herb garden

This is probably my favourite spot in any of my gardens. If you look closely, you might see a few tomato plants, mouse melons, runner beans, and eggplant. I'm a big fan of mixing edibles with ornamentals.

In the past two days, I've sold about $70.00 worth of veggies! Not bad considering I'm not doing the local farmers market this year or anything. Why not? Well, I don't drive, don't have a vehicle. The farmers market is at the fairgrounds, which is about an hour's walk (make that six hours with a 3 year old). I'd bike, but I can't transport the above mentioned 3 year old AND boxes of veggies to sell. The husband doesn't get home from work until after 9am, making it too late to have him drive me over there.

What are people buying from me? Heirloom tomatoes, of course, as well as tomatillos, pattypan squash, delicata squash, tromboncino squash, mizuna, sweet corn, bell peppers, mesclun mix with edible flowers, and some cut flowers.

The amount of money we spend on groceries is really dwindling these days, thanks to the gardens. In addition to the above, we've been eating mouse melons, cucumbers (little pickling cukes that Dusty likes, and a variety called Hmong Red), edamame, fava beans, cabbage, shiso, dill, and other stuff. I grow grains like quinoa, amaranth, and millet, but not enough this year to keep us supplied, so I'm just leaving it for the birds to enjoy.

herb garden

herb garden
Originally uploaded by smartcakes.

I have to admit, I'm a tad nasturtium-happy. I'm really into the whole edible landscape idea, so my pretty little 'herb' garden contains tomato plants, eggplants, beans, and other yummies. You can see the shiso (perilla) plant in the bottom lefthand corner of the photo.

nasturtium

This is "empress of India" nasturtium, peeking out from the tomato jungle.

Why no, I haven't been around lately! For starters, three weeks ago, I had a rather bad stomach ache come on. Less than twenty-four hours later, I was coming out of surgery. Yes, I now have one less appendix than I used to.

edamame!

edamame, originally uploaded by smartcakes.

These are my 'envy' soybeans - if you look closely, you'll see that the pods are just starting to form.

Damn, I can't wait to eat these!

icelandpoppies

icelandpoppies, originally uploaded by smartcakes.

These are Iceland poppies growing in Dusty's garden.

Every time we go to a nursery, Dusty gets to pick a plant of his very own, for his little garden. In addition to the poppies, his garden contains chives, violas, yarrow, red onions, columbines, and charentais melons. The melons are doing fabulous, and are flowering like crazy.

How many three year olds are lucky enough to get to eat melon that they picked out, planted, and grew all by themselves?

Well, I think he's a pretty lucky guy.

Actually, he won't be three until July 12th. I have NO idea what to get him for his birthday. We really don't do birthday parties for him - although that'll likely change when he's older. I think we might take him down to the childrens museum in Denver, then go over to his grandma's for birthday cake or something.

Who knew that a handful of sweet, pokey tortoises could cause me so much stress?

Actually, it's just the lumpy one who is being an asshole.

I caught him IN my main vegetable garden this morning, munching on the largest pattypan squash plant. He must've squeezed his tortoise ass under the fence to get in there. I'm glad I caught him when I did, before he had a chance to do any real damage, at least. That particular garden contains several types of squash, the remainder of my peas, all of my bell peppers, soy beans, fava beans, lettuces, Asian greens, concord grapes, and other stuff.

The same tortoise already effed up my tomato garden a few weeks ago - I went in and found all of my tomato plants looking like little topiary-type things - he'd trimmed all the leaves up as far as he could reach.

Geez, it's not as though the tortoises are starving to death - the tortoise-friendly areas contain all the bindweed you can eat!

Oh, and I'm assuming the same lumpy dude was the one who polished off my New Guinea impatiens this morning too...

I've been finding all the shitty looking marked down perennials and shrubs at Home Depot lately. Last night I picked up another butterfly bush, a dwarf burning bush, and some dahlias. It's amazing how much different they look today after being watered properly. I planted both next to the bench in front of the koi pond.

