maybe i have PeppersMS. get it? be nice....it is hard to be funny when you have PeppersMS.

Squirrels. mother effing squirrels. remember last year when i thought their pumpkin eating was so cute? well now they have just gone diabolical. i have sunflowers. the sunflowers i have are not your wimpy "i love cherry tomatoes!" kind of sunflowers that don't actually have any seeds (um,or character?). they are mammoth "mortgage lifter tomato" kind of sunflowers that tower above me and promise flowers the size of dinner plates and plenty of seeds for birds and squirrels to snack on....In The Fall. that would be if the squirrels were not gnawing through the stems and lopping off the tops right now this summer.

Glorious regal sunflowers:
sad victim:
what the squirrels don't get is that i want to help them! they can have the seeds! they just need to let them grow first. dummies.

i think i am supposed to be harvesting my strawberries soon or something? does this look like a harvest?

cos that is all i got.
on the brighter side, we have new snacks!

ichiban eggplant tastes really good, people! i have never had much success with or love for the eggplants. but these guys are yumtastic.
we (Neil) built a leaning trellis for the lemon cucumbers once they finally started growing. the plan is that the vine travels up but the fruit falls through the trellis for easy pickens.


here you can see a dude following directions:

i have a question for you....are green beans supposed to grow like curly little turds?



i have another question for you. how many squashes would one need to eat a day for it to become an unhealthy way of living? i grate them into salads, sneak them into stews, use them instead of noodles, and try to pawn them off at pool parties for 6 year olds. i think i only unloaded a few that way, but i was desperate. and they fit so nicely into the sparkly party favor bags!

a few folks who have visited the garden have questioned how the brussels sprouts actually grow. and i get it. you want them to grow like broccoli or cabbage...a big head right in the center.

what they actually do is grow like little knobs along the stalk of the plant. see little baby brussles here:


Well folks, i am sure you are thinking "why is she bothering with all of these other trivial garden items when there are tomatoes on the line?" i know, right!?!

well, lookey here. the best thing is that the basil is all a bushy 3 feet tall and neil has finally come to appreciate the Caprese Flavor Profile so.....

it. is. on.



overview of the vaguely controled chaos:




faulty carrots: The guinea pigs don't care, though. also, this really is the basket i harvest with. sometimes i forget to bring it out back and neil says "don't forget your harvest basket!" and i stop and wonder "who the hell are we? i have a harvesting basket and neil reminds me when i forget it? really?" that must be the secret to our two years of marriage.


so i am trying to figure out what i will do for cool season crop. more swiss chard because that crap cooks down and i can eat a LOT of chard. collard greens? are they cool season crops? i love them. some cabbage maybe? broccoli? suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Don't call it a comeback

"I been here for years
Rockin my peers and puttin suckas in fear
Makin the tears rain down like a MON-soon
Listen to the bass go BOOM
Explosion, overpowerin
Over the competition, I'm towerin
Wreckin shop, when I drop these lyrics that'll make you call the cops
Don't you dare stare, you betta move
Don't ever compare
Me to the rest that'll all get sliced and diced
Competition's payin the price"

This is what my garden would be saying to you if my garden rapped. Also, that one line would probably be "when i drop the tomatoes that'll make you call the cops", since a garden doesn't really have lyrics or anything. i mean, duh!

we are not out of the woods yet. but we have been getting some actual sunshine and actual heat. we are getting the afternoon thunderstorms on a daily basis too (thank god cos the swamp cooler is being fritzy and mama needs a cool down here and there) but we haven't had hail in a few days now and the plants are thrilled at the break.

Biggest surprise so far has been the swiss chard. you may remember that i overwatered it. and then mother nature pissed all over it for weeks. well lookey here!:

This may look like a lot of peas, but i can eat a day's harvest before i even make it out of the garden. in fact, Neil accuses me of "eating all of the peas" every day when he gets home. it goes like this..."hey babe. how was your day? did you eat all of the peas?" just because i CAN eat of the peas, does not mean i actually DO eat all of the peas. sheesh, husband.


here is our first Lemon Cucumber flower. I was about to give up all cucumber hope entirely. Me of little faith.

We harvested a couple of yellow squash for dinner the other night. 2 down, 974 to go. and we also have a zucchini growing as well. i will rethink this next year, after i have enough gardening confidence to not have to rely on the easy squashy stuff.


Here are our recovering sunflowers, lettuce, and strawberry patch. i know it looks as though we are insanely patriotic and funloving, but the pinwheels are to scare birds away from the lettuce and strawberries. unfortunately, nothing scares squirrels. More on this later.


I noticed something pretty interesting today. I purchased my 5 tomato plants in two different sizes....and two different prices. The larger plants were quite a few bucks more than the littles, but it seems to be evening out quite a bit now. Here is a cheapyteensy Mortgage Lifter, a cheapyteensy Cherokee Purple, and a priceybigsy Big Beef.

And dudes, this is what it is all about. all of it. here:


So Moose. I love this dog. Like it hurts me sometimes. How can any animal be this sweet? Kids sense it in him. Last week we went to a kickball birthday party for adults. There were kids there, too. and Moose. Two little girls were fighting over who could hold what part of Moose's leash and who Moose liked more. um, excuse me girls. he likes me the most and i think i'll hold the leash, thank you very much. um, anyways....you get my point. he's just too nice, that Moose. He clearly did not learn that from us.


Look closer....



okay, i will look closer for you....


