Giants In The Earth

The days are getting shorter and the air is getting crisper, so that means Fall is fast approaching. That also means it's time to see what grew in the garden this year. You may remember last year's bountiful harvest. This year I changed seed to see if I would have a little bit better luck.

This year I planted corn, cucumbers and carrots. I decided that pumpkins will not grow in my shady acreage so I chose only vegetables that start with the letter 'c'. The letter 'c' loves the shade. Shade is cool, as are cucumbers. And just like corn, shade can be high as an elephant's eye, if you are standing next to an elephant. And I picked carrots because I wanted something orange to grow in the garden.
So around about the middle of July I had a couple dozen corn stalks about thigh high, three and a half rows of carrots and one cucumber plant starting to bloom. Then we went away for the weekend and in the course of two days, all of my corn stalks were trampled. After falling to my knees and shaking fists toward the sky screaming, I got out the magnifying glass to search for clues. Namely, small tennis shoe tracks. But, alas, we have pretty well behaved kids in our neighborhood, so no incriminating tracks were found. Do squirrels like to trample corn stalks and at the same time stomp on the horticultural dreams of a middle aged man just for kicks?
At least the cucumber and carrots were spared. In August, I picked no less than four six inch cucumbers before the vine dried up. I finally proved that something can grow anyway.
Last week, Number One Son and I dug up the three and a half rows of carrots. And let me tell you this, the size of the carrot showing out of the dirt at the top doesn't necessarily indicate how big the carrot under the ground is. It's somewhat like an iceberg in reverse. Usually, the iceberg under the water is much larger than the tip showing. My carrots had a top showing that was about as big around as a nickel. But when they were dug up I found out that some were about as long as a nickel as well. So quite a few carrots look more like carrot-balls than sticks.

Here is a fair representation of the range of sizes that were unearthed. Unfortunately, the produce at the left side of the picture was the most abundant. But along with the many mini carrots, there were some interesting shapes as well.

I named a few of the most unique vegetables that came out of the dirt. If you can't read the small print, it reads from left to right, Snowman, Hershey Kiss, Xmas Tree,Twister and Love.


Here's a close up of our favorite carrot of the season. I think it signifies all the love and caring I put into the garden this summer. Even though I kind of gave up after the corn stalk massacre and let nature do it's own thing.

These zucchini came from our friends garden but N1S was so impressed that he wanted to take a picture of them. He used the zucchini on the right for a gun since it grew a curved handle on the end.

But this year's zip lock baggie of carrots has encouraged me enough to probably try again next year. I will have to find some other shade loving vegetables or possibly try flowers.

Whichever I choose, you can be sure to see me in my bib overalls and straw hat endlessly toiling in the hot summer air working on my farmer's tan.

Revenge of the Great Pumpkin

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I like to decorate the house with lights, ghouls and, of course pumpkins. So this spring, I decided to plant a pumpkin patch in my back yard.

My seeds started off strong. I had almost all of my mounds sprout with multiple plants. It wasn't long before I got my first bloom too. As the weeks went by, more blooms would appear but no pumpkins. So I went on-line to find out what the secret was. Apparently, pumpkin vines have male blooms and female blooms. This information would have been useful on the seed package. Anyway, since there is a shortage of bees to transfer pollen from the male blooms to the female blooms, we sometimes have to help them along.

So in order to set the mood for my blooms to get together and make a pumpkin, I dimmed the lights, played a romantic Barry White song on my ipod and left a tray of oysters and chocolates on the ground. When that didn't work, I went back to the Internet which told me how to gently transfer pollen.

Once that was done, amazingly, I had a small pumpkin starting to grow. I knew then that I was going to earn my farmer's tan this year. In my excitement, I visited it everyday and watered it every other day to make sure it wouldn't dry out.

After about two weeks, I noticed my little pumpkin getting smaller and wrinklier and eventually it fell off the vine. I also noticed about half of my plants were getting sick and withering. I thought, maybe I was watering too much. So I let them dry out a while, which seemed to help.

It was quite a while before I got any more female blooms. I guess they are much rarer than males. So I did some more match making when I did get the right blooms, but these pumpkins did the same thing by growing for awhile before dying. This was around the end of August. My garden was looking more pathetic by the day.

