I left the soaker hoses running in the vegetable garden overnight. Because I am a fool. The wailing of the younger at 4:30 am this morning must have fired my one remaining functional synapse and somehow reminded me that I had dumped a rather large volume of precious water onto my unsuspecting plants. The beds are raised, so they drained fine, but what a waste.
In addition to my perpetual foolishness, I had a couple of pints as I rumbled around the garden yesterday afternoon. One pint of Old Speckled Hen, which brought me a shameful amount of joy, and another pint of Crispin Apple Cider. The apple cider was good, but my wife wondered if it was a little too sweet and fizzy to be considered acceptable for a serious ale drinker to imbibe. I think she may be right. Not that my drinks need to confirm my testosterone level, but I do have an image to keep up. An image I already push to the limit by writing a garden blog.
I bought the two cans of drink at the giant Whole Foods in downtown Austin. The place is a wonderful temple of all things good to eat and drink, and it stays packed with hipsters, hippies, the bourgeois and people that seem to simultaneously belong to all three categories. When I go, I wish I had hair to muss up and act like I didn't mean to. Even bald, I just try to look as aloof and disaffected as possible. This proved especially difficult yesterday, as I tried to check out in the self check lane with the two beers and about 5 items of produce. It turns out that finding the little sticker on my produce, entering it and weighing the produce takes me longer than a trained checker. OK, I completely screwed it up. Twice. And the one checker assigned to 4 self check lanes had to come over and help. Twice. All this while a line of customers took time out from thinking deeply about eating locally to join together and hate me for taking so much time. I was beginning to sweat by the end and had to stifle the urge to look behind me and apologize with a wan smile at the angry mob that had gathered. I did not look hip as I thew my organic, local vegetables into my recycled paper bag and fled.
In actual garden news, I ran by the Natural Gardener and I bought my potatoes - Red Pontiac, Kennebec and Yukon Gold. I also bought onions, the varieties of which currently escape me. I'll update later.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Kohlrabi Chicken
My biggest Kohlrabi split in half. I don't know how or why - too much water after ages of none, freeze damage, was it ready to be harvested and I left it in too long? My other question, can I still eat it? And my primary kohlrabi question, how do you eat this crazy thing anyways?
Most gardening books include a brief blurb admonishing the neophyte gardener to plant only vegetables that they want to eat, which is good advice. Which I ignored. The seeds were on sale at the dollar store (1 cent a packet!), the picture on the packet was stunning, I had read local garden guides recommending Kohlrabi for our area and I figured that I was more likely to figure out how to eat it than any of the sort I saw as I glanced around the dollar store. Despite my obvious advantages - ability to read, Internet access, a full set of teeth to eat with - I have done no better, perhaps worse, than my bargain shopping brethren.
I, like most 30 something bourgeoisie American snots, abhor bargain shopping establishments. I hate wal-mart, loath costco and stay out dollar stores. Well, sometimes I go in dollar stores. OK, with some regularity. I have one addiction which draw me back, travel coffee mugs. I don't collect travel mugs, I just love to lose them. I've left travel mugs in all the best places. My wife has grown tired of me buying nice travel mugs and them treating like disposable paper cups. While on that subject, I think the new line of re-usable coffee mugs that look like disposable paper cups are stupid. Really people, you want your cup to look like you could throw it away? I don't get it. So I sneak into dollar stores and buy cheap mugs and hope my wife is not paying any attention, assuming I keep them in my possession long enough to get home and into the line-up. The real pain is that nothing at the dollar store is a dollar. The cups are like 3.99 or so. Still cheap.
I learned of dollar stores as seed depots from a client. This client is dear to me due to her having played a reasonable size role in the great chicken drive of 2009. While out at her farm, doing what I do (mysterious, isn't it?) I noticed her sizable collection of animals that are not big. She doesn't have one of every species in that rather broad category, but she does have these - chickens, ducks, geese (pronounced thusly - ba-stards) rabbits, small dogs, children, cats and guinea pigs. All pretty much running loose together. Since chickens, along with bees, are on my list of animals that fly that would make my garden nicer, I began asking her all about her flock. She has about 15 hens - 3 Rhode Island reds, 9 mixed breeds, 1 with a crazy fluffy head and fluffy feet and one chicken that once rode to Fredricksburg, Texas in the undercarriage of her minivan. The story, as she told it, is a bit choppy owing to it's telling being interrupted by her goose (ba-stard) trying to peck my testicles off.
