Category: Garden

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So Much I Don’t Know About

No, this isn’t an existential post.  Well, maybe a little.  So Liz wanted a tiered strawberry bed.  That wasn’t a priority project, but something she had been keeping in mind.  Recently, we had a kid-free day, and she suggested a couple options to fill that opportunity: Dayton’s 2nd Street Market, and Mendelsons liquidation outlet.  The former didn’t sound very interesting to me as I had envisioned food and hippies peddling art (we went there later anyway, and my prediction wasn’t far off).  But Mendelsons sounded just odd enough that I became intrigued.  And so, off to Mendelsons we went.

“Liquidation outlet” didn’t do this place justice.  It was somewhere between hoarder’s opus and nerd’s paradise, if that means anything.  It occupied 3 stories of a downtown Dayton manufacturing compound, and was filled with surplus/deprecated products, ranging from plastic restaurant containers to decommissioned business electronics.  One day I’ll have a server rack, and I now know where to acquire one to refurbish.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Liz found some nice wooden boxes on the ground floor, which we would go back to.  A sign, however, informed us of electronics being on the 3rd floor (the 2nd was off-limits for an unknown reason).  Following these signs, we were led down a hallway to a choice: elevator or stairs.

Context often gives words more meaning than the words themselves–looking at this elevator, the notice that it could hurt me was taken VERY seriously

A service elevator with a dubious last-maintenance date?  We took the stairs.

It was on floor 3 that I realized there is so much in this world I just don’t know anything about.  There were piles of circuits and various mechanical components.  Alarm systems, telecommunication systems, closed-circuit surveillance systems, row upon row of capacitors and resistors.  There was a section filled with ball-bearing rotation devices.  There were things I was afraid to even touch–what appeared to be high-pressure sodium light bulbs.  How is this place allowed to exist?  I don’t know, but I’m glad it does.

A room dedicated to the era predating transistors

There were many, many ideas for future projects.  But, back to the strawberries.  Downstairs, we picked up the two boxes we had set aside earlier.  They were labeled as NCR boxes–a company I had to research as I am a non-native to these parts.  Once I did, however, I remembered the logo.  Sadly, it was another big company that had abandoned Dayton with the recession.  The meaning behind those numbers, written upon the wood, will be forever lost to time as the sun physically erases them from existence.

But the wood is solid and looks nice.  One placed inside the other, raised on bricks, created the tiered strawberry garden Liz wanted.

They just don’t make ’em like they used to.

–Simon

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Insectopia

I’m understanding more and more the appeal of hydroponics.  I could grow vegetables in a controlled environment, maximizing yield while minimizing space, all the while eliminating pest problems.  I realize of course that this is an overly-simplified view of gardening, but frustrations lead me to consider it.

This, The Year of the Garden, has me experimenting.  Before I choose how to invest my energy and resources, I have planted a variety of test plants.  At the end of the year I will consider the results of these subjects, then use it as a baseline to decide what to grow in the future.  Except tomatoes of course–I will always grow those.

Still, it’s irritating when something doesn’t work out.  Yet I’m quite the gardening pragmatist on all matters besides tomatoes, so rather that fight nature, I strike bargains with it.  The rabbits are eating my flowers, so I plant beans and clover–something far tastier.  The rabbits in turn have, for the most part, agreed to leave everything else alone.

But, there are forces with which I cannot reason.  And said forces are always of the insecta variety.  I had a tentative relationship with my local ecology, until the Japanese beetles arrived.  Nasty little harbingers of death.  First they attacked my crabapple, then the ash, then the peppers, then the basil.  So I did what I don’t like to do–applied insecticide.  I’ve also installed a beetle trap for the first time.  I don’t like to take these measures because they always have adverse and unpredictable effects on the balance.  But it was either that or lose my entire garden to the scourge.

I had a couple pumpkins volunteer, no doubt from the Jacks who withered away post-Halloween.  And wouldn’t it be cool to grow a pumpkin?  I did successfully manage to do so one year at the townhouse.  My pride and joy this year is big and happy.

Then I noticed some interesting wasps frequenting the plant.  From experience, I generally take that as a good sign, as they prey upon things that eat my vegetables.  But this wasp was one I hadn’t seen before.  Curious, I took to the Internet, but as we can still only search with text, it made identification difficult.  So I consulted a better resource: the family chat.  It is often quite convenient that I have contact with such a variety of biologists whose degrees and hobbies frequently overlap.  I took a photo of the questionable insect and sent it to the group.

Moments later, I received a response.  I was instantly concerned.  Such a quick turnaround couldn’t possibly be good news.  My sister advised me it was a vine borer, followed by the comment: “mother fuckers!’ and the suggestion that I “kill them!!!!” as “THEY WILL DESTROY ALL YOUR SQUASHES”.  I must say, that was very clear and concise expert instruction.  So many of my colleagues could learn from this effective communication.