So I figured there must be an anti-pumpkin hex on my garden. And the only way to get rid of an A-P hex is with a scarecrow, of course. But even that didn't seem to help.

So a friend of mine suggested that they might not be getting enough sunshine. Since I planted my garden among some shade trees, this could be true.

So I got my chain saw out and leveled all the trees in the backyard. No, I really only trimmed a couple of branches that were hanging over the garden. But by this time, it seemed too late for any pumpkins of size. So I concentrated on nurturing the few small lemon-sized orbs I had.

I watered a little, propped up a few vines a little and prayed a little. But my plants continued to look sickly and miserable.

And then....., a miracle!

On the week before Halloween, my garden exploded with orange spheres of all sizes and shapes. Some were oval. Some round. Small, medium, large and extra large. It was incredible! I could hardly believe it! It was almost as if someone had mysteriously loaded up a truck load of pumpkins from the local farmers market and dumped them into my garden before anyone had a chance to catch him in the act.

I guess my farmer's tan wasn't wasted after all. However the pumpkins got there, they will be put to good use on All Hallow's Eve, frightening and delighting trick-or-treaters of all ages.

I think I will try growing pumpkins again next year. I may also try a few new things just to see what will come out of the ground. I'll have a good eight months to think about it anyway.

Well, Blow Me Down!

Last week, Sweet Pea went over the neighbor girl's house to play. At supper time SP can skipping home covered head to toe with mud.
"What happened?", Lady Di shrieked as she slammed the storm door.
"G and I were making sculptures.", SP responded.
"You were making a mess with mud.", I countered.
"No, we were sculpting with clay.", she protested.
Which is partially true. Our ground is all clay. Not modeling clay, mind you, but greasy, sticky, muddy clay. It's awful if you need to dig a hole after a rain.

Here is a display of SP's artwork. There are a couple of pinch pots, a Popsicle, two puppies and a bunch of stuff that looks like something we would find in the yard after we let our dog out.
Right away SP said she wanted to take the 'puppies' up to her room and put them on her dresser. Right away Lady Di said, "No mud in the house!"
"But it's clay!", SP whined.
Then, to avoid a monumental clash of the titans, I asked SP if I could decorate my garden with her sculptures. They both thought this was a great idea.

So with my clay decorations nicely melting with the rain, here is an updated crop report on our pumpkin patch. The warm weather and my daily watering diligence have yielded promising sprouts.

I planted eight mounds with seeds and so far six of the mounds are showing signs of life. If I can get at least one pumpkin from each mound I will be happy. But I will accept more too.

Other changes in our yard are not as positive. Last Wednesday, we were visited by strong winds. One of the gusts blew over one of our larger dead trees. Which isn't all that bad except when it fell it knocked over two other trees, one of which had one of our hooks for the hammock.

Here is the big one that snapped off in the wind. It's about eight feet off of the ground.

Here's our poor hammock tree that got bullied down by big tree.

And here is the entire gruesome scene.

The good thing is that we now have bonfire wood for the next ten years. The bad thing is after spending an afternoon with the chainsaw, I have a Paul Bunyan sized back ache. Now, does anyone want to split logs for me?

Green Acres

I've always wanted to plant a garden but I just never seemed to have the space or the time. This year I set aside 8 feet square of space to force me to find the time to plant it. So I guess I'm a farmer now. Which I know is an insult to real farmers world wide but that's what I'm going with.

Here is a picture of my victory garden.

This year, with luck, it will be a pumpkin patch. Strictly for Halloween jack-o-lanterns. The seed package said to plant 3 to 4 seeds per mound and to space the mounds four feet apart. I planted 5 to 6 seeds per mound and squeezed them together as much as I could. I'm going for quantity instead of quality. Actually, I will be happy with anything orange.

My main goal will be to keep our vegetable marauders out long enough to get a harvest. Next on the list is to make an intimidating scarecrow to keep watch over my precious patch.

Along with the pumpkin seeds, I planted a couple other 'surprises' that everyone will have to wait for in the fall.

As the days tick onward I will hopefully have some pictures of something actually growing besides weeds to show. Until then, I have to get my overalls washed and fetch some water from the well. I will let you know when to come over for the barn raising.