One day she parked her van down by the chickens et. al. and left it for the night. The next morning she loaded up the kids and drove roughly 50 miles to visit a friend. While exchanging greetings in her friend's drive a rather bedraggled, and apparently hot to the touch, chicken stumbled out from under the front tire. After three irregular circles, the little gal found a spot of grass and stuck her head back under her wing where all agreed it had likely been for the last hour. After a night's recovery in the friends bathroom, she road home in a normal, civilized chicken manner - between two kids in the backseat of a minivan. Apparently it was some time before she layed any eggs again. What a chicken adventure! Think of the tale she had to share. I'm sure the bunny's bought in immediately. the other chickens stuck their heads under thier wings for the duration of the telling, the guinea pigs stared on in awe and the geese (ba-stards) tried to peck her famous legs off.
I digress. Again. So chicken lady told me to hit the dollar store for a seed sale. 90% off the one dollar seed packets (Ok so the seed packets really are a dollar still). I strolled in, picked out a coffee mug and proceeded to fill a plastic bag with 40 some odd packages of seed. Including some plants I didn't know much about, like kohlrabi. Very greedy acting, I was. I was prepared to shell out the whopping 4 dollars that these packets were going to set me back, but the clerk rung them up as 1 cent a piece. I earnestly tried to correct him (really, I did!), but he had that dollar store kind of look in his eyes and I could tell he didn't care. So I bought my Kohlrabi and 43 other packets of seeds for less than 50 cents. But now what to do with them, I don't know. I get that dollar store look a bit myself when I think about it.
Most gardening books include a brief blurb admonishing the neophyte gardener to plant only vegetables that they want to eat, which is good advice. Which I ignored. The seeds were on sale at the dollar store (1 cent a packet!), the picture on the packet was stunning, I had read local garden guides recommending Kohlrabi for our area and I figured that I was more likely to figure out how to eat it than any of the sort I saw as I glanced around the dollar store. Despite my obvious advantages - ability to read, Internet access, a full set of teeth to eat with - I have done no better, perhaps worse, than my bargain shopping brethren.
I, like most 30 something bourgeoisie American snots, abhor bargain shopping establishments. I hate wal-mart, loath costco and stay out dollar stores. Well, sometimes I go in dollar stores. OK, with some regularity. I have one addiction which draw me back, travel coffee mugs. I don't collect travel mugs, I just love to lose them. I've left travel mugs in all the best places. My wife has grown tired of me buying nice travel mugs and them treating like disposable paper cups. While on that subject, I think the new line of re-usable coffee mugs that look like disposable paper cups are stupid. Really people, you want your cup to look like you could throw it away? I don't get it. So I sneak into dollar stores and buy cheap mugs and hope my wife is not paying any attention, assuming I keep them in my possession long enough to get home and into the line-up. The real pain is that nothing at the dollar store is a dollar. The cups are like 3.99 or so. Still cheap.
I learned of dollar stores as seed depots from a client. This client is dear to me due to her having played a reasonable size role in the great chicken drive of 2009. While out at her farm, doing what I do (mysterious, isn't it?) I noticed her sizable collection of animals that are not big. She doesn't have one of every species in that rather broad category, but she does have these - chickens, ducks, geese (pronounced thusly - ba-stards) rabbits, small dogs, children, cats and guinea pigs. All pretty much running loose together. Since chickens, along with bees, are on my list of animals that fly that would make my garden nicer, I began asking her all about her flock. She has about 15 hens - 3 Rhode Island reds, 9 mixed breeds, 1 with a crazy fluffy head and fluffy feet and one chicken that once rode to Fredricksburg, Texas in the undercarriage of her minivan. The story, as she told it, is a bit choppy owing to it's telling being interrupted by her goose (ba-stard) trying to peck my testicles off.
One day she parked her van down by the chickens et. al. and left it for the night. The next morning she loaded up the kids and drove roughly 50 miles to visit a friend. While exchanging greetings in her friend's drive a rather bedraggled, and apparently hot to the touch, chicken stumbled out from under the front tire. After three irregular circles, the little gal found a spot of grass and stuck her head back under her wing where all agreed it had likely been for the last hour. After a night's recovery in the friends bathroom, she road home in a normal, civilized chicken manner - between two kids in the backseat of a minivan. Apparently it was some time before she layed any eggs again. What a chicken adventure! Think of the tale she had to share. I'm sure the bunny's bought in immediately. the other chickens stuck their heads under thier wings for the duration of the telling, the guinea pigs stared on in awe and the geese (ba-stards) tried to peck her famous legs off.
