Okay, I know I've got a bunch of people on my f-list who garden within city limits (and yes, containers on patios & balconies count).  Well, get over to The Urban Garden Project and be counted!  They're trying to get 100,000 urban gardens started by 2020.  Honestly, I suspect there already are that many, but it's the thought that counts, right?

I ask politely for a dry few days to do planting.  The weather complies.  I've got lots of stuff out in my garden now.

.... and it's going to be 25*F tonight.

Fuck you, weather.

I went to Ye Olde Friendly Locale Nurserye Store today (the aggressive use of the letter "e" is my own addition).  I was looking for a small variety of things, but paramount were seed potatoes for Brian, and some grape vines (and blueberry bushes, if they had any) for me.  The nice checkout lady pointed me in the direction of these pre-fab'ed grape vines in boxes, sort of pathetic little things, although I'm sure they'd grow just fine.  Very little selection (maybe three varieties?), and at least two of the varieties weren't even hardy for this area.  Heck, one of them was only hardy in Florida or further south!  What were they doing here?!  Anyway, I was grumping a bit about this, trying to make a selection, when one of the garden ladies from outside came in and gave me an appraising look (you know, like the one Mary Poppins gives to Mr. Banks when deciding whether or not to work for them).  Then she say, in what I swear was a conspiratorial voice, "You wanna see where the good grapes are?"  I was either going to find a secret stash of grape vines, or have me some illicit sex, I really wasn't sure which. 

Turns out they really were grapes (this is a family blog, after all--*snort*).  Much nicer vines, many many more varieties--all of which were actually appropriate for growing in our area.  I got one vine of Niagra white, one Delaware red, and one Concord blue.  And GLORY BE!  They had blueberry bushes!  Whooo-hoo!  Got the seed potatoes, nae problemo, and several packs of flowers/herbs, and another pack of carrot seeds (ran out). 

Today I finished indoor seeding everything I'll need to start indoors, I think:  basil, borage, calendula, chives, more tomatoes, echinacea.  From here on out, it's happening outdoors.  Of course, we're having massive rains now, and I swear it's about to flood out all of the plants I just put in.  Seriously, I've got 8" raised beds with excellent soil (lovely loamy stuff), and there is standing water in there right now.  Where is my drainage?!  Grrr.

I'm also, hopefully, gonna score some free elderberry bushes from a farmer friend who is pulling them to make more room for his other stuff (utter foolishness, I know--what could be more important than elderberries?).  Sweet!

In other news, there is nothing better in this natural world than mock toffee.  How easy it is to make is proof that there is a devil, and he's invented the best ways to snare us into sin.  Brian is currently postulating that mock toffee is the evolutionary end aim for cows producing cream for butter.  Ohhhh, I've gotta go get another piece now, I'm starting to come down from my high from the last one....

My beets this year have been a disaster.  Big, gorgeous greens, nary a bulb to be found.  *sigh*  And the chard, sitting right next to it in the same bed, is looking huge and healthy and happy.  What gives?  So, I was out picking some chard for dinner the other night and I noticed that there seemed to be a small bulb at it's base.  I mean, I know that chard and beets are basically the same plant (one bred for greens, one for bulbs), but it's a little insulting when your chard has bigger bulbs than your beets, ya know.  And come to think of it, I planted rhubarb chard, and it never really developed that gorgeous red spine and red-tinged leaves like it was supposed to, just like the beets have... er....

... wait a second...

OH YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

Yes, I've been confusing my chard with my beets all summer long.  We in fact have lovely, perfectly-sizes beets, and gorgeous, deep-red hued chard. 

And thus concludes today's lesson on proper labeling of your garden plots.

My asparagus finally arrived today!  I'm sure this is a sign of the apocalypse.  Of course, my body is currently beyond thrashed from the day's events, so I'll just be dealing with that tomorrow.

Today was long, but fun.  I biked with Ian to work out, and then over to the community garden.  I've got two 10' x 10' plots, one of which will be potatoes (yes, yes, I know, very late--I like new potatoes), and the other is for the kids' Halloween pumpkins (and a couple sugar pumpkins, too).  The ground though... oh dear.  Let's just say that I didn't get one of the prime spots.  There's the "really great!" plots, then the "well, they're okay" plots, then the "marginal" plots, and then there's the "we think this used to be a driveway" section.  Guess where I am?  Anyway, 3 wheelbarrow loads of compost later, and I managed to turn a 5' x 10' section of brick into reasonably workable ground.  Boy, did that take it out of me, though.

Then, there was the Kindergarten picnic.  Oh my.  It was fun, oh yes.  Much munching was done, and the kids ran and played like mad on the park playground (inventing new ways to not slide properly), then back to the pavillion for games, cake & ice cream, and then... the water balloon game.  Each set of two people (usually a parent and kid) has a water balloon which they toss to each other, each time taking a step back until, well, until you can't toss the balloon any more.  I'm sure you can see where this one is going.  The first wave of balloon-toss was fine.  The second was perhaps a bit more loose and enthusiastic than planned; and the third was a complete balloon free-for-all, culminating in the teachers getting bombarded.  Much fun was had.

