Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Hello, again.

I am still alive. I swear.

I've been away for the last two weeks or so. I knew I couldn't compete with any Grandparents with baby snuggles time and so planned my visit to see my new niece a few weeks well after her due date. And so have been in NC since literally, July.

It was really awesome to get to see her and sit on my sister's couch with a little baby napping on my chest, binge-watching Long Island Medium. We might've watched all three season on NetFlix, twice. There might've been a dozen donuts from Rise Donuts polished off, which if you're ever in the Raleigh area you should go to, every day, twice. And eat everything, which I definitely did not do. Twice. There is literally nothing better than a 6 week baby smiling at you. Even if it's immediately followed with that same baby pooping everywhere. You can't find a better medicine than a smiley baby.

I even managed to get some gardening in. Trying to earn my keep and realizing that while they may be damn good at birthing pretty babies, my sister and brother-in-law didn't have much of a garden to brag about this year. I don't know what could've kept them busy the last few months, but don't worry I properly scolded them for their gardening laziness. I think a certain 6-week old wasn't pulling her own weight. The day I left they had green beans, Swiss chard, basil and spinach sprouted and their two new tomatoes looked happy, we'll see what late summer and fall gives to them in vegetables.

Here's a few shots of the garden today, the green beans have really taken off and I'm hopeful that with the cooler temperature they have been having, the tomatoes will set fruit (they wont over 80-85 degrees).


I've tasked my Dad, who lives near my sister, with watering it and keeping and eye on things just in case the 6-week old continues to shirk her gardening duties.

Meanwhile back at home, I I left my garden in the hands of no less than 5 people (because I'm neurotic) and came back to a zucchini bigger than my forearm. Don't get me wrong, I am literally indebted to my fellow gardeners and roommate and friends  for keeping tabs on things and picking things so the plants didn't die off after fruiting, but I might've overdone it because all the watering and rain left me with a wicked case of powdery mildew, which KO'd my cucumbers and made of feast of my Squash. Silver lining: one of my fellow members who I had told to pick whatever she liked while I was gone, surprised me with a quart of my tomatoes that she had picked and jarred after she saw all my Romas ripen. It really made my day!


There'll be more later in the week, detailing fall plans, the ridiculous amount of food I've brought in from the garden this summer and what I've done with it all.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Gods of Curb Finds.

Sometimes, I think to myself "How the hell did I get here". And I don't mean that in a geographical sense or anything like that. What I mean is "How the hell did I find myself dragging a wheelbarrow, half in the bag, down a block in Brooklyn, mosquito bitten,  to scavenge flagstone from a house reno?"

Let me explain. Today I had some running around to do, and briefly, while I was home, brought the dog out for a walk and while we were out happened upon a lovely pile of flagstones, they might also be called slate, but they're thick slate, not the measly stuff you slate things with, but the tough thick stuff that you walk the street in hooker heels with.  Sadly, neither without the time or any fellow gardener to snatch the stones and schlep them back to the garden I (foolishly) placed my hope in the gods of the curb finds and went on with my day, hopeful that I'd be able to dash back once I got home.

The Gods of the Curb Finds are a vicious and vengeful sort. They will not hold stuff, they will not give what you beg to find. They are fickle and they are cruel. They will bless you with the discovery of a gorgeous shelving unit ONLY when you have your mini schnauzer (who loves to stop and smell EVERYTHING) and they will laugh and enjoy the sight of you as you invoke your Momma Bear strength to carry said shelving unit with one arm while Miss Daisy smells every rock and tree and creature. And despite knowing how cruel the Gods were, after walking a friend who had come over to try some of the tomato jam that I spent 4 hours making, with some Hungarian Rose, I ran to the garden to borrow a wheelbarrow to ferry the stones back. WELL, as we enjoy collecting (hoard) dead plants and weeds, we also in the garden like to hoard wheelbarrows. Literally, there are 5 wheelbarrows in the back. None of them have inflated tires, one has an entirely flat tire AND NO HANDLES. I know. One day I'm going to drag them out to the curb. ONE DAY.

And so after all that, and doing a pretty damn good (horrible) job at walking (dragging) Barrow (yep, I shortened that, we're on first name basis after our ordeal) down the street, guess what was gone from the curb. Back on the list of curb wants goes flagstones. Sigh. I will go comfort myself (and my mosquito bite covered legs) with Camembert and Tomato Jam and Hungarian Rose. Life is hard.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

This post is brought to you by a giant glass of wine.

I found a body in the garden today.

No. I'm serious. I found a dead body in a plastic grocery bag in the front garden today, tossed over the fence.

What sort of body? The world will never know, unless of course one of you, braver souls than I or two other members of the garden and two of New York's finest, want to untie the tripled bagged garbage bag and open that sucker up.

I joked, and still do, that this community garden is straight out of the movie The Funny Farm. Last week, lightening struck a tree in the back, today I found a body or chunk of body, a hooker's arm, or maybe Fluffy. I really have no idea. I'm terrified what will happen tomorrow.

