Funky harvest

My garden is a land overflowing with abundance and mutations. Seriously, I apparently can't grow anything normally. I planted over a dozen zucchini, which ANYONE can grow, and while they flower exuberantly, no squash appear. I mean, shit, everyone else in the world accidentally grows so much zucchini they have to force them on others at gunpoint. Then I plant carrots and cucumbers, which all decide to grow perfectly round. Instead of long, slender, beautiful vegetables, I get this:

 

I mean, what? I can maybe understand the carrots, since they might decide the ground is just too wearying to try to push through, but the cucumbers? They are all like fat weird balls.

Also, my marigolds are MONSTERS. I grew them from seed. For a long time, they didn't look like they would live. They drooped, and looked depressed, and lost leaves. Then, after two months of being emo, they shot up five feet into the air and exploded into flower. I've never seen marigolds so tall. 

  

 My corn looks beautiful... from the outside. I peeled back the husk on a few ears of corn, and found that each one seemed to be the home of a new and interesting bug. None of them would be edible. They certainly didn't look appetizing. I am disappoint.

 Speaking of bugs, the yellow jackets are doing fine. Bastards. I tried to take a picture of them as they flew in and out of their burrow, but they were not cooperating. They were flipping me the bird as they buzzed past. So, instead, here is a dumb picture of their evil festering nest.

Also, here is a caterpillar. She's huge. I was picking tomatoes, and I was startled to find this big darling hanging underneath one of the tomato plant branches. I poked her a little, and she pulled her face out of the branch and drooled juice everywhere. I would be annoyed, but as you have read before, I have approximately 28,000 tomato plants. I can afford to lose a few. I already have gathered several big baskets of tomatoes by now and there are still dozens green still on the vine.

I found a nifty catepillar ID guide online so I could figure out what she is, and found that she's a Great Ash Sphinx. I like her shiny green face.

Despite everything else being weird and funky, my green beans are still producing like mad, and if I'm REAL FAST I can scoop out some potatoes a few at a time, and I'll eat the carrots and cucumber despite their questionable heritage, so I can get a whole big bucket full of happy fresh foods! I look at this and feel pretty damned satisfied with myself. And I think, someday I will grow normal-looking things! And maybe even the mighty zucchini!

In other news, my bees are not making me any damned honey yet. I mean, they are finally making some honey, but I'm worried they won't have enough even for themselves once winter hits. I really don't want to have to feed them syrup to get them through to the spring, but it looks like I might have to. I also noticed two weeks ago that Small Hive Beetles have finally found the hive. At first, I freaked out. I thought they would kill the colony. I made a bunch of stupid and worthless traps that managed to catch, like, one ant. But the last time I got into the hive, I saw that it wasn't that bad. There were only a few beetles, and when I opened the cover, the bees were actively murdering the couple of beetles that were suddenly exposed. Rock on, you hardcore babes. Here is a picture of them looking busy without actually doing much work:

Gardening = Terror?

Saturday, I took a break from studying and spent some time in the garden. I mucked out the pond (and found teenie tiny baby goldfish!!!) and planted some flower seeds. At one point I was digging around the base of a tree with a hand trowel, wanting to make a space for some shade flowers. I'm stabbing away at the dirt and, suddenly, this THING popped out of the ground like it was on a damned spring and almost splatted into my chest. Thankfully I have ninja-like reflexes developed from a lifetime of being highly anxious and tweaky, so I was able to throw myself back while shouting like an idiot.

This horrible ball of slime is what sprang out at me:

 

It was the exact size of a chicken egg, covered in 1/2 inch thick layer of slime, and smelled terrible. I thought I had dug up an alien baby. I was not happy that my serene garden contained such horrors. I knew Dani wouldn't believe me if I simply described it to her, so I scooped it up on my trowel and carried it into the house. She was taking a nap, but this was too important for sleep! Her reaction was: what the crap is that? Is it alive? How about you put that outside? 

I plopped it onto the front porch and, in the interest of science, I cut it open. That little bastard was as hard as a rock. It also released a hideous stench once it was sliced into. It took being putrid very seriously.

   

I have no idea what the crap this thing is, which means I need to hit the internet. I'm guessing if it truly is not an alien baby that is about to sprout tentacles at me, then it is probably a fungus of some kind. I get on Google images and type in the most unfortunate series of words, bringing up pictures I should have never seen, wish I could erase from my brain, and will probably alter my psyche forever. Things like mucus, eggs, slime, gross, fungus, etc. It was a bad idea.

Finally, I discover that my unholy friend is a stinkhorn "egg" or fruiting body. How interesting is that? It's deliberately nasty to attract flies, and the adult stinkhorn looks disturbingly like a phallus with some kind of terrifying STD. 

Of course I had to show the girls. They were delighted and yelled, "GROOOOOSS!" and poked it with sticks. Then I put it in a bowl on the porch and forgot about it until today. I went to dump it out and saw that it has grown. AHHH! It's still alive! It's trying to reach for me! And it's slimier! I don't like nature anymore!

Beekeeper's daughter

Ivy has expressed a lot of interest in the beehive; to the point of occasionally getting in trouble for inviting neighborhood kids over to check it out and getting a wee bit too close. So today I suited her up for the first time and took her with me when I went to check the hive. I wanted to teach her how to act around the bees - how to be responsible, slow, and quiet.

