Wanna Be Part of a "Flash Blog?"

A girlfriend of mine is organizing a "Flash Blog" - kind of like a flash mob, but blogger style - to highlight whale education. It's timed with the release of her first novel for which all of the proceeds go to whale education.

Here are the rules:

You must be willing to post the film about whale education

You must hold off on the post until a specified date. The goal is for everyone to post it on the same day, hence a 'flash blog.'

She's running a list of sponsoring blogs on her own website as well. If you are interested, email me at the address in the far right column by Thursday, March 29. Send me your email and the address for your blog. I'll gather a list of interested bloggers and email you on Thursday with the details.

Judging by the scope of what she's already got going on, this is going to be fun. I'm in!

Terrible Sight in Roswell, GA

A fight has been brewing for years in Roswell, GA over a man dubbed the Chicken Man and his keeping of a large number of birds on his property. He's become a local symbol of the back yard chicken movement, but in my opinion, he took his mission too far. He's served jail time, suspected that his birds were poisoned and today he was facing eviction from his property.

Apparently, marshalls were there to aid in the eviction when the man called a news station and told it to get off of his property....and then the house exploded.

You can read more about him and all of the legal troubles here:
http://www.ajc.com/news/north-fulton/home-of-roswell-chicken-1398695.html

The battle has been poorly fought from the start with errors on both sides of the argument, and I think I've posted about him somewhere here before, but this is not the way it needed to end, or so I'm assuming it has ended being that a body was found in the house, but they haven't released whose it was.

And...We May Have a Problem.

I do think we've got a few problems already this year. All problems, however, could be made okay if my tomatoes were germinating. They're not. I'm a bit disapointed. I'm hoping they'll do so soon as I really don't want to buy transplants. I don't know if they stock the ones I like. ;(

Here's what's not a problem. This is the picture of the oregano and parsley that went missing the other day. Holy Smokes! They were nuts. I'm thinking I should have looked up how to trim them before I butchered this lot. Problem 1. I'm hoping they'll grow back.


Here's what I snagged. I only took from that one parsley and the one oregano 'bush' beside it and some off of the rosemary behind it.

I've got it drying in my dehydrator now and I'll put little baggies in the mail room on Monday - clearly labeled baggies.

If you remember, last year the man put in a pool and I lost major points on my 'woman card' for fighting him on it. I really hate summers. I need to work and the kids need to be busy 24/7. I wind up doing some pretty stupid things over the summers (215 square foot garden anyone?). Anyway, even though it didn't get finished until the end of the summer, we sure got our use out of it.

We had to move the horseradish bed that was nice and contained in a little 3x3 foot spread. Looks like some roots went through the soil beneath and now are popping up. Sadly I'm using that soil to fill in the potatoes as they grow out of control. I hope I got all of the roots out. It's so incredibly invasive, isn't it. These will likely get mowed down, so who knows if they'll give any good roots.

Here's the big problem....

Look again....

Not sure if these are termites or just flying ants. They had calmed down a bit right before I took this picture. They were swarming while I was out there which made me stand there stupified.

Oh well. We'll see.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams....and if my tomato seedlings would come up it wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit.

Plantings, Patty's, and Other Scurrilous Activities

Ok...Plantings come first - this is a garden blog you dirty minded fools. Then and only then will we get to the information that may be considered circumspect.


Apparently I've been gone from Blogger for so long that I no longer remember how to move pictures without deleting them. Well...that'll learn me. Now that planting season is really coming to a head, I'm hopeful, more hopeful than last time, that I'll get back into this regularly. I still am at least four months behind in blog reading. I'm just waiting for summer vacation and then LOOK OUT!!!! You'll be seeing some responses on posts you made in December and go....What?


I went ahead and started my tomato and squash seeds. The way things are going right now I'd say I could direct plant these suckers now and not have a problem. I might honestly put the zucchini and zephyr in the ground in two weeks anyway. We've got spring break and we're headded to St. Louis so I think they'll fare better in the boxes than they would at their own mercy on the porch. I'm hopeful, however, that Auntie Daddy will take care of the tomato seedlings for me....By the way, Auntie Daddy, will you seedling sit?


I hilled the potatoes for the first time today. Some have sprouted and some have not. The reds seem to be taking off faster than the Yukon Golds. Right now, I'm hilling only around the tall ones, but I'll start filling the box sooner or later. I direct seeded lettuce this year which was a HUGE mistake. I'm usually drowning in lettuce by now and the ones in ground are not even the size of my pinky. Chalk one up as a point for procrastination. I did plant carrot seeds and radish seeds this week, but we had a real toad floater and I half bet any of the carrot seeds are gone with the wind.


