Saturday, May 10, 2008 | by nathan

Unfried Green Tomatoes

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to present my first tomatoes:

I’m not sure I can adequately express my excitement about having helped in the creation of these tomatoes, except to tell you that when I saw them, I squealed like a little girly piggy, fer sure.

Yesterday my coworker Gwyn brought me and my boss - who also is an avid gardener - some raspberry plants that her boyfriend had dug up from their garden. They needed to thin their bushes out, and she immediately thought of us. They sat in a pot with only a little dirt, no light and no water yesterday at work, but I put them down as soon as I got home yesterday. So far I’m not *too* hopeful about them, but there’s a whole lot of compost and manure under them and they’ve been watered no fewer than 4 times in 12 hours. Still, for the moment they look a little pathetic:

So pray for the newest addition to this garden. They’ve been watered and fed and watered and then fed some more, and it should be noted that they look a tiny bit better now than when I put them down, but only just. At any rate, if they work out I’ll have raspberries as well as blueberries and blackberries. The blackberry bush I put down last week, the one I got from Home Depot, is going nuts; it’s had about 6 inches’ new growth since I put it down:

This week I also took a chance and put down some of my cucumber seedlings. Here’s a lesson in gardening for you: always grow more seedlings than you’ll need. Best case scenario? You’ll have a whole bunch of extra plants you can give away to loved ones or other gardeners. What will probably happen, though, is that some of your seedlings will die after transplant and you’ll need the extras to fill in. Here’s hoping the latter is not the case with my cukes:

I also put down some carrots, though I don’t have a great deal of faith that they’ll do very well, or live at all, actually. But it’s always good to keep hope alive.

Monday, May 5, 2008 | by nathan

Four Days’ Wedded Bliss

Brian and I decided, for our third anniversary, that we would take a break from life entirely. The date was Wednesday, April 30, and we booked ourselves into a room at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. We had done this last year as well, but had forgotten to take the next day off work, and so we found ourselves, on a Tuesday morning, scrambling around in a posh hotel room at 7 a.m. trying to get to work on time.

This year, we were smarter. Anniversary was on a Wednesday; we took Thursday and Friday off work. We arranged for late check-out from the hotel, enabling us to sit around in complimentary bath robes and watch The Price is Right.

First, of course, was our anniversary dinner on Wednesday night. We started off the night with drinks in the Red Piano Bar in the Skirvin. Brian was Talisker on the rocks, I was Brittan martinis (Chopin, dry vermouth, bleu-cheese olives).

Afterward we went to the new Redprime Steak in downtown Oklahoma City, across the street from the apartment we lived in when we first got together. Dinner and the accompanying drinks were amazing, and afterward we went up on the roof of our old apartment building and reminisced. We took some time to be glad we no longer lived downtown, that I no longer worked 7 days a week at 3 jobs while also going to graduate school. We talked a lot about the future and where and how we see ourselves going forward.

The next morning, hung over, we ordered room service and watched gotzy morning television and generally just lazed around for quite some time. We perused an Oklahoma Travel Guide to give ourselves ideas for the Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008, and checked ourselves out about noon. We spent a fair bit of the rest of the afternoon at home, working in the yard. A trip to Home Depot found me with four wonderful grape tomato plants - my favorite kind of tomato - and a whole bunch of sacks of cow manure and mushroom compost. Brian got some flowers to put down in our backyard bed.

I also decided, in a fit of gardening glee, to plant a blackberry bush:

It all sounds like the least-romantic thing that two people kicking off four days of marital bliss could be doing, but it was so great being out there with him, both of us getting sunburned, both of us working this tiny little plot of earth that we call home, together.

In our significant downtime we played a lot of Mario Kart Wii - I get frustrated when I lose, which is often - and had some friends over for a cookout on Friday night. Saturday we managed to get rid of almost all our extraneous junk in the neighborhood garage sale, and we even had a few offers on Sam, who got something new that you’ll see here on Friday.

The garage sale, unfortunately, took almost all day, and by the time it was over we were sunburnt and tired and we retired back to the Wii. Yesterday I dropped the rototiller on my foot - it wasn’t running, luckily - but overall I’m rested and ready for what’s next, which is summer on the short term, and on the long term, at least 50 more years with this awesome guy and this life I so, so love.

This morning, when I went out to my car to go to work, this was on the steering wheel:

Friday, April 25, 2008 | by nathan

Look! I Created Food!

Well, okay - God created it. BUT I HELPED!

Check this out:

See that little yellow flower, there? That’s going to be a freaking TOMATO! There are a whole bunch more on the same plant.

See, I’ve been so busy with life and all its appertaining craziness of late - almost all of it good - that I forgot to tell you all about my garden. After Sam ate my first batch of plants (remember that?), I was discouraged but not defeated. I ordered new seeds from Organica Seed and Seed Savers, and I started anew, in adorable little IKEA pots in my kitchen.