Tomorrow I am Not Going Anywhere during the day, DAMNIT.  I am going to stay home, plant asparagus, pick strawberries, make mozzarella, maybe make bread, read some magazines, play with my new yarn, and let my body recuperate.  Grandparents descend to steal our children tomorrow afternoon, and then bliss may begin.  Friday morning it's the gym, and then out to the community garden again to see if I can't wrest control of the other half of one plot.

Here are some photos of my garden.  I am posting them here so that, when mid-July rolls around and it's all gone to hell, I'll at least have proof that my intentions were good when I started. 

I am happy to take suggestions, advice, or criticisms.  However, please understand that my body is currently in unreasonable amounts of pain due to the work I've done out there.  As such, any criticisms must be prefaced with glowing praise of the work I've done.  Suggested beginnings might include "Wow, I can't believe how beautiful your garden is!" or "I wish I had such a magical space as that!"  Of course, don't let me limit you--explore for yourselves the variety of praises you might heap upon me.  ;-)

Okay, that will suffice, here are the pics:

Brian took his Praxis II test, and actually he feels pretty good about it.  We won't find out how he did for about a month, but I'm glad he feels good about his performance.  BUT, the rumor mill at the test is that SMWC, where B is looking to enroll, may have just lost their teaching licensure accreditation for the year.  (nevermind--see comments.)  WHHAAAAAT THEEEE FUUUUUCK?!?!?!?  Does someone actually have it in for us?!  The HELL?  This is just the rumor mill, after all, and maybe if B can enroll for the June session he'll get in under the line regardless, but that was always up in the air due to test results turnaround time.  DAMNIT.  I guess we'll have to see what they tell us.  I did sit for over an hour chatting with one of the faculty in the Ed. department there at an earth day event, discussing among other things B enrolling in the accelerated licensure program, and she didn't say anything about ths

1.    I am deeply in like with the garden planning software at www.growveg.com (thanks otterkin for that link!).  There are a couple of somewhat annoying glitches, but they pale in comparison to the usefulness of this tool.  I'm using the 30-day trial right now, but I foresee me ponying up the $30 annual fee for this thing.  I mean, damn.

2.   Behold the beauty of my planned garden (clicky for a bigger version):



And as a final afterthought, it is worth mentioning that I have at least another 50ft to expand into to the east, with another postage-stamp sized area around the corner, too.  Next year I'm planning to add some beds of perennials--garlic, shallots, more asparagus--more veg beds, and then some dwarf fruit trees.  Over the sidewalk to our front door will (eventually) have a grape arbor.  Oh yes.

Taking suggestions:  I need to score approx. 2.3 bazuttloads of concrete (cinder) blocks.  I want to use them to make raised beds for my garden next year.  Some quick math indicated that, for standard 8x8x16 blocks, if I want to make the beds 2 blocks high I will need about 600 blocks.  At $1/block new, that's... lessee... 600 x $1... um... a lot.  More than I'm going to spend. 

There are a few options to pursue here.  I'm pretty set on using concrete blocks.  I could work on remapping my garden, but I'll probably need roughly the same amount of blocks no matter what I do.  I could also do only one layer this year (very plausible, really), and then the next layer next year, but that's still $300, which is still a helluva lot of money. 

So I'm looking for suggestions of ways to score lots of concrete blocks cheap/free.  I was thinking of calling some of the local construction companies to see if I can buy any leftovers from them, but they might well store their own blocks for future projects (can't hurt to try though, right?).  I can put an add in the student newspaper to get all of the bookshelf supports I can cart away, but that won't happen until May (still, possible).  Any other ideas?

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

(yes, my brain is already in April--what's your point?)

<-- boy do I smell like dirt!  I got some nice compost out on 3 of my garden beds today to prepare for planting.  Sounds impressive until you know that I have 12 beds.  Ah well.  Two and a half of the beds are already planted, so really that just leaves me 6 1/2 beds to go.  And the other ones won't have anything going into them until early May, so I've got some time.  On Sunday, if the weather follows what weather.com says, I'll be putting in broccoli, cabbage and romaine lettuce.  The romaine starts are looking grand, and I've got a half bed of direct-seeded loose-leaf mix already coming up nicely.  The cabbage & broccoli starts, though--eesh.  I'm not even sure they'll make it.  They look great from the top, but they are sooooo leggy.  Some of them have stalks that are literally wrapping around on the ground!  I cannot figure this out.  I've got them right under lights--lights which have been perfectly sufficient for everything else.  They're not overgrown--I only started them a little under a month ago, and they've been growing leggy the whole time.  It could be that I was out of town when they started germinating and I didn't get them under the lights quickly enough.  At any rate, some of them are doing okay (I tried to thin out the most egregious of them), and they'll definitely go in.  And I might try to plant the others a little more deeply than might otherwise be called for, and see if that helps.  I planted 18 broccoli starts, and probably only have 6 that are in really good condition.  The cabbages are having a similar problem, but not quite to the same extent.  Ah well, if all hell breaks loose, I hit the local nursery and add broc & cabbage to my list of peppers & eggplants to buy prestarted.

The radishes & carrots are also already in and doing well.  I interplant these.  Radishes, of course, exist only to break up the soil for the carrots.