Oh, have I mentioned that the koi pond now actually contains koi? It's true! No, not the ones that are worth thousands of dollars, we're talking the petsmart variety. But I think they're the coolest things ever. Dusty has named one of them (or both?) Flippy. Heh.

I'll try to get some koi photos this afternoon. I have adorable little water lilies growing in there too.

I went to the easy yoga class last night, and barely even broke a sweat. Sometimes when I do yoga I just feel so in touch with my body - so capable and strong and in control. I love that. My core strength and flexibility have been improving dramatically over the past month or so. I have one more easy yoga class left in this session - I think after that I'll drop that class, and start taking two of the killer yoga classes a week. Now I *really* want to lose weight - I'm reasonably certain that headstands, handstands, etc. would be easier to do if I weighed, oh, fifty pounds less than I do. Trust me, it's difficult to keep one's giant ass above one's head for any length of time...

Oh yeah, my little Happy Nature garden seems to be working! Yesterday I heard a buzzing noise above my head when I was working out there, and looked up to see a hummingbird. Woo! That's the first hummingbird I've seen in the past few years. We're starting to see lots of butterflies in there too, and dragonflies. We also have a nest of baby bluejays, and I found a fledgling robin in there a few weeks ago. Anyway, I hung a hummingbird feeder from the back of the garage this morning.

There are no words for how much I despise my crazy-ass neighbour Mary. In addition to being batshit crazy, she's also a nosy bitch. Get this - she was upset when the people who live directly beside her put up a six foot fence, because that meant she couldn't see into their yard, "in case something bad is happening". So, she keeps a tall ladder up against the fence so she can climb up and look into their yard.

I kid you not.

She lives behind us, directly across the alley. We have a chainlink fence, therefore, no privacy whatsoever. Every time I go out to work in the garden she comes out. She comes out to water her garden every ninety minutes, all freaking day. Hose in hand, she watches my every move.

She came over yesterday to talk about cucumber beetles. I told her I'd found a few this year, but didn't see any last year at all.

"Well, that's because there weren't any last year."

"Huh."

"But there were billions the year before."

"Oh, I didn't grow any squash or anything the year before."

"Yeah, that's why."

"Eh?"

"That's why you didn't have any - because the cucumber beetles destroyed everything."

"No... I didn't even plant any that year. I didn't have any at all."

"I said, THAT'S WHY!"

"Huh."

"They live up in those trees in your yard, then they come down and EAT UP MY GARDEN!"

Crazy ass bitch.

She usually refers to me as "girl". As in, "get over here girl, I need to tell you something."

One of my other neighbours says he'd be willing to bet that her house smells like a combination of cigarette smoke, shag carpeting, and pet odors. I'm sure he's right.

I just checked the weather forecast for today, and it is supposed to get to 97 degrees. Gah.

I transplanted some more hot peppers today into their new bed - jalapenos, bulgarian carrot, anaheims, serranos, and a few banana and cherry peppers as well.

My Friday morning yoga class has been cancelled, due to the fact that I was the only one who had actually signed up, though others were attending on a drop-in basis. Shawna, my yoga teacher, suggested that instead of refunding my money, I could try the two-hour Wednesday night advanced class.

So, I did!

Sure, it kicked my ass a whole lot, but I did okay. I completed all the sequences, held poses, and I didn't even die. I did lose about half my body weight in sweat, though. And my glasses fell off twice - being soaked in sweat (I know - ew) while upside down tends to make things slide off one's face.

The biggest news? I did a HANDSTAND.

Really.

Truly.

It was up against the wall, but still.

Accomplishing that felt really and truly amazing. I was one of those porky little kids who couldn't do anything physical - I was slow and awkward and uncoordinated. I have never in my life done so much as a cartwheel, though I did try.

And now I'm doing handstands and shoulderstands in an advanced yoga class? I certainly never would have predicted THAT.