Then, do you want to know what happened? All my plants but one were stricken by some awful fungus and died. Seriously, it was quick, too - I left for work and they were fine. I came home from lunch and they were all laying over, wilted, like someone had let the air out of them.

This guy survived, and I’m so proud of him:

Someday soon he’s going to be providing my household with delicious heirloom Marglobe tomatoes. Yummy!

See, a couple weeks ago I decided it was now or never; I had to get this garden started, to coin a phrase. So I got out the old rototiller that I’ve somehow inherited from my dad. It was quite the testosterone rush, let me tell you, throwing that thing down and coming up with dirt. Quite the rush indeed. I immediately wanted to go build things and have sex. But that’s another story.

I got new seed flats - I’m using peat pellets this time to start my seeds. But also, I’ve been reading a lot of gardening books, especially The Seed Starters Guide, and I decided that I needed to give my seeds even more support. So, I went to Target and bought a shelf, and to Lowe’s, where I bought four grow lights and some zip ties. I attached the lights to the underside of the shelves with the zip ties, and kablammo! Grow shelves! Now my neighbors can all think I’m growing weed!

But I’m not. I’m growing purple opal basil.

And cherry tomatoes:

And cantaloupes:

I’ve also got some cucumbers, yellow strawberries, bolivian rainbow peppers, dill, carrots, Calabrese broccoli, Ailsa Craig onions, and white bush beans under those grow lights. It’s all going crazy. The beans got so big after just a week that they had to be moved to the lower shelf, with some tomato plants that my buddy Jaye brought me:

The cool thing is, that’s not even all of them! Wednesday night after work there was a thunderstorm coming, and I wanted to get as much of this in the ground as possible. So, with lightning on 3 sides of us only 1-2 Mississippis away - gardening is occasionally an extreme sport, as it turns out - we put down a row of young tomato plants and a row of beans:

The hardest part, emotionally, was thinning out the superfluous seedlings from the peat pots. But some of them came up so easily, so completely and beautifully intact, that I couldn’t resist the urge to put some of them back down in pots to see how they did. And, with these 99-cent Home Depot clay pots, I did exactly that. So I ended up with a basil, dill, cucumber and cantaloupe plant each in its own pot:

So far the only thing that’s bearing a little fruit are the jalapenos, which I also bought from Home Depot because I was feeling impatient with waiting for seedlings to get started. One of them wilted a bit, because I inadvertently set the sprinkler too far away from it. It’s all recovered now, though, and it’s got 3 tiny little peppers on it, and its brother has even more than that:

These jalapenos are growing next to the 6 bell pepper plants I put down. I got bell peppers in orange, yellow, and red, because adding a variety of colors to your vegetable diet is very, very healthy and delicious and aesthetically pleasing. The bell peppers have had the hardest time so far, because we’ve been experiencing really high nighttime winds that have buffeted them quite a bit. I’m not completely sure how to help them out, but they do seem to be hardening off quite well on their own and even showing some new growth, which is always encouraging.

One last thing and then I’ll let you go. This is mint. I have two pots of it:

Next week I’m going to add mulch & compost to all this goodness, and probably put some more stuff in the ground.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 | by nathan

The New Seed Starter’s Handbook by Nancy Bubel

I wanted something to help me get started again, to help me to believe in gardening after Sam ate all my plants. This book was, in a lot of ways, exactly what I needed; full of helpful, practical advice that was really easy to follow.

The problem, however, with buying any kind of hobbyist volume - even one that professes to be for beginners - is that it’s written by expert hobbyists. In this case, Nancy Bubel is an excellent gardener, but she is an excellent gardener in part because she owns a large tract of land and because she makes a living from doing this. Hence, she has almost unlimited funds and free time to care for a garden, and the book almost seems to be written for people who have the same kind of time to invest.

Fact is, I don’t have time to try eighteen different types of compost, and I really don’t have the money or yard space to do some of the more elaborate setups she describes. As with many gardening books, she offers a lot of advice that should perhaps come with a disclaimer, something like, "Plants want to grow. That’s why they exist - to grow, to flower, to produce fruit, and, finally, to produce seeds." Instead, by supplying a lot of really elaborate ways of caring for plants, from very specific, circuitous ways of layering the soil in one’s garden to how to build drip-irrigation systems, she seems to imply that anything you put in the ground will rot and die if you don’t follow her advice.

Still, overall I’d absolutely have to recommend the guide. It definitely helped me as I restarted all my seeds, and while I’m sitting here decrying her occasionally overly-elaborate growing methods, I did take her advice almost word-for-word when I built a growing shelf complete with grow lights. I never would’ve thought to do so in the exact way she described, so for the most part, I have to say I’m incredibly grateful to and for this book, as I think I may have a really good harvest once I start putting everything in the ground.

