Gone Feral In Idaho

Kyle finished our first  Adirondack  chair today. Next step is for him to share the knowledge and help me build one for my own. I will in fact do all the building.   This is the disgusting mess that the pondtainer ended up in. Brackish black black water due to the tons of leaves that fell in it last fall. The water was literally slimy and stinky. Yet, the dwarf water lily sprouted up new lily pads despite it's pot having fallen on it's side sometime during the fall/winter. Hardy dwarf lily lives up to it's name. I re-potted the lily and cut off the rotten gross stuff. I also emptied the lower pondtainer galvanized wash basin and scrubbed all the gravel.  It looks so much better.  I also took the two fake plants from the stock tank and pressure washed the slime off them and thew them into the lower 'tainer until I get the big one ready.   I mucked out a huge pile of soggy leaves and gross stuff. I now understand how a natural lake can go bad so easily....

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets. The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip... The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies. The beet was Rasputin's favor...

We broke out the salad bar Kyle build last year out of a rubber-maid style storage bin. It is self watering and we will post some how-to's when we convert our now defunct recycling bins now that the city has changed to big city-style garbage and recycling cans. The concept is basically a perforated shelf lined with landscaping fabric (to keep the soil from washing out) and landscape fabric lined wells that go down into a water reservoir. The soil wicks the water up as needed and they usually only require weekly refills making gardening in the high desert a breeze.  Homemade self watering tubs are great because they don't cost much, you get to say you made it, and you can move them around to meet the needs of your plants.   The PVC pipe is the watering tube we drop a funnel into for weekly fill up. The set up worked so great last year we decided to keep this one a salad bar. We have several varieties of leaf lettuce, three varieties of radishes, and som...

45 degrees outside, maybe i'll stunt their growth and buy some time These are two of the four 8 week old Black Krim plants. It's March 26th, there are 6 weeks left before the average last frost date. They are huge and each plant has started to bloom. I have a very hard time offing my plants and am in a bit of a pickle, so I've started an experiment in the greenhouse. I filled 8 more 2 litre bottles to help absorb as much solar energy, although cloudy wet weather isn't helping the cause. circle the wagon train Tomatoes don't like temps below 55 degrees on average, so we have a long way to go. I'm recording each days high and low in the greenhouse and as soon as possible, will plant two of the Krims inside rings of bottles. In the mean time, I have a sacrificial Zavory pepper plant planted in the right circle of bottles. poor little guy, i feel bad for him I'm not sure if I'll learn anything from this experiment other than plants don't like the cold...

Do yourself a favor and watch The Staircase. It is the documentary about a notorious murder trail centering around defendant Michael Peterson who had been charged with the grisly murder of his wife    Kathleen. Trust me, I don't get into crime T.V. too much, but I was riveted and shocked with the ending. This doc is an interesting look into the US judicial system and is an example of why I think we should have professional jurors.   Links: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15894727/ns/dateline_nbc/ http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/04/03/staircase/index.html videos

image source and article As I work in a mostly arid climate, although the past few springs have been very wet, I've never seen this happen to a body.  In other parts of the country that are more humid and cool, saponification happens. Yes, a body can turn to "soap". Click the link for an interesting article. If you are into this sort of thing.  It is also known as "grave wax" or most professionally adipocere. Well not really soap that we wash with. Here is the  Wikipedia article .

click the photos to enlarge:  eggplant spines this looks like this year's first megabloom tomatillo fuzzy krim zavory brandywine potato leaf teeny-tiny yellow wonder alpine strawberry cherry tomato seedling garden huckleberry

Sadie and I spent day one of my four day weekend outside in the yard.  I re-potted seedlings and she kept guard. It was a perfect afternoon. I never take my weekends for granted.  Gardening is a perfect hobby for me to have. It is very meditative and so full of life. It is a nice balance for working with grieving people and  the dead. I also think starting seeds indoors would benefit those with SADD. There is nothing better than coming home from work on a dreary late winter night and having those grow lights on and little seedling to watch as they grow from seeds into little identifiable plants. I know it is cheap and easy to buy seedlings at the store, but I love the whole ritual of choosing seeds in December, planning the gardens when you don't dare go outside because of the weather, and the actual sowing-waiting for the first seedlings to curl up from the soil.   These are some of the tomato varieties: tomatillo, garden huckleberry, and ground ...

It's a lot harder to photograph the new grow-op, but the seedlings are doing really well.  We have the very early start tomatoes in the back row with basil plants, the middle row has eggplants, Thai basil, and Zavory mild habeneros, and the front row are all the new seedlings with the normally planted tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries, garden huckleberries, and wild strawberries.   I finally figured out that the large guy here, probably isn't a strawberry.  It looks more like a dandelion.  I have no idea where it came from. Oh, and the one on the left doesn't fit in either.  I'm pulling them.   These are really tiny alpine strawberry plants. I hope they get a bit bigger.   I'm really glad I started the Zavory's extra early.  They were this big when we planted them out last year.  These guys have 2 more months to grow and will have such a huge start.   I had to make room for two of the early Black Krim tomatoes.  ...

Proof Saturday was much nicer than forecasted, so we took advantage and prepped the raised beds.  We amended and cleaned out the beds.  That is parsley that overwintered uncovered in the left bed corners.   This year I wanted to try a new method to keep what I will no longer call the cold frame, but will refer from now on as our portable greenhouse.  The vinyl tent got really warm on warm days, but at night, promptly dropped down to the outdoor ambient temperature.  I first thought that wall-of-waters would be a good idea,, but then found this article.  What a great recycling idea.   I have four Black Krim tomatoes that will be whittled down to two and will be planted in the center of each of these home made solar heaters.  They are set up now to start warming the soil with the portable greenhouse over the top of everything. Here is an outdoor transmitter for an indoor-outdoor thermometer (in a plastic ziplock to keep it dry). ...

These are the very early started tomatoes that are 8 weeks early.  Black Krim. Zavory mild habanero. New 8 week start seedlings. The wild Yellow Wonder strawberries are growing!

These guys have been around for a while.  The Sultan's Elephant is amazing to see.  This is a more recent video of the awesome puppetry productions they do. Click the photo for a video link.  Look up Royal De Lux on Google to find bunches of videos.   This link has ads, but several video clips.  

I was having some stress over the alpine wild strawberry seeds germinating.  No need for that, at least so far.  Two seeds have sprouted and are the tiniest little seedlings I've ever seen.  Here is a photo of two sprouts with my finger for perspective.   Finding the two new wild strawberry seedlings and jumping in the super fun blow-up bouncy house with Kyle and one of his super cute nieces were the best parts of my Saturday.  Well, jumping in the bouncy house was really the best.  Then the strawberries.