Basically, all week I've smelled a sort of sweet stench of decay, what I imagine (and now know) that death smells like. I first blamed it on the girl next to my plot. I knew she was (finally) convinced that she needed to fertilize her plants and figured (feared) she had gone the blood and bone meal route. Terrible idea mostly because both of those just draw in our furry rodent friends and they both (surprise!) smell like death, cause well that's how dehydrating blood and pulverizing bone works. I was absolutely convinced everytime the wind blew a cloud of death towards me that it was her. Absolutely convinced, but there was just something missing, a piece of the puzzle, missing, nothing near her plot smelled like death, I even smelled the dirt, nothing, yet still DEATH.

Well today I had to get into the garden and get some WORK done. Having sent my friend packing on her cross country road trip and the garden in desperate need of some LOVE, especially after yesterday's frenzied 'THE GREEN BEANS ARE DONE AND OVERWHELMING ME AND SO THEY MUST GO' fest, I got down to business. Almost immediately DEATH smelled everywhere and still convinced that my neighbor, in her imagined free love and crunchy granola ways, brought the smell of death into the garden, I just tried to get on with my day and breathe out of my mouth.

I'm not sure what caused me to look up, or how a bag buried in the branches of a shrub in the front garden caught my eye, but instantly I knew. I had found the source. Well, long story short after getting two other members who lived nearby to come help and then collectively having a moment of WHAT IF IT'S A BODY we called the precinct who told us it was definitely a 911 call. I think the 911 operator thought I was insane, "Yes, no it's in a grocery bag, but it's double bagged and smells like death, there are flies everywhere, so I assume it's something that's not alive anymore. No, I have no intention of opening it, cat or not a cat, but it could also not be a cat and in that case I'd feel guilty chucking someone's bits out without calling someone whose job it is to open bags of mysterious smelly things." She told us help would be on its way and to call back if things change. Sure Lady, if the bag starts coming to life we'll call you back and let you know the zombie apocalypse started. Right.

The police eventually pulled up and we were told to bag it and let sanitation take care of it. I decided not to suggest 'IT MIGHT BE A BODY' because it's never a good idea to suggest to the police that the bag that smells like death, could have a body in it, because it might and then you're suspect number 1 and well I still had a cucumber trellis to stake. Some surprises are better left un-had.

In other news, my tomatoes have fungus and my legs are covered in mosquito bites. Like I said, this post is brought to you by a giant glass of wine (and Nicole, thanks for the wine!)

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Mission: Accomplished.

It's always been about the tomatoes. Unless you grow tomatoes in your backyard, or if you live on a farm (and in that case, why haven't you invited me??), you just can't get a good tomato. Tomatoes you get in the grocery store are either a dull red that are hard as a rock or a beautiful red that are mushy as hell, whichever way, they're at best tasteless and at worst, plastic flavored. Unless you have some magic grocery store produce guy who conjures produce from heaven, those are your choices for tomatoes. It's really a consequence of the modern Agro-industrial complex, which demands year round produce in huge yields all at once. Most commercial tomatoes are picked green and pumped with ethylene which causes them to turn red, often times while they're in transit or far from the farm. Further, because tomatoes in the wild (like most plants) grow and produce fruit overtime and not all at once, modern industrially produced tomatoes have been breed to produce fruit all at once. What this has created is a hard, tasteless tomato. Now, of course, Farmer's Markets which offer fresher and tastier tomatoes than grocery stores, exists, they are both obscenely expensive and not as fresh as walking two blocks, picking a tomato off the vine and coming home and eating that fucker. 

And that's exactly what I did Monday night. My very good friend Nicole, who writes an awesome blog about vegan food and travel came to visit for a week from Berlin and while the tomato I planted so it would have fruit to eat when she was here, wasn't ready, two others were!

 Nom Nom Nom Nom
 It will be a matter of a few weeks before there's an epic avalanche of tomatoes and I'll be canning and jarring tomato yums well into the night. 

We made a really awesome pasta dish and while I'm totally game for pickling and preserving and showing that stuff here, I'm going to jet you over to Nicole's blog for the delicious tomato yumness that we made. You can find it here.


Monday, July 7, 2014

I'm having a moment

I'm having a moment.

I am not a very organized person, but I like to say (and to an extent, believe) that my chaos is planned. Growing up, as a result of my parenting, of course, my room was a mess, a royal mess. Like if the Queen was caught in an orgy, high on coke, dressed in a furry outfit, mess. But there were paths, I knew vaguely what was where, albeit crumpled on the floor, there was order in my chaos.

Now certainly as I've grown up, I've become better at periodically battling back the mess and making more order of the chaos. I like piles. Piles make any thing look more organized. It's perhaps a crutch to keep me from freaking out at the chaos, because in some small way, there is order, my order, in all the noise.

This is not the case with the garden right now.

I believed the cucumbers would stop at the top of the trellis. Where they would go after that, I have no idea, but they would stay where they were told to be, piled if you will, and though sprawling, they would be ordered.

I believed that the green beans would grow quickly and compactly, ordered between the rows of tomatoes, neatly in front of the potatoes and then they would be done and we could move on with the summer.

I believed that the patty pan squash would grow up and swirl neatly out, displacing the beans and the arugula, as their own season faded, politely taking their places, that were kept warm by them, earlier in the summer.