Part of the 'Gone from Blogger' syndrome is the subsequent random deletion of the awesome picture I took of the broccoli. Envision it if you would. I'll give you a moment. Beautiful, aren't they. Thanks. I thought so too. Anyway, I was taking their picture and as I stepped back I looked down and screamed.AAAHHH!!!! This oregano was put into a pot two years ago and was pathetic. Utterly beyond pathetic. I let it die. It died like it meant it. Last year it put out some pitiful shoots and plaintively at that. Just enough so I couldn't ditch it. I had no idea it had done this. Fantastic!


Cut scene to yet another missing picture of the other corner yard. I figured if this one looked like this then how about the other corner yard that I've basically ignored. Holy Guacamole! as my daughter would say. There are three there that are going crazy. Can you see it! Yeah, neither can I because the blasted picture went MISSING and I deleted it from my computer and phone. Whatever. I'll get out there tomorrow and give it another go - more push to post more often (and make shorter posts which doesn't hurt any of your feelings, I'm sure.)


I'm thinking of drying some of the parsley and oregano - for they are legion - and putting them in baggies and then in the mail room at school....hmmm...oregano in baggies. Maybe I'll add a note this time telling people what they are getting instead of just dropping the bags on the table.


On a personal note - gardeners can stop reading now if they choose - although there is something sacreligious at the end to whet your whistle if you keep reading...


This weekend we celebrated both the boy's and girl's birthdays. With them being only a month apart - literally - and since we can't afford to mortgage our house for a birthday party twice in two months, we usually combine theirs. This year they decided on the park where they could invite as many people as they wanted instead of only two friends each somewhere else. We had terrible rain all the night before and well into the morning. We were toast. I prepared the kids for a cancelation and the sun gods smiled on us and cleared everything up to an 80 degree day just an hour before party time. Then there was the cake incident. Ah, the cake incident. Now THAT's another post. A long one. Next time, maybe.


"Cake incident" notwithstanding, the party was wonderful! Here's a picture my mom grabbed of the fam. It's a great picture. Notice the cake. There's a story behind that cake. You'd be proud of me, my friends. Very proud.


Notice as well that neither kid is looking at the camera. They're attracted to shiny things. This is par for our course.

The man played a gig last night for St. Patrick's Day with the Old School Outlaws - his Southern rock cover band and the bar had this sign hanging over the stage where the drummer was located. Seriously? Read this. How completely sacreligious. Do these people know no shame? There's not an inch of moral fiber to be found in anyone associated with that bar and the shame transfers to us by association.

Good lord, people. Sundays is plural, not possessive!! *hangs head in shame*

Auntie Daddy was gracious enough to come with us, although she didn't quite realize this band plays three sets instead of the one the other band usually plays. We didn't get home until around 3:00 AM and my knees have gently reminded me all day that I cannot dance all night no matter how much of a stud I think I am.

We sure did have fun, however.

The morning comes early. And I really do need another day to recuperate. Sweet oregano and St. Patty's Day dreams.

Hey - St Patty's Day is all about green. Man, we gardeners ROCK this holiday.

Getting Growing Again

We've really had a lot of rain recently and that, coupled with very warm temperatures, has made things start to take off this week.

Almost all of the onions have broken the surface - I'm so using more nitrogen on them this year. My goal is to have onions that bulb up this year.

Here you can see the broccoli in the foreground and in the back corner box, you've got some cabbage which, as always, I just plant because I can and not because I think I'll get anything out of them. Cabbage worms have done me in every season except for one. I'm about to use some seriously bad chemicals on them. I may not eat the cabbages after that, but I'll get sick pleasure out of annihilating the worms.

My lettuce is starting to sprout.

And....woohoo! Potatoes! This is the first year I'm doing potatoes in boxes. The last two years I've done them in pots, but this year I've given an entire giant bed to them. Hopefully I'll get tons of them. I'm thinking I can dig some up as I need them and let the plants stay in the ground, right? With the pots, once I upended them, that was it. Hopefully this other way will work for me.[Image]There's still that nasty issue of the far corner bed falling apart. Rotting, rather. After the cabbage has either been eaten or sacrificed, I'll likely take the bottom boards off and just slide down the top boards. I'll distribute the excess soil across the other beds. Not sure if it will be too shaded by the other beds since it will now be half their height, but we'll see.

