Me and Mr. Gore

So I guess I could be slower to post this. Last Friday I went to see Al Gore speak at the DAR Constitution Hall in downtown D.C. I thought he was inspiring and I completely buy into his vision that we can commit our country to being carbon-free in 10 years. His comparison to Kennedy's space shot commitment was spot-on. The U.S. had fewer resources for a moon shot back in the 60s than we have today to create a fossil-fuel-free United States. In fact, of all the world's countries, the U.S. is one of the very few in a position to do this. Once done, we can serve as a model for the rest of the world.

Back in the 80s, when I first became a raging environmentalist, it was still considered fringe or hippie to embrace such a cause. In fact, in the heat of that decadent decade, such a thing would never have received national attention in spite of the fact that we already knew about global warming. It's just that nobody was paying over $4.00 a gallon for gas back then so we felt safe in our ignorance. I actually remember when I bought my first car, gas was UNDER ONE DOLLAR a gallon. We used to pity the Europeans and their high gas prices. Who's pitiful now?

I like to stoke my huge ego by thinking that I am doing something for the environment by growing such a huge organic garden. In addition to not polluting, I'm also improving the soil AND creating a home for bees, butterflies, birds and other small critters. It's a good start, I think.

If I could issue my own challenge (though my podium is slightly smaller than Al Gore's) it would be to encourage everyone to put in just a few plants outside, whether in a garden or window box or pot. Use good soil, compost your garbage and feed it to your plants, and welcome pollinators to visit by providing bright flowers for pollen and nectar. These are actually small steps, but if everyone tried it at least once, I can almost promise you'll become hooked, especially if you're originally a city person like I was and the only nature you ever really saw was pigeons fighting in trash cans, alley cats and the occasional rabid squirrel. Now I'm totally fascinated by all of this amazing stuff I missed about nature while I was growing up.

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Abundance in the Garden

HELLO SQUASH!





This garden has now taken on a life of its own, a life with which I have no ownership or involvement. All I do now is occasionally water it; otherwise all I'm good for is removing the obese vegetables that seems to populate its borders.

The zucchini have apparently been hiding their numbers from me. What I perceived to be simply a collection of large leaves has indeed spawned some improperly large and numerous fruits. Likewise, the yellow crookneck squash are hard at work pretending to be squash blossoms; I discovered four fairly large squash hiding under clumps of blossoms, which in turn was defended by hazardous-looking bees.

So far, my approach to harvest has been simply to eyeball the plants and remove what looks ready. However, it appears that there is more to it than just eyeballing; I need to climb in and move stuff around every day to check for ripe veggies because things that appear small one day may grow exponentially larger by the next morning.

One may ask what the hell I spread in this notorious garden to produce such offspring. Indeed one may think that it may be a Chernobyl-effect, although so far none of the vegetables have eyeballs or multiple heads. In any case, let me be clear that there is no chemical fertilizer in this garden, no Miracle Gro or any of that other stuff to force out what I refer to as "zombie plants." These are plants that produce beyond what they are supposed to, giving the look of life to something that should have long ago died. Sort of the way cut flowers look when you put that white powder into the water and the blooms are staring at you intently and exhaustedly, even as their stems are wilted and dead underneath.

I thank the worm poop, my cockamamie compost concoction, and just plain old sweat and hard work (no, I don't think there is any sweat on the plants). Yay organic!!!!

N.B. It is with a heavy heart that I mourn the passing of my entire cantaloupe vine. Apparently in my efforts to stake up its heavy stems, I inadvertently shoved the trellis through its roots and killed the whole damn plant. I am pissed.

King-Sized Cukes

Okay, okay, I'll admit it right up front. The previous mushy post was inspired by my descent into insanity. Yes, I delivered some of those large, porn queen cucumbers in all of their phallic beauty to my favorite chiropractor.
(see post Digging the Doctor, Dirty Girl: http://dirtygardengirl.blogspot.com/2008/06/digging-doctor-dirty-girl.html)

In my defense, they are fresh, organic and grown locally. He's a very healthy man - a very, very healthy man - so I'm sure fresh, organic, locally grown produce is appreciated...no matter how phallic...

When I Give From My Garden

When I give you gifts from my garden, it means something about you and me. To me, it means you are a gift, that you have added something to my life.

Just this past winter, I was a virgin organic vegetable gardener. I was just learning because in the past vegetables have been WAY out of my league. But this winter, I started anew, armed with seed catalogs, some seed starting trays, compost and a lot of enthusiasm.

So I sewed the seeds. I waited and hoped, and when the little shoots appeared, you would have thought that Buddha himself had descended from the clouds and told me to bring my enlightened ass home (though I'm sure he would not have put it that way). The sight of those little seedlings was so promising that it gave me the encouragement to care for the hundreds of little things each day. It was not all sweetness and light; somedays I forgot, somedays I left the damn things out in the sun too long and some of them burned. I lost a LOT of seedlings.

Come spring thaw, I only had a few of each left to put in the ground. I ended up planting tomatoes, cantelope, watermelon, cucumber, zuchinni and yellow squash, and waiting hopefully to see what emerged.

Many more plants were lost once in the ground, to bugs, birds, squirrels, chipmunks and human little boys who ignore their mother's pleas and run through the garden in soccer cleats.

What I have left now is one of each type of plant - one of each. Each plant unique. Each thriving, much to my surprise, and each is abundantly beautiful. I am so proud, not of me, but of the plants doing what is encoded into each of their genetic blueprints.

So when the fruits come to ripen and it is time to harvest, it is with a lot of love that I remove them from their plant and give them to you. It is my deepest hope that you can feel and taste what went into growing it, the months of preparation, dedication and care, and the love I have for each plant as it grows; the love I must feel for you in some way, my friend, as I give to you of myself, what I've worked on for so long.

Holy Crap! I Hatched a Potato!

The potato that I chucked into a pot way back in March has hatched 10 little potatoes that, it seems, might actually be edible...although my daughter hastily reminded me that she adamantly refuses to eat ANYthing that comes out of the garden. I like the trust!

I'm just so thrilled that anything has actually grown that I am strutting around like a mother hen over my little tater chicks.

The sight of the cucumbers is enough to make me squeal like a porn queen, they're just that big. The only problem this city girl is encountering at this point is how to know when to harvest everything. That sounds like it should be the subject of a later blog.

So, later....harvesting stuff....

Pinching Suckers

I think that's an attention-getting title. But I make reference to tomato plants and nothing more. So I did what I said I wouldn't and pinched off a good bit of my tomato plants. Upon inspection, I discovered that they were leafing out so large that they were starting to cover each other in spite of being spaced apart at least a foot. Since I have one plant with nice, large, green tomatoes I decided I better start pruning off those useless parts that were just consuming energy and delaying the ripening process. So far, so good. The plants are still alive.

Last year, I pinched my tomatoes so badly that I killed them, so no tomatoes for me. Hence my skepticism regarding pinching back. On reflection, I can't really name what exactly I did wrong, but whatever it was, it killed two plants.

In any case, it seems to have worked for now. Pictures will follow if these tomatoes actually ripen. The fact that any fruits and/or vegetables will actually come from something I've grown is a HUGE shock to me. Regardless of the fact that human beings have been cultivating food for thousands of years, for me it seems to be a laughable process, hence the 'clueless' in this blog title. Growing up in the city is not quite the preparation for the farming life that a person might need.

Zucchini has blossoms, big ol' blossoms; watermelon is getting close to blooming, squash is blooming; and the cucumbers are developing all over the place. I may have so many cucumbers that I'll need to start giving them away.