I believed that the potatoes would grow tall, flower and then fade, leaving behind mountains of potatoes, ready for the fall.

The tomatoes, I had such faith in, there was to be this genuis method of staking, weaving twine between the vines to hold them straight up, compactly and uniformly, held taunt by stakes placed at either end. They would reach upwards and be graceful and weave themselves effortlessly through the twine.

These are all things I believed. I had faith. There would be piles of vegetables and it would be ordered. I would conquer Mother Nature and make order of her chaos.

I will pause now and allow you to quiet down with your laughter. Done now? Great.

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, the garden is anything but ordered. Shit has literally gone bananas. I've taken to just walking through the garden staking plants up and tying back plants with twine and bamboo poles. Trying desperately to pile plants on top of themselves. It's not really working. Yesterday, in a fit, I ripped out two basil plants that I had planted next to the patty pan squashed, but that had now been subsumed by the squash. It was entirely reactionary; I put them in another part of the garden, but today they looked miserable. I can't blame them. 

Of course, this is a blessing, an actual gift, but it would have been nice if perhaps stuff stayed politely piled on top of themselves. Neatly. Really, the only thing that is at all ordered is the little herb garden I've planted on the side, in neat little bunches.

Tomorrow I'll have a really awesome post, where I'm not having a nutter panic attack episode. I promise. Stay tuned.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Bam: Canned Beans.

Today was a really great day. It's been pouring here on and off. One minute it's bright and sunny and the next it's the end of the world and you can slice the rain with a knife. The rain is good for the garden and the drop in temperature means that the tomatoes will set more fruit. They get very annoyed when it gets hotter than 80-85 and refuse to do anything. Me too, Mr and Ms. Tomato, Me Too. So during the burst of sun I dashed into the garden and decided the green beans had gotten big enough and it was time for pickin'. I got nearly a shopping bag worth of beans out of the first spit of beans that I planted way back in May, and there's still some nearly mature beans (which I'll probably save until my friend Nicole gets here) and a bunch of little baby beans. This harvest means I'll have fully recouped my money for any bean seeds I bought. If I haven't mentioned by now, with the odd cucumber I've gotten out of the cucumber vines, I've also recouped all the money I spent on cucumber plants. So far Mr Garden is pulling his weight.

What really made the day great though is I finally was able to accomplish one of the goals I had set out to do with this garden, pickle and jar things. Now I've made a couple of quick pickles with the few cucumbers I've gotten, but I'm talking water bath, mason jars, the full deal. A few of weeks ago I had bought as\ really awesome book (Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan, who has a really awesome website and whose recipe for Dilly Beans I used). Although I spent some of the later afternoon whining to my sister about being too tired (yes I complained about being tired to a mother of a 10 day old, either I'm a very brave man or my sister is a very forgiving soul, perhaps a nice combination of both), I decided tonight would be the night. And so bam:
Dilly Beans. Now I've got to wait 2 weeks until the flavor fully develops but I'm a sucker for anything dill flavored, so I'm excited to try.

Right now I'm debating how much more to show on here of what I can, just because I like to give canned stuff as part of my holiday presents to folks (I like giving DIY sorts of gifts more than just buying crap, it feels more heart-centered). We'll see. I know I will do a post or two of the tomatoes I can and it looks like by the end of the month I'll be swimming in tomatoes, so expect that at least.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Wonderful things.

This blog post is incredibly delayed. So much has happened in the garden and in life in the last week, a single post won't even do it justice. So as to not rank anything in importance, I'll start with the beginning of the week.

After putting all the tomato, squash and zucchini plants in the food pantry plot (henceforth known as FPP) and sowing rows and rows of beans and radishes and digging a trench for potatoes, the next couple days were the most trying since I finally got a hold of the garden gate key 'way back' in May. An extremely hot and sunny day left all the plants withered and dead looking and the earth cracked over and dusty. I was pretty heart broken and felt like the run of success that the original plot had been, had suddenly came to a screeching halt. Perhaps it's the New Englander in me, but I often am cautious about glorifying too much success, for fear of the old line, 'pride comes before the fall' being proven again. I was therefore, I thought quite lucky that a good soaking, a few prayers and fingers crossed perked up all the plants and after a week of some TLC (of both the Waterfalls variety and the tender lovin' care sort), the FPP is looking pretty great. The Potatoes have sprouted, the radishes and beans have all germinated and the Tomatoes, squash and zucchini seem to be taking, so in about 15-20 days, we'll have out first basket for food to bring to the pantry, radishes!