Things are starting to pick up and I hope that means I'll be blogging regularly again soon. What I REALLY need to do is start reading blogs again. The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

It's Good to be Back

Boy, once someone lights a fire under my butt, everything rights itself. Today was a beautiful day. Almost 70 degrees. I couldn't believe the kids were running around in shirt sleeves and flip flops and I couldn't even get mad about it.

After they built the deck for the pool this summer, I asked them to keep the extra lumber so I could fix some of my garden beds that were falling apart. Well....that never happened. The man came upstairs one day and said, "I'll buy you more lumber." I went downstairs to find this!

It looks better when cleaned up, but the thing is amazing. He needed a work bench in the basement and got frustrated enough with a project that he just threw the boards together to make a table. He laughed and said the years of box building helped him out.

So, I don't think I am going to build any new boxes, but see what I can do with the ones I have. I have a few like this one that are just getting eaten away from the underside.

There's one on the side yard that I'm just going to let go alltogether an another that I could replace, but I think will make it one more season and then I'll fiddle with it. I'm also thinking I may or may not go get a trailer load of compost this year and instead just amend with a bag here and a bag there. When I replace the boxes on the side next year I can go crazy with the loads of compost. This year we may just try to get by.

Today I moved the second square box from the other corner yard over to the main one. We had to take the dirt out of it this winter to burry the electric lines for the pool. The box never did well over there anyway, so this may work out for the better. I decided to plant potatoes in the box to the right, so as I was digging out dirt from there, I put the dirt in the 'new' box. Then, when the potatoes start to grow, I'll put the dirt that was in the box in this one to cover up the potatoes. It's the MASH version of gardening, but hopefully it will work out well.

I'm going to try to do my cherry tomatoes in gigantic pots this year which may or may not work. I'm also going to do the same for peppers. I've never, ever had pepper success. I just don't get enough sun, so I'm hopeful that if I put them in the front yard in pots I'll have success. We'll see.

Proof that the weather has been so fine is the herb garden. The oregano has never died off and the parsley...well...anyone need some? I've got enough to spare.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Are You There, Blog? It's Me.....Ribbit.

Apathy is a powerful beast.

Peer pressure is its nemisis.

Granny emailed me a while back to remind me I haven't blogged in ages and gently nudged me with an electric cattle prod. It has been awhile, hasn't it.

Not much has been going on in the gardening world after the garlic went in during the fall. New Year's came around and I went outside on the deck just to take a gander at the garden and my breath was sucked out of me. Down in the corner were two of the most beautiful heads of broccoli I had ever seen. They made for a lovely dish for the occasion. I had no idea they were out there. That, my friends, was how long it had been since I was down to the garden.

Garden apathy set in so deeply that I didn't even remember to order seeds for this year until last week and I never started my lettuce seeds indoors. I may still do that, but the girl and I attempted to direct sow some today. Those never seem to work out for me, but we'll see. The onions also went in today and the potatoes are chitting on the counter.

Our new problem for this gardening year is going to be those feral cats from last year that the neighbor is continuing to feed and not fix and they are multiplying at the rate of rabbits. We've got one male that keeps coming around, howling at all hours on our front porch and spraying the house indeterminately like the bug man.

It comes around to the back porch and yowles for the kids to come play, which they do. He doesn't hesitate to spray them as well.

They're mine, you flee bitten son of a motherless cockroach. Mine I tell you.

Of course, the children are enamoured. The girl keeps calling him 'Lucky.' They boy is intent on calling him 'Puss-y.' We will not be hypenating the name.

Anyway, said rodent masquerading as a cat and its harem has no shame and they have taken to my boxes as their own, personal litter boxes and Ican see they've been chewing the leaves of my garlic. I firmly believe they're the ones that took down the cabbage and, I thought, all of the broccoli from last fall. This is one of the reasons I am trying to direct sow the lettuce. Anything new, big, and yummy looking will be snatched up by them directly. If they grow there slowly, they may get used to them and not eat them.

Such is the nature of my delusion.

Anyway, I know it's tedious to read a long blog post with no pictures that says nothing in particular except for spew vitriol regarding rogue, unsolicited, insufferable felines, but such it is with a gardener who is lacking the finess of regular blogging etiquette.

It's Saturday. The man and boy are off at another's house and the girl is watching Tangled....again. The laundry is done and the house is clean as long as I fall prey to a Jedi Mind Trick. Therefore, I'm thinking it's time for a nip and a good book.

Until next time...and I promise it won't be months.
Yours Truly,
Ribbit.