So it turns out that this little fucker is a moth.  As the name implies, their pupae bore through the stems, often with fatal results.  The myriad of treatment suggestions ranged from targeted excision of the grub to injecting BT.  This seemed like a lot of trouble for a plant I wasn’t terribly vested in, so I guess I’ll just wait to see what happens.  The main stem is already chewed, so I doubt there’s much I could do anyway.  Pity.

Are there any bugs that selectively eat dandelions and thistles?

–Simon

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Ocimum Lazarum

Nothing truly stays dead in the plant kingdom.  The late frost, which I suspected had killed my basil, had only slowed it.  In keeping with the saying that it’s only a weed if you don’t want it, basil would very much be a weed indeed were it not so tasty.  Behold, the two plants I had started in December:

And like my Evil Morning Glories, I have applied a new taxonomic designation.  When I make pesto from these, they will grant me regenerative properties.

–Simon

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Summertime Magic

With the first year of school comes the first official summer break.  And that means that I get to watch a little girl’s first experiences with the wonders that the magic of summer break have to offer…with some minor guidance of course.  Captured below are two of these such moments.

She asked me to get her a drink.  I was busy, so I suggested the novel idea of drinking directly from the hose.  She stared at me blankly, considering that proposal.  It had never occurred to her before that she could do that.  Eventually, she decided that sounded fun, and off she ran.  I found her in the front yard with the hose.  Her eyes were bright with glee as she held the hose to her face, cute little nose crinkled as the inefficiency of hose-drinking drenched everything in the area.

Every kid enjoys being a know-it-all, especially to authority figures.  At one point, someone had taught her that she could eat clover flowers, which has become a regular activity to taunt her teachers–guardians who are necessarily concerned with their charges eating wild plants.  Now, with the herb garden installed, a banquet of edible plants sits in the yard, begging for a child’s destructive attention.  So after she freed the remaining fishing worms into the herb garden, decided to sample the cuisine.  Admittedly, it was fun to teach her about the different plants and let her build culinary associations.  I’d have her taste a leaf first, then ask if she could identify it.  She was pretty accurate with the more obvious ones, correctly identifying chives, mint, and basil.  She’s not a mint fan, but loved the chives.  Forestry merit badge earned.

–Simon

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Micro-Bouquet

While I would never admit this to Liz, I too enjoy the aesthetics of arranged flowers.  Where we differ, however, is that I generally don’t feel the price point of these arrangements to be worth their cost, nor do I consider purchasing them to be a full experience.  But, it is possible to make one’s own floral decorations, and since this represents a project—I like projects–I dabble in this art form.

Back in the Lubbock years, mom would take us down the road to a vacant lot.  This being upon the Great Plains, the lot had gradually morphed into reclaimed prairie.  The inevitable spring storms would then turn this into an urban landscape of wildflowers.  We would each pick a bouquet, then walk home and place them in vases.  It was an afternoon activity of cheap entertainment, until the city eventually paved the lot.

At the time, I found it a little out of character for a boy to be immersed in flowers, but I had only sisters, so the options were generally to play alone or join in with more effeminate activities (although I still instigated the occasional Nerf fight).  And play alone a lot I did, but there’s only so much a kid can do alone before needing company.  So while Texas schooling tried their best to beat me into a tough, football-loving macho asshole, I was forced to embrace aspects of my feminine side.  This was also at the end of the super-angry 80s feminist period–the period that gave us a decade of sitcoms featuring incompetent family-men, and represented a brief period in which I was taught that as a boy it was okay to show emotion.  I say brief because once I tried dating, girls were decidedly not interested in a boy who talked about and showed his feelings.  Can you say double-standard?

Just search through Pinterest

But a consequence of this confused upbringing is that I can easily embrace a cultural shift in masculine ideals.  Gardening?  Bah!  Sissy nonsense.  Cooking?  Tailoring?  Domestic woman’s work.  Not so much anymore.  Even the most obstinate of minds still has to accept the pendulum is swinging back.  And such is the case with something as simple as flowers.

I note of growing popularity are the Asian floral arts.  They will spend hours deciding where to place a single flower.  And like all things Asian/European, Americans are quick to assimilate the culture as chic.  Hence, floral arrangements are no longer effeminate.

With that over-analysis, I can move on with my anecdote.  In the townhouse, there wasn’t a lot of room to grow flowers, and any garden space I did have was reserved for tomatoes.  Therefore, I started making what I call “micro-bouquets”, or simply “whatever I could fit into a shot glass”.  Simplicity became the governing principle, and the small size necessitated creativity over substance.

Today, I still like to apply this philosophy to floral arrangements.  I find a small bouquet to be less gouache and more elegant, less taxing on my garden’s resources, and more difficult to pull off:

Intellectual reflection aside.  My daughter really likes them.  And if making my daughter happy isn’t manly, then I fail to understand anything about our current society.

–Simon