Here's a picture of the FPP from this afternoon:


More so, this past weekend I had the extreme honor of traveling north to see my Aunt marry her now wife, who she has been with for 17 years! The wedding took place just outside Augusta, which isn't very far from where my mother's family is from. This is the first trip that I can actually remember going on and it was a bit jarring and centering all at the same time. Inland Maine, where Augusta and my ancestral home is located, is centered in the middle of the paper and wood industry and for many, it meant good union protected jobs. Up until the Paper Mills took advantage of the slump the American economy went through in the 1970's and 1980's, and busted the Unions, a job in the mill meant a secure and permanent position in Maine's middle class. What exists there now is just terrible poverty. My great Grandparents' house looks run down, beautiful Victorian homes, adorned woodwork, sit with peeling paint next to double-wide trailers. It's just all very sad and in a way interrupted my previous imagination of a sort of classic New England image I had of where I came from. More importantly I think though is the resolve I also saw while driving through the backwoods of Maine. So many gardens, huge gardens! Each tucked into the yards houses in every neighborhood and along most every road, the realization that for many, gardening wasn't some frivolous hobby, but the only way of putting and keeping food on the table. It was a good reminder of the ancient faith that gardening really is and I am grateful for it.

Perhaps what is most exciting though is I became an Uncle on Monday! My Sister and Brother-in-law welcomed into their family a little girl named Caroline Mary, who is literally the cutest baby I've ever seen. I know. Everyone says that and I won't lie, I did for a second worry that there was the (unlikely) chance that maybe the baby would have features she'd have to grow into, or come out covered in hair or any a plethora of typical wrinkly newborn baby things, and I'd have to spend the next couple of months dodging the SHE'S SO CUTE line, but seriously this baby is absolutely gorgeous. I'm not entirely convinced that my sister gave birth to her and instead perhaps she took part in a con of the entire family, carrying an increasingly inflated basketball under her shirt and went out on Monday morning to Babies R Us and picked out the cutest baby they had. That's what they sell at Babies R Us right? Babies? I just assume.

And although my original plot has suddenly taken a back seat to all stuff babies, it too has exciting things happening. In just the weekend I was away, the arugula has given me another harvest of leaves, which equaled two dinner salads, the beets have finally gotten to the point of being thinned out (which'll happen tomorrow perhaps), the potatoes are just ridiculous now and have started showing flower buds, which is a good sign that little baby potatoes are happening below, the tomatoes all have at least 5 tomatoes or varying size and development, one plant alone has 21 tomatoes ranging from tennis ball size downwards, the cucumbers have exploded in growth, all the plants are covered in the yellow flowers and baby cucumbers, which mean cucumber sandwiches and quick pickles wont be too far away. The pattypan squash are HUGE and the male flowers have started flowers, and that means in a week or so, they'll be joined by the female flowers, which means I'll soon be pickling and jarring them too and the green beans all have purple/white flowers on them and come up to above my knee! Also, the little side garden full of herbs and a more arugula and romaine have come along nicely!

Here's a few pictures:

 Future cucumber salad!
This little baby has 21 tomatoes!
If you were curious of what potatoes look like (and what my pinky finger looks like) here it is! Future Gnocchi and roasted potatoes!

Baby beets, which to be honest I'm not particularly thrilled at their progress. I might pull them all up and just plant another succession of green beans. LAME


What an awesome week!

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Exciting News.

I received some really exciting news in the garden today. I was out fertilizing the tomatoes and the rest of the plants, after the last week of heavy rains, when the director of the garden came by, bringing some great news. See, I had mentioned to him a couple weeks ago that being as fortunate as we are with this garden, the space, the ability to grow our own healthy and nutritious food, everything, that it really felt wrong to not be growing things for the community food bank. I had already come to the conclusion that with my own personal plot I would reap a huge amount of food and that I'd give 10% of my total harvest, but we definitely could do more! So anyway, he said that I could have an extra two or three rows to plant things. This essentially doubles the size of my growing plot and multiplies by 5 the amount of food I'll be able to bring to the food pantry! So far I've doubled the amount of potatoes I'm growing, added two more tomato plants and planted zucchini and yellow squash, all of which are good at producing lots of food. I also bought two bulk packets of green beans which tomorrow I'm going to begin succession planting to make sure there's a constant supply of green beans!

When it comes down to it, 1.4 million of my fellow New Yorkers depend on soup kitchens and food banks to meet their food needs and too often people use food banks to get rid of their canned foods that they themselves don't want. (Hint: If you don't want to eat the year old spam, why would someone else want to?) Further, those dependent on these sources to feed themselves often live in what are colloquially termed food deserts, where low-cost, nutritious food is almost impossible to find. I know whatever I'll be able to squeeze from the land won't individually solve the hunger problem that this city faces, but I'm an "either help bail the boat or get out" sorta guy and so I'm very excited for this opportunity and hope the success I've had in my own plot will carry over into this new project. I'll keep you informed.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

First Harvest

There's lots going on in the garden. I've cleared out the front garden, possibly with the help of child labor (we'll talk about that later). My two plot neighbors took the back patio area on as a project and made a really awesome rock garden (they might've found astroturf buried under rocks, with weeds growing through it). I buried a pumpkin with a friend, It was a 'love pumpkin' that she had bought with her partner, whom she had just broken up with and then it collapsed in on itself, so we buried it, as you do (or should do) with past relationships. It was solemn and ridiculous, just how I prefer things.

What's most exciting though is the garden is suddenly exploding in growth! The Potatoes have grown past the rim of the trench and today I mounded the soil up around their vines for the final time, next stop HOME GROWN POTATOES. All my Green Beans have their second set of leaves and so soon I'll have fresh Green Beans! Some of the Tomatoes are now double their starting size and all are covered in flowers and most have tiny little fruit on them!