I digress. Again. So chicken lady told me to hit the dollar store for a seed sale. 90% off the one dollar seed packets (Ok so the seed packets really are a dollar still). I strolled in, picked out a coffee mug and proceeded to fill a plastic bag with 40 some odd packages of seed. Including some plants I didn't know much about, like kohlrabi. Very greedy acting, I was. I was prepared to shell out the whopping 4 dollars that these packets were going to set me back, but the clerk rung them up as 1 cent a piece. I earnestly tried to correct him (really, I did!), but he had that dollar store kind of look in his eyes and I could tell he didn't care. So I bought my Kohlrabi and 43 other packets of seeds for less than 50 cents. But now what to do with them, I don't know. I get that dollar store look a bit myself when I think about it.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Obligatory new year post
To start with, happy new year.
A quick look back at 2010 -
Best - A new, happy, healthy baby girl!
Worst - Our Dog died.
There was lots in between, but these two events will mark 2010 for me. I suppose every year will have it's ups and down, it's all arounds (trademark: Joe West), but this year has been a doozy. To those that say "things can get worse than a dead dog", I know you are right, but go and spread your life perspective and rationalism somewhere else. I know they can get worse, and will, but I'm not looking forward to worse, not at all.
And things don't get much better than a healthy baby, so I'm sticking with the idea that this year was one with some large changes of polar opposite monument.
So, here is to 2011.
I have lots of goals for 2011, most of which are too boring or off topic for inclusion here, but I need to make some goals and focus on them in the garden. In most of my life I am very goal and project completion oriented. In the garden, though, I wander about in piddle mode for hours. I accomplish a few things, invariably, but rarely are they the task I walked out to do. I am on my way to the compost pile to turn it, see some wood that needs splitting and then realize I should water my potted plants and when was the last time I fertilized them and what the hell, did the deer eat my rose again and is that a weed or a wildflower and who said that about a weed, Emerson? Thoreau? man a book and a pint and that picnic table sound nice. So ends another day. It is very different from everyday me and relaxing,I know it is a big part of why I garden, but I am accomplishing little to nothing besides a buzz and some reading I can misqoute later.
Therefore, a list is in order. Maybe posting it will hold me to it.
1) Buffalo grass lawn with raised rock bed borders to the west of the cottage garden. My wife has wanted this forever. I want her to be happy and show interest in the garden, so this is first.
2) revise master plan for garden to site future walled garden and make best use space, time and money. You think this should be first? Are you trying to upset my wife, what is wrong with you?
3) rock wall with gate and pergola in front of cottage garden
4) fountain in cottage garden
5) plumb vegetable garden
This should be enough. If by next year, I've accomplished all this, then I am awesome. And had some help.
As an aside, I start art lessons this week. I've always liked to draw and sketch, but never had any formal training. My goal is to learn to paint, so I can paint my garden and others. You guessed it, in the future, this blog will include not only mediocre writing, but mediocre art. Oh yeah!
A quick look back at 2010 -
Best - A new, happy, healthy baby girl!
Worst - Our Dog died.
There was lots in between, but these two events will mark 2010 for me. I suppose every year will have it's ups and down, it's all arounds (trademark: Joe West), but this year has been a doozy. To those that say "things can get worse than a dead dog", I know you are right, but go and spread your life perspective and rationalism somewhere else. I know they can get worse, and will, but I'm not looking forward to worse, not at all.
And things don't get much better than a healthy baby, so I'm sticking with the idea that this year was one with some large changes of polar opposite monument.
So, here is to 2011.
I have lots of goals for 2011, most of which are too boring or off topic for inclusion here, but I need to make some goals and focus on them in the garden. In most of my life I am very goal and project completion oriented. In the garden, though, I wander about in piddle mode for hours. I accomplish a few things, invariably, but rarely are they the task I walked out to do. I am on my way to the compost pile to turn it, see some wood that needs splitting and then realize I should water my potted plants and when was the last time I fertilized them and what the hell, did the deer eat my rose again and is that a weed or a wildflower and who said that about a weed, Emerson? Thoreau? man a book and a pint and that picnic table sound nice. So ends another day. It is very different from everyday me and relaxing,I know it is a big part of why I garden, but I am accomplishing little to nothing besides a buzz and some reading I can misqoute later.
Therefore, a list is in order. Maybe posting it will hold me to it.
1) Buffalo grass lawn with raised rock bed borders to the west of the cottage garden. My wife has wanted this forever. I want her to be happy and show interest in the garden, so this is first.
2) revise master plan for garden to site future walled garden and make best use space, time and money. You think this should be first? Are you trying to upset my wife, what is wrong with you?
3) rock wall with gate and pergola in front of cottage garden
4) fountain in cottage garden
5) plumb vegetable garden
This should be enough. If by next year, I've accomplished all this, then I am awesome. And had some help.
As an aside, I start art lessons this week. I've always liked to draw and sketch, but never had any formal training. My goal is to learn to paint, so I can paint my garden and others. You guessed it, in the future, this blog will include not only mediocre writing, but mediocre art. Oh yeah!
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