I thought this thing was going to jump on my face like something from the movie Alien. Moose just thought he was nice to look at. Moose didn't even get up into a sitting position. He lied there while the squirrel chirped "i'll eat your eyeballs, bith!" at me. seriously. Needless to say, the squirrels have made it so that we have not been able to eat any of the strawberries that have ripened. i see them get pink, and then they are gone. or half eaten. those are my favorites...the half eaten ones. thanks for mocking me, king of all rodents. now get off of my house. or maybe i'll just go back inside for a while....

june twelfth, two thousand and nine

so yeah....rain rain go away and all that crap. and then the hail came.


these guys used to be proud sunflowers.
oh, and here is what used to be my lettuce patch.


all we can do at this point is eat cinnamon toast. sad.

effed up foot

I hurt my foot. I believe it to be planter fasciitis. it sucks. i am supposed to be resting and elevating and icing. i am really good at doing all of these things for a few days and then i blow it and have a bbq and drink beer and chase our friends new puppy around our yard all day. as if you would do differently when presented with beer, friends, and a puppy. come on!

So since i am trapped on the couch, bored out of my noggin, i thought i would give you a pictorial garden tour. Come along, will you?

Wait, first i must announce/remind you that we have lived in Denver for a year now! Last year at this time, Denver was knee deep in a very ass kicking heat wave. and everyone kept telling me that during the summer, thunder storms roll in during the afternoon and cool us down. there were no storms. there was no swamp cooler. It was dry and brown and we had to go to the pool a lot.

Flash to this year. we had a late spring and we are having an even later a summer. And the storms are here. thunder, lightning, hard fat rain, and hail. I take hail personally, like god is throwing rocks at my garden. This is from two days ago:


So here is how the garden looks on approach. You can see a lot more green than before, huh? well check it from inside, dudefriends!

the first sign of yellow squash:

chives that are about to flower. i love chives. why did i not know that for so long?


all of the sweet allysum seeds that i started inside croaked. in a desperate attempt to not waste the $1.49 i spent on the seeds, i sprinkled them at the borders of some of the planters. low and behold, sweet allysum is the cat of flowers. ignore it and it is your bff. give it some lovens and you will only come to be disapointed.

if i were to smell like anything on the planet, i think i would choose to smell like fresh basil.
the strawberries are throwing out runners. they are going for it. so are the sunflowers that i planted behind them. i think that if you have kids and you have sunshine, you should be obligated to plant sunflowers for your kids. they grow like an inch a day and at the end of the summer, you have snacks! what kid doesn't love snacks?


the lettuce patch is a bit conflicted. or maybe the fact that Jules keeps napping on it is the problem. i don't know. parts are good and parts are not so good. we are sooooo close to being able to start harvesting but i don't want to push it.

and for the surprise front runners......brussels sprouts! I love the b sprouts....always have. i believe mom tricked me into trying them by calling them "baby cabbages" and it worked. oddly enough, i never really ate cabbages as a kid so i don't really get how that would appeal to me. moms are tricksy.

i have found that i am really annoying. wow, way to set y'all up for some easy heckling opportunities, right? i should disable the comments section. anyways, i have been doing this thing where i need to remind people i am from california via food items. i realized i was out of control when i made a salad for friends and i put jicama in it. the b sprouts are all about that plan. none of our friends here are fans of the sprouts but i am going to cook them and i am going to cook them incredibly awesome-ish and they will be loved. they have to be because we have 9 plants and no one likes brussels sprouts 9 plants worth. not even if neil started calling them baby cabbages. i must share.


Carrot/scallion town is booming. i have thinned the carrots. i can't wait for these guys because it is a mix of orange, yellow, white, and purple carrots. i don't know if the guinea pigs are going to appreciate their new gourmet snackins but nothing is too good for Simon and Walter. They are from california, too...so they may appreciate the fanceys.

peas:


a little friend on a zucchini leaf. you can see how the hail does a bit of damage here:


have we talked about borage yet? it has the most beautiful flowers, bad bugs hate it, and bees think it is their knees....get it? bees knees? i am funny. seriously this foot injury thing is mind numbingly boring. i need out. i need to go ride bikes or something. anything.
nasturtium from seed. can't wait for this one to flower. edible flowers that bad bugs hate.

my eggplant isn't doing too great, nor is it not doing well. but it does show just how much dirt the rain and hail kick back up on the plants.

and here it is.....my heaven....tomatoes, basil, chives, marigolds, tarragon, and some cilantro is in there somewhere as well:

We hung a birdfeeder right outside our kitchen window. i love it. as do the birds.

We have hippy heighbors. well, i suppose they are retired hippies, at this point. they have prayer flags and a sign in their window that says "friends for peace". i love them. a few weeks ago, i had to knock on their door and ask for weed vs. flower identification assistance. Neil, Alice and i had a great time in the front yard, noting that any plant that is growing where you don't want it to grow is a weed. period. Alice did however warn us that some of these potential weeds may flower soon, so we spared a few......look!

i am glad i didn't just hack everything down.

Alice also told us about when she first bought her house, 20 something years ago. she had been renting for a few years and finally was able to buy her house for herself. she had a housewarming party and since she was finally able to garden, she asked her friends just to bring something for her to plant. a friend of hers who didn't have much money showed up with a handful of violas, clearly dug up from her garden at home. Alice planted them and every year there are more volunteer violas all over her property. here are some that have snuck on over to our side of the property line:


And just because......



So, i have some errands to run but i swear i will totally stay off of my foot for the rest of the day! wait, after i check to see if there are any tomatoes and the veggies may need a watering and i am sure the dogs would like a little walk and......