Best of everything though is yesterday I harvested my first meal from the garden:

Fresh Arugula! The Arugula needed to be thinned and waste not want not, so I made a light lunch of Arugula microgreens. Granted, it was only 1 oz. of food, but drizzled with a balsamic vinegar reduction and olive oil, seriously, so delicious.

And tonight I had my second meal from the garden. Pasta with a deconstructed tomato sauce with mushrooms accented with fresh from the garden Basil. Yes, of course the only thing from the garden was the Basil, but for real, it made it so yum.




I'm so excited for the garden to really start producing food and to be able to make full meals with produce from it. Every day there'll be more and more! Here's a few more photos of the garden to show its progress:

 Green Beans!
 Baby Tomatoes!
 The New Tomato Stakes (details in blog post to come!)
 Cucumber sex! Er. Well Cucumber flowers, which is sorta like sex, but with pollen. They're growing up the trellis quite nicely and have tripled in size since they were planted. I CANT WAIT TO MAKE PICKLES AND CUCUMBER DILL SANDWICHES!

That's about it. The latest seeds I've planted are some Romaine Lettuce (to be shaded and hopefully prevented from bolting [going to seed] by the cucumbers), a mess of Carrots, a new crop of Arugula, more Beets to replace the first seeds that washed away, and a quick crop of Radishes, that'll be kept cool by the towering Potato vines. Next time I'll tell you all about how I discovered someone in the garden crazier than me!

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Gardening Footwear

There's nothing that compares to the relationship you have with a sibling. I love my sister more than it could possibly be said, how else are you to feel about someone who puts up with your insanity (and I, hers)?  This is of course before a few days ago.

Now, I had always considered her to be slipping just a little bit. Who moves from NY to NC, I mean, of course, owning your own home might seem better than sending to a landlord, a check every month or finding a place grander than a hovel for less than 500k, but really. Have you not met a New Yorker? We're delightful. An absolute treat. But being the ever loving and supportive brother I am, I chalked up her geographic silliness as a passing phase and let her go on her southern adventure. (We won't talk about how approaching 3 years later she's married, a home owner and about to birth her first baby, cause you know, that would make it seems as if I might be wrong about NY or NC. And that's just not a possibility I'd like to entertain. I swear she inflates the husband and house and pregnant belly whenever she needs to show her idealized American dream and really she lives in a double wide with a man name Cletus and his mother, Franny.)

Having said that she pushed me too far and crossed the line in expecting me to accept her lifestyle. After days spent in the garden, destroying, one by one all my converse, giving up and switching to flip flops (oh god I can even describe the amount of dirt left in the shower) and finally going with an old pair of top siders. She suggested I buy a pair of crocs, for the garden. I know. If I hadn't saved a screen capture of the text I wouldn't believe it either:


 Crocs just remind me of the sort of utilitarian footwear you'd want to wear while hosing off corpses in a morgue, except not, because you wouldn't want body water sweep through the holes. In fact, I now know of a fate worst than death, being dead, naked and hosed down by a schmo wearing crocs. Nothing with that much plastic should find a place on your body, plastic doesn't breathe! Gah. I can't even. I know there are converts and ardent followers of Crocs, but I think they're a mark of the beast and their inventor, the Antichrist.

All I can say is she too will be added to my list of people to pray for, her Cletus and Fanny, especially Fanny, with her speech impediment. She tried so hard.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

"Plants"

I had a friend tell me yesterday that I came off as actually insane, but that it's okay because I acknowledged it. So in that continued spirit, I know I'm pretty crazy. I prefer to think about it in the passonate and driven sense and not the creepy and restraining order sorta way, (not that I've really given you any reason to believe the former, instead of the latter), but for my sake, let's pretend.

I have basically finished planting my garden and aside for some anal retentive weeding and watering, it's mostly up to the plants to grow big and make babies. Babies I will eat. Right? Cause tomatoes are plant babies no? Anyway, because I've got nothing to do in my little plot my sights have turned elsewhere...(queue the dun dun dun music [is that music? a tone maybe? Whatever it is, make that noise in your head, riiiight NOW!])

So the garden is faced with a fence that's probably 12 feet high, with a smaller gate meant for people and a larger gate meant for vehicle access, behind the fence is a common area garden that's 4 or 5 feet deep. I mentioned in my last post a grassy area that will probably become my summer/fall project, this is part of that are. And well summer/fall is officially now. I had planned on doing this slowly so perhaps maybe people wouldn't notice, I certainly don't want to make waves. I spent yesterday sorting through the pile of potted "plants" that dominated the area. I use the term "plants" in a very loose and generic sense, it's not an animal and it's in a pot, so it's a plant-sense.  I kid you not, half of them are filled with dead or dying plants, another quarter are filled with living "plants" and by "plants" I mean weeds, actual weeds. Yep, welcome to the community garden where we grow dead things and weeds! The last quarter had plants that were alive but missing a label. YAY PLANT MYSTERIES! Still unsure about whether these were the property of a crazy hoarder gardener, I just divided the living from the dead and weeds and figured I'd let them sit for a few days and see if anyone moved or claimed their "plants". I honestly gave myself a day before I couldn't resist and just tossed them all in the garbage, cause I'm crazy and now is better than later.