Thursday, April 17, 2008 | by nathan

Blowin’ In The Wind

Oklahoma has been living up to its reputation lately; the wind is sweeping down the plains like a mother. I stayed home from work yesterday because when I woke up I felt pinned to the bed by centrifugal force, the way you feel after a night of really hard drinking. My head had been throbbing the night before but I’d managed to get to sleep; when I woke up it felt like I’d had brain surgery and they’d left the saw in. I tried to get in the shower and get ready for work - I really did - but I just couldn’t seem to manage it.

Having allergies really is the worst; you’re not contagious, so usually if you’re suffering from an attack there’s still really no excuse not to go to work, but you spend a whole lot of your time feeling sort of vaguely sick and congested. I’ve tried every medicine, prescription and over-the-counter, and found them to be of some help, though not a great boon. Allergy shots didn’t seem to help much, and when it gets really bad the only thing that really helps me to breathe is Afrin, which can be addicting if taken more than 2-3 days in a row. Exercise really helps, as it does for everything.

Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that in every single "scary medical story" they do on the news, it’s always like, "NEW RESEARCH SHOWS THAT PEOPLE WHO EAT ORANGES ARE 6% MORE LIKELY TO GET COLORECTAL CANCER!!!!!    … except unless they got regular exercise, then not so much."

I feel like my body just works better on a fundamental level when I’m getting regular exercise. I’ve been to the gym once this week, as we’ve been trying to get our backyard sorted out and that hasn’t left time for much else after work. Monday night I put down two cherry tomato plants, six bell pepper plants - two in each color: red, yellow, and orange - and jalapenos. I planted two mint plants in pots and put my first strawberries in the ground last night. Brian, meanwhile, has tilled the grass from our flower beds and cut down some very ugly bushes and weeds and pioneer trees we had going back there. Talk to me in two months when I have more vegetables than I know what to do with and see how much I like gardening.

Anyway, my allergies are better today, thanks to a nice little cocktail of pain killers, antihistamines, and nasal sprays, and the sleep-of-the-dead brought on by Advil PM last night. Here’s hoping yesterday was the worst of it.

Saturday, April 5, 2008 | by nathan

Starting Over

As you can see, I’ve restarted my garden. I’m not sure it’s going any better this time than the last, but at least my pots are prettier and I’m making sure that Sam gets nowhere near them.

Monday, January 28, 2008 | by nathan

The Attack

Brian got home from almost a week in Orlando on Saturday. Just before he arrived home I had decided to put all the plants out in the backyard, on top of a large adirondack loveseat we have out there, so they could get some real sun. I had repotted most everything and it was all doing well, except for the tomato plants I ripped away from their roots and then washed down the sink and ran through the garbage disposal. (A moment of silence).

Brian got home, and we had all the appertaining hellos - kisses in the driveway while disapproving neighbors clucked their tongues, and the like. We talked for a few minutes and then I suggested we take Sam to the dog park so he could work off some of the nervous energy he’d been exhibiting over the last week.

I knew something was wrong the second I went into the backyard. Sam didn’t come running; he was propped up, his front legs on the adirondack seat. I screamed at him, he came running, a horrified look on his face - "Horrible news!"

He’d torn most of the plants down from where I’d put them, chewed and dug into the pots, destroying those weeks’ worth of work and growth and all the excitement I felt. I went to get a look at the damage - it was extensive, almost total - and a kind of rage came over me. A piece of dog poo lay at my feet; I picked it up and chucked it at my dog, who took off running away from me after his own excrement caught him square in the face. I called him back to me and gave him a spanking, screaming "BAD DOG!" in his face over and over. He ran away and hid.

I picked up one of the broken pots and smashed it against the side of the shed. I cried a little on Brian’s shoulder and threw a few clods of dirt at nothing. I screamed at Sam. Welcome home, sweetie!

I watered everything that was still alive and left it in the sun. As soon as we repotted what we could I went and found Sam; he was hiding from me on the sun porch, and when I found him he was looking at me with complete terror. I felt awful, and also, I was only barely repressing the urge to cut him open with my gardening spade and show him his own kidneys.

Instead, I yelled at him some more, then we took him to the dog park anyway. (I’m reasonably certain I’m going to make a terrible parent).

The garden is mostly dead. A few cucumber and tomato plants that I’d put on the front porch instead of in back have survived, and the strawberries, several of which were squished when Sam perched his giant paws in their tray, have come out mostly intact. The asparagus has started to come up but was not outside for the attack. Still, most of the cukes, tomatoes, all of the dill, all of the basil, and the peppers - they’re gone. I threw it all away tonight.

I’ll start a new garden shortly. This time I’ll know a little better how to manage, and hopefully, I’ll be smart enough to keep it away from predatory, stupid animals. Hopefully I’ll be nicer the next time Sam - to put it nicely - fucks my shit up.

That’s all I really want, you know - to be nicer. It’s just - it’s really difficult sometimes, you know?

Saturday, January 26, 2008 | by nathan

Yellow Strawberries