Normally a not particularly cautious person, she surprised me by showing some reservation about this situation. So I duct taped her pant legs' closed, let her wear the enormous hive gloves, as well as the big hat and net. This made her feel more confident - though she was constantly paranoid that a bee had somehow made its way under the hat and she refused to believe me that it was one of her braids moving around.

The bees seem to be doing alright. I'm not sure, though, since I don't exactly have any experience yet. There do appear to be less of them. Bees live only about 3 weeks during the summer months, and since there hasn't been much time for the next generation to be born, and it's been a good three weeks since I've had them, there looks to be a sharp dip in the population. I'm crossing my fingers that nothing terrible is happening. They haven't made much progress since I checked them last weekend.

I couldn't find the queen, but again, I suck at that and haven't seen her since I put them in the hive. So that doesn't mean anything. I looked closely and didn't see any evidence of disease or mites, which is awesome. They are also still very chill about me pulling out the frames. They just don't seem to give a damn. I use a smoker, but only lightly. They are all, "Whatever!" and completely ignore me.

 

My garden is doing... not too shabby. I haven't been able to give it much attention because of school, so I can't complain too much, but I do wish I could have it looking/producing better. I have to keep reminding myself that 1) I am not supporting my family with its bounty, so it's ok if it fails, 2) it is only for my own amusement, and 3) I am not trying to get in Better Homes and Gardens or some shit like that. 

But I'm sad because my spinach bolted. It's been so damned hot that they barely made it six inches tall before farting out on me. I love spinach so I'm bummed. I did read that in my area it's easier to grow spinach in the Fall because spinach also prefers short days. I'll try again then.

My potatoes are getting tall. I forgot what potato flowers looked like and I think they are puuurty. Here, I took a crappy photo for you. I think that I had a smear on the lens.

 My regular peas did not grow at all, which is bizarre, but my snow peas have gone crazy. All of a sudden, there are snow peas all over the damned place. I picked several handfuls, ate a good dozen of them as I went, and then made dinner with them. I am very excited that this is the first time that my dinner was dictated by what was growing in my lil' garden. It feels really good, you guys.

 

Very first garden meal! Stir fry with snow peas, spinach, carrots, and "chik" patties. This is one professional food photo - it deserves to be featured in a snotty food blog. Or something.

So many seedlings

At the beginning of March, I was overwhelmed with the need to make a garden. Of course, where I live it was too cold to plant anything other than radishes, so I started many plants in the basement. I set up an elaborate system of lights propped up with books or tied to the wall with string. I started a zillion seeds.

I wasn't really thinking about just how many seedlings I was growing. It didn't seem like much when they were only half an inch tall. And many died anyway, since the basement was damp and chilly, and I didn't exactly have the best nursery system going.

The flower seeds either sprouted quickly and I put them outside one by one, or I killed them with love. Either way, easy to handle. But then my tomato and pepper plants began to mature.

See, I love tomatoes and peppers. My love borders on the obscene. I figured, a few plants aren't enough to fulfill this love, so I will start LOTS of plants. But when they got big enough to pluck from the cookie sheets and put into individual little peat pots, I began to get a little stressed out. I'm in nursing school so I don't have a lot of extra time. Then they were big enough to transfer outside, and I become VERY stressed out. I hadn't counted before, but I had more tomato plants than a single person would ever need. The Roommate and I both like tomatoes, but Dani and the girls are not enthusiastic about them.

I have been putting those goddamned tomato plants in the ground for the past three days. As of an hour ago, I have transferred FORTY plants. I still have thirty left sitting in the wheelbarrow. Mocking me. Looking depressed and wilted because I won't give them a beautiful place in the sun to spread their hateful little leaves.

Little bastards.

What makes it worse is that I had decided to be all hippie about the garden. I took the advice of internet gardening hippies and I have been making most of my garden with the "double-dig" method. This means you have to: 1) dig a lot 2) dig some more 3) be real pissed off and tired but you still have MORE DIGGING. I had done this because I thought, hey, it's great for the earth! And it'll be a good workout and I'll get some awesome buff arms! But those damned hippies scammed me. They didn't say, "Oh, this will take for-fucking-ever. And you'll want to kill yourself long before your garden is ready."

Also, I didn't realize that I would be uncovering with my BARE HANDS a lost graveyard of glass. I don't know why the previous owners hated glass so much, but there was some serious loathing there. The entire back yard is full of shards of glass. And it's well under the sod, so it's been there a while. I guess they would collect bottles and go out there and go SMASH I HATE YOU BOTTLES and spread the glass around evenly so no area was untouched. I don't get it. I've never seen this much glass in one spot. So I've slashed open my fingers so many times it's ridiculous. I'm also finding bizarre twisted rusted pieces of iron. What?

Anyway, I also planted a small mystery garden today. Why is it a mystery? Because I have NO IDEA what those seedlings are. I had started a ton of flower seeds, moved them out to the little window box in the yard to grow, and promptly forgot about them. A few days ago, I pulled the top off so they could get used to not being in a greenhouse environment - but I forgot out Ranger. That damned dog got into the box and dug it all up - leaving me to find a big pile of potting soil, sad seedlings, and chewed up plant markers. So I went ahead and planted them all and we'll see what happens.

THIS DOG IS DELIBERATELY SABOTAGING MY LIFE.