Luck would have it though that the "Guy in Charge" wandered by and marveled at all the work I had been doing, so I casually asked what the pile of "plants" were doing and what was going to happen with them. (I'm very good at this sort of thing, the: "Hi, this is all garbage, you know it's garbage, I know it's garbage, I'm going to throw it out, I hope that's okay, but if it isn't, I'll do it fast, so it doesn't hurt as much, because this is garbage, garbage.", ie. being a WASP.) Again, luckily he just sort of confirmed that some things were plants the garden got for free and some were just random things to fill in the place in front of the gate and some things he didn't know about, but that "I COULD DO WHATEVER I WANTED". Yeah, I know. I literally laminated that shit and put it in my wallet. I near immediately ripped out all the weeds in the plot next to the fence, planted Marigolds plants and seeds and Four O'Clock seeds. Summer is now folks, we have to hit the ground running! Tomorrow I throw out all the "plants".

Monday, May 26, 2014

The Grand Reveal.

Guys, I finally figured out how to make the internets work. Yeah. I know. And I'm entirely sober doing it. Tomorrow, I might even clean my room. Behold the power of over-caffeination!  Besides my mastery of the internet I also spent most of the afternoon in the garden, where excitingly things are starting to sprout and grow! This is mostly a photo update, so please forgive me for destroying your data and everything, but today is the day! The big reveal and some pictures of seeds sprouting!

Essentially this is the layout for the plot, it measures 20 feet by 5.5 feet, the foot path is on the north side of the plot, which corresponds to the left side of the diagram. I'm the first plot, so I have access to it's entirely length, from a patchy grassy area. Between the grassy area and the plot, there's a raised planter that up until now was full of weeds, it's now the home of some perenial ground cover and an herb garden I planted yesterday (It is roughly the top row in the diagram).  I figure my labors should be rewarded and the reward will be tons of dill. The grassy area has turned into my summer/fall project. Right now it's dominated by a dozen or so pots of living/dying plants and weeds that the garden got for free from someone. I obviously can't help myself and you all know me better than to not anal retentively organize and sift through the mess and make some order of it. (I actually spent part of today transplanting some perrenial ground cover plants into the border areas near the foot path and used this really awesome app to help identify some of the plants.)

So here's the layout of the garden! Hopefully it's pretty clear, after the photos there's a short description that might clarify things a bit.  



The actual plot from left to right (North to South) starts with a netting for cucumbers to grow up, the cucumbers, of course, pickling and slicing, then tomatoes, (twelve in total!), there's some green beans mixed in between the tomatoes and summer squash, that will hopefully give a quick harvest before either of their neighbors start getting demanding for space and light. Also, between the potatoes and strawberries and potatoes, are spring/early summer vegetables that by late summer will be replaced with a crop of broccoli, kale and bok choy. If you've got any question about the lay out leave a comment below! Here's a photo standing on the North side, looking through the netting:
NOW, exciting things are also happening in the garden in the seed department. So far we've got glimpses of life from the Green Beans:
And we've got Arugula sprouts!  (Please forgive the terrible shadows. It ain't easy taking pictures of Arugula sprouts, those guys are TINY.)


And last, but certainly not least (cause growing potatoes, sort of ridiculously awesome) Potato sprouts!
Hopefully now you have a sense of what's happening and how things are laid out. And yes, I know it got a bit ridiculous, but the plot is literally bigger than my bedroom, what would you have me do with all this space?! I've been denied fresh vegetables for years. A BOY NEEDS HIS TOMATOES.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Strawberries!

Two weekends a month I get to hang out with the coolest ten year old I've ever met. Steven and I are each others respective big and little brothers via Big Brothers Big Sisters. We were matched just before the most ridiculous winter I've had since moving to Brooklyn and so most of our outings have been to museums and movies. Today though, in continuing the long line of child labor in my family, we got to hang out in the garden! I had managed to keep unplanted a bit of land between the squash and tomatoes and so after I picked him up we went to Home Depot, where we wandered around the plant section so he could decide what he wanted to plant. Being a kid after my own heart, he went with the best choice, strawberries! I can't help to be a bit proud that instead of the typical grade school ambition of green beans he want for something a bit more challenging and hopefully rewarding in the yum department!

After we got to the garden and we read the tag for planting tips and instructions we got to work and after the ridiculous thunderstorms and rain of the last two days we got pretty covered in dirt. Once we got the plants in the ground, plus one extra that went home with Steven in a pot, we planted a few rows of green beans and spinach. We also ran into our plot neighbor Christina, this is also her first year so we'll be stumbling through community gardening together! A pretty successful day in the garden and we managed to dodge the rain too!

Here's Steven mid-strawberry planting:
So that's about it of what's happening in the garden. Nothing has sprouted from seeds yet, but I don't doubt the soaking we've gotten in the last week will mean little leaves will be poking through the soil any day!

