Saturday, May 29, 2010

Memorial Day and the Garden

First, an update: Windows 7-- STILL HAS NOT CRASHED! Ha. HahahahahahaHA! Take THAT, Vista!

It's Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend and a 3-day weekend couldn't have come at a worse time, work-wise. I've already put in an extra 4 hours since I left work Friday, and if I had a full day at work on Monday, things would look a lot more manageable. Still, though, I'm not really complaining. Like a lot of people, I get some of my best work done when it's do-or-die time. And it's more fun that way. Go figure.

We did have some normal fun today. The 4 of us wandered the neighborhood a little, went to BJ's and bought a barrel of cheese balls (Jambuca is trying to finish them off all by himself), and had Red Robin for dinner. Jambuca and e-baby have been pretty grumpy today, and when we got home I figured out why-- it's this cold they are sharing! Jambuca was running a fever, and e-baby was just pooped. He was asleep by 6:45 and she was out before 8. On top of that, he's got really gloopy eyes. It's probably his blocked tear ducts (the doctor diagnosed it last year and it acts up every time he has a cold) but to be safe, I'm giving him antibiotic eye drops which just makes him cry.

I am hoping to fend off this iteration of the cold because I have to teach throughout June-- and have been teaching the last 2 weeks straight as well. It would be a bad time to lose my voice (again).

The garden's going great. Although I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed about the volume of food it produces. The plants are doing well, and they seem to be productive, but so far the only things the garden has kept me from buying at the store are spinach and snow peas. Which, you know, how much of that do you normally buy anyway? The strawberries were mostly eaten by ants for the 3 or 4 weeks that they produced, and now they're pretty much all done. The snow peas are having a second wind right now, but that'll end soon. I've had some swiss chard, but never more than one person's side-dish's worth. Carrots aren't ready to pick, beans produce maybe 4-5 a day. No asparagus or artichoke this year (I knew that when I planted them), no tomatoes yet, no pumpkins or melons yet. The yellow squash look promising-- there are probably 40-50 tiny little baby squashes on the plants right now, but some of the squashes just turn wilty and brown right there on the plant. I don't have a ton of faith that they'll make it through the summer without an infestation of vine borers. I'm gardening organic, whih means all I do is look for the eggs (to SQUASH 'em! get it?) and spray Dr Bronner's lavender soap on them to kill any little beasties that might be around.

But it has been a super-fun experiment, and e-baby has eaten more spinach than, well, ever in her whole life. If I'm honest, she never ate any spinach beyond the little bit I used to sneak into her baby purees long, long ago. She'd balk at anything green in her food. Now she walks along the fence picking and eating snow peas and spinach leaves. She picks strwaberries for Jambuca (if they have't already been eaten by ants) and he eats them (and the snow peas) like candy. I have the joy of seeing the magic of a seed growing into a plant through the eyes of someone not yet jaded by modern conveniences. And that's worth all the money, time, and hard work of creating this monstrous garden.

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