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Rain

    I lied to you. I don't have a diagram. I can't for the life of me figure out how to get this sketch program to make pretty pictures of things and so it's going to have to wait until I can achieve the proper drunkenness to figure out how to make technology work. In the mean time I promise, there are rows and vines and trenches, TRENCHES! I know. Growing potatoes apparently involves digging a trench, I'm skeptical. I figured most of the garden already thinks I'm insane, so having a trench makes perfect sense in the grand scheme of thinks and at least if Queens ever decides to invade I'll either have potatoes or a place to hide, potentially both!


It's been thundering and raining on and off all day, which is of course what happens the day after I spend an hour and a half going back and forth to the spigot with a pilfered bottle of Dasani water, watering each and every plant. Now of course it would make more sense to use one of the three hoses laying around the garden, and normally I'd admit that sometimes I like to do things the difficult way, because I'm stubborn and my father's son, but no, each hose had its own special way of getting me dirty and wet. Before I tell you about the hoses let me preface this by saying for some reason although the city can't pressure the water enough to get a decent shower, they do a great job at making sure the Community Garden has water powerful enough to power wash paint off metal.

 The first hose I tried had rotted and decayed at the nozzle end so that the only way to prevent it from spraying out the side and soaking me, was to hold my hand over one end, while also keeping the nozzle sprayer held open with my other hand. If I didn't do both, I got sprayed from crotch to neck, so after turning on and off the water it looked like I quite enthusiastically pissed myself. The second hose, which I had to drag from the other side of the garden and untangle from a random fence had it's own delights in store for me. For some reason it had a splitter attached to the end and I couldn't figure out how to remove it without actually removing the end of the hose but I assumed I could just close off one side and screw on the nozzle to the other. That is of course how it would work with a hose that hadn't sat out all winter, instead there was literally no "closed" position for the splitter, so the only way I could use this hose involved holding one hand over the end of the "closed" end, which more kept the water from spraying in my face than stopped it from coming out of the hose. It also meant that where once I stood on solid dry ground, I now stood, in wet shoes, in a mud hole. The third hose I don't want to talk about. I should have taken the fact that it was tied up with a piece of fabric (who ties up a hose with a shirt sleeve?!) as a sign that I should've left it where it was, but instead while it worked perfectly fine, I'm pretty sure it's previous life involved pumping crude oil because I ended up covered in grease.

   So yeah, having left the garden day two looking like I pissed myself, rolled around in the mud and then changed the oil in my car, using a bottle on day 3 made a lot more sense, I promise. Thank god the forecast calls for more rain. We won't talk about how I might've asked my Dad if I should cover the rows of seeds with a towel to protect them from the pouring rain. I think moving forward, we should just accept that fact that instead of 28 cats I have plants and sometimes I worry.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Ground is Hard

    If there’s something I remember about childhood forced labor, I mean gardening, it’s that the date when it’s usually safe to plant things outside happens to fall on Mother’s day. I remember this mostly because the Fire Department my father was a volunteer at also held a Mother’s Day plant sale, where usually the children of the department members would tag along/become convinced that unpaid labor was exciting, and help sell. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that it was also a borderline child labor sweatshop, but outside and for a good cause, so totally okay. If there’s one thing I excel at, (aside from emasculating men at the hardware store, which is a story for another day) it’s selling azaleas to people who don’t want or need them.
    Having said that, NYC is so large and full of heat absorbing concrete that it’s actually warmer than 45 minutes east of here, which is vaguely where I grew up. This means that the last frost date hits much earlier than outside of the city. Yay heat island effects! This also means that I was way behind schedule and now that I had a plot and a key, SHIT GOT REAL.
    The first afternoon I turned over, by hand the plot, which for reference is about 20 feet by 6 feet. Yeah by hand. I’m not even sure farmers do things by hand anymore, they have donkeys or machines or donkey machines to do these things. And this dirt was hard, rock hard, like spent the last year making sweet love to concrete and their love child was the ground I was hopelessly trying to make into black gold, hard. Black gold in the nice rich soil sorta way, not the Texas T, moving to Hollywood with granny sorta way. But hoe I did. Please note hoed side and non-hoed side, NOTICE HOW ONE SIDE LOOKS LIKE CONCRETE??
    Two hours later, covered in dirt, sweaty in impossible ways and my back, actually broken, it was PLANTING TIME. After Saturday afternoon was a bust, because apparently 2pm on Saturday actually means 3pm on Sunday, I had salved my angry/enraged/broken heart with good old-fashion consumerism. I BOUGHT PLANTS. Tomatoes and cucumbers and squash and seeds for all sorts of things, so I got to plantin', which did not help with the whole covered in dirt part. So dirty.

    Next time we'll have the grand reveal, I'm writing up a diagram of sorts and we'll have photos of PLANTS IN THE GROUND.

On Being Creepy

"Dear Brian, You are a nice and also very serious person. In study hall, I saw both sides. I know you can’t stand incompetence but I know that you will be patient until the world catches up." Love, Mrs. Harris 2003, High School Yearbook.

She at least got part of it right.

There are two things that I consider non-negotiable. Being regularly on time and doing things you say you’re going to do. In my ideal world everyone would do what they said they would and the bitches would be on time. The following is a tale of neither of those things happening and how sometimes for no reason at all and certainly not because I’m losing my cool, my left eyelid twitches. I assure you neither of these are related. I’m just training for the eyelid Olympics. We gotta beat those Russians. Yeah. Good. Glad we’re on the same page.

Alright, so last we left our dashing and brilliant hero, I, errr, I mean he,  he  was dealt the double blow of produce that literally was going to rot in the store AND barely three windows in which to grow any sort of vegetables that might salve his tomato craving broken heart. (That’s not to say he didn’t try, but that’s more a snifter of port and a cosy blanket sorta story, stay tuned!)

Anywho, I walk around my neighborhood a lot. I mean creepily a lot, I check out the neighbors yards, make judgey sideways glances at their paltry attempt at a front garden and take note of their wall hangings. Hi my name is Brian and sometimes I can’t help thinking that my neighbors yard needs, no, demands a handful of flower boxes and perhaps some better ground cover than concrete. I know. I have a problem. But all of this is okay because all these creepy neighborhood judge-fests are because I have to walk the dog. Girl loves to pee every two feet and I’m a sucker for a stroll. We know, we’re seeking help at our own pace, back off. So, on these walks I’ve noticed a few seemingly semi-public (as public as a 10 foot fence padlocked shut is) gardens. I knew I just had to get in one.

Alright new friends, now we’re ready to really share. Are you ready? I hope so. Something you should know about me: I am persistent. Imagine that Mom. Really, my mom, imagining her? On the side of the field, in the school office, at the doctors? She knows what she wants and dammit she’s going to get it. You give me a lady in a pantsuit with her eyes on the prize and the guts and gall to get it and I’m sold. It’s not that I don’t understand the word “no”, it’s just that until I hear that word accompanied with a reasonable and logical explanation I’MA HUNT YOU DOWN UNTIL I GET WHAT I NEED. I blame my upbringing, I know, I’m seeking help, but in the meantime crazybitchtigermom got himself a garden plot due to his persistence, so eat it.

For real though, the saga that was getting a plot in the garden was in itself a novella sized story of ridiculous. All told it took me 2 1/2 weeks of daily, if not twice daily, door knocking and bell ringing, a note posted to his front door, a note given to a neighbor to give to him and a note posted to the gate door to get a hold of the coordinator of the garden. I was clearly determined, fortunately having a scruffy mini schnauzer bopping along made my efforts seem less crazy garden stalker and more casual dog walker. Dogs really are the best way to completely normalize, bizarre behavior. Hoarding curb finds? Bring a dog! Being nosy and want to check the planning permits for a new building? Bring a dog! I know, I’m sick, very very sick.
The kicker of course comes that after finally getting a hold of him and being told “Meet at the garden at 2 on saturday” and after rearranging my weekend, HE INSTEAD WENT UPSTATE TO PICK UP HIS SON FROM COLLEGE. I know guys, at this point, both eyes, actually twitching. I won’t even mention that though his house phone had no answering machine and his cell phone voice mail box was full, the man knew what Text Messaging was AND responded, surprises all around.
 I’m still not entirely convinced I have a garden plot and instead am dreaming and will wake up, still creepily walking around the neighborhood, muttering about beefsteak tomatoes, dragging a now quite tired mini schnauzer.

Hi.



Hi. Hello. Hey there. Stay with me now, this is literally the first thing I’ve ever done on tumblr. I’m scared, you’re scared, let’s pour ourselves a big glass of wine and get through this together.
I live in Brooklyn, in a pre-war apartment that though it is blessed with space and closet space, is a bit short on the whole sunlight thing. Now, it isn’t dark by any means, don’t let me mislead you. I can grow a whole slew of houseplants, at points, my bathroom and bedroom have looked less like living spaces and more like an overgrown rainforest. I know, poor me, first world problems, party of me, humor me here though.
I grew up in suburbia on land that only one generation ago was virgin land. My father planted what seemed like acres and acres of tomatoes and cucumbers and bush beans, you name it, enough to feed us all summer and still we chased most of the neighbors around with surplus tomatoes and zucchini. What this meant is when I moved to Brooklyn I suffered from extreme shock. Do you know what they try to pass off as fresh produce in this town? It’s criminal.
Now, of course I get it, part of the deal we make in exchange for living in such a great city is we give up some of the luxuries in life: being able to sleep soundly every night, not knowing about the certain hot wet urine smell scent that permeates the subway, and paying less than $6.99 for a pint of ice cream. We accept these things for the greatness of New York. We do so gladly, or at least a scoff and a grumble and perhaps a sigh. There’s no place like New York and I love it, but a fella needs a tomato that doesn’t taste like plastic. What does he have to do, to have a nice sliced tomato sandwich that tastes like the garden? So far it seems, a lot.
That’s it. That was my first post. We made it! Now, pour yourself another glass of wine for a job well done, we earned it. Next time we’ll probably need shots though, we’ll be talking about the saga of joining my community garden.