Intermission

Over a holiday dinner, Pop-Pop said to me, "I think our next garden ought to be bigger."

I think if our garden gets any bigger, we're going to have to hire help to work it.

However, rumor has it that Pete (down the road) wants a bigger tractor tiller, and might be willing to trade his smaller tractor tiller for a piece of farm equipment that sits dormant behind Pop-Pop's shed. If we get a tractor tiller, and I can learn to work it, it's on.

Yesterday, after another dinner at Nanny's, I went out to the garden to find out what happened to the two experimental brussels sprouts I planted last summer. (When I checked on them in October, worms had eaten them to skeletons, but they looked like they might have been about to put out new leaves.) One of the plants was D.O.A., but the other is still chugging along, with marble-sized sprouts along its stem.

The sweet peas are goners.

The mustard, turnips, and kale could probably still be eaten.

Rabbits ate the spinach. It's putting on new leaves, though. Bon appetit, bunnies.

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Sweet Peas

Though we've had a few chilly nights with frost, we haven't had a serious freeze, and the sweet peas are acting like they were made for this kind of weather. (Maybe they were!) While the first frost completely killed everything else in the garden, these peas are still vigorous - still blooming, for pete's sake!

On Saturday, I decided I'd better pick the peas before the really cold weather sets in. I took a plastic grocery bag to the garden and filled it nearly full of fat pods. The frost had turned the pods a strange, whitish color, but the peas inside were just fine. We shelled them for supper on Sunday night, and got about 2 cups of peas. I should have picked them sooner; some of the peas had grown so big that their skins had split, and they were still a little al dente even after 5 minutes of steaming. But, heck, I'd never grown sweet peas, so what did I know? In any case, they tasted wonderful.

There are many more immature pods still on the vines. We're supposed to get some below-freezing temperatures this week, and I'm curious to see how the peas will cope with it.

While we were at the hardware store on Saturday, I bought a big sack of tulip bulbs. I wish I had planted them this past weekend, since it'll probably be even colder this coming weekend. Spring bulbs are such a joy. By springtime, I've usually forgotten what I planted the previous fall, and so every flower is a welcome surprise. I'm going to plant these tulips in the beds along the front sidewalk, where there is creeping phlox and creeping vinca. Won't it be terrific if they all bloom at the same time next year?

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First Frost

We had our first frost two nights ago. Foreseeing the chill, Nanny picked the remaining green beans (4 gallons of them!) and bell peppers. She covered the tender lettuce with a sheet of plastic. I never got around to buying that extra plastic sheeting, and so she didn't have enough to cover up the other greens. Hopefully, they can take a little chill. Hopefully, I can remember to get more plastic today.

I am also crossing my fingers that the sweet peas can stand the cooler temperatures. Few of the pods have matured. I picked the fattest ones yesterday afternoon, and they yielded a handful of peas, which I tossed into a noodle concoction for last night's supper. There are many more immature pods still on the vines. I left them there, hoping that they will grow a little more.

After leaving the garden yesterday, my husband and I went into town on a furniture-buying mission. We have not had new living room furniture in 20+ years. For a long time, we've been talking about buying new furniture, but never got around to it. When our son and his family moved in with us (temporarily) a few months ago, we gave away our old living room suite, making room for our son's furniture, knowing that when he and his family moved into their new house, we'd be forced into action.

We began shopping for furniture in mid-September, anticipating a late-September closing date on the new house. We each found a few things we liked - my digital camera is full of pictures of sofas and recliners - but, naturally, we did not agree on anything, and, since the closing date kept getting pushed ahead, we kept putting off the decision. Last week, while we were on a camping trip, we learned that the closing is "definitely" to happen this week. I said to the husband, "Since we can't agree on anything, and since we've both seen what the other likes, one of us should just go and buy the furniture, and get it over with." On the way home from the camping trip, the husband said, "Since I'm off work again tomorrow, maybe I'll go buy the furniture."

I gave him the "have-you-lost-your-mind?" look.

He said, "Well, you SAID that 'one of us' should just go do it."

I said, "Yeah, but I meant ME!"

Wisely, he refrained from going to the furniture store until I got home from work. As we should have anticipated, none of the things we had liked on our previous outings were still in the store. We had to start from scratch. But 30 minutes after I walked in, I knew what I wanted. So did the husband. Unfortunately, they were not the same things. The compromising started.

Other customers came and went. A friend came in, and called to us, "Hey, how are you guys doing?"

"We're about to fight," I told him. He waved, and ran for cover.

Before it was over, poor David, the store owner, had rearranged about a third of his inventory, moving "that chair" next to "this couch" so that I could see how they looked together. (I believe if we had debated a little longer, David might have paid us to take some furniture and get out of his store.) We finally agreed on one chair - a cushy burgundy leather recliner for the husband - and were able to build a suite around it. "Put 'sold' signs on these," we told David, "and we'll call you when we're ready for them." I thought David was going to cry.

He may cry for sure when I go back to the store today, to see if I still like everything in the daylight. ;)

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This Year's Last Hurrah

The greens are ready to pick. According to my last blog entry, I planted them about a month ago. We have plenty of mustard, turnip, kale, and lettuce. Sarah took home two sacks full on Monday. This barely made a dent in them. Come Saturday, I'll be picking greens for the freezer. Wish you lived close enough to help! ;)

The spinach is being persnickety and has come up thinly. Same goes for the beets. Right now, there's enough spinach for a couple of small salads from the baby leaves, but not enough to sautee. We intend to make a plastic tent for all of the greens, hoping to extend their growth into winter. I should go to Home Depot for plastic tomorrow, so that Jack Frost won't catch me unprepared.




This afternoon, I picked the first green beans from the "new crop." (We planted those two months ago.) I went to the garden hoping to find enough for supper, and came out with 2 gallons of beans. They'll need picking again by the weekend. After skimming a couple of handfulls off the top for our dinner, I gave the rest to a cousin up the road. Mine are now slowly steaming in garlic butter, to go with the potatoes and the pork loin that are roasting in the oven.

The sweet peas, planted two months ago, have nice, big pods on them, but they're not filled out yet. I can hardly wait for those!

Back in the summer, I found two scraggly brussels sprouts plants at a garden center, and stuck them in the ground. It was way too late to plant brussels sprouts, and they just sat there, doing nothing, during the hot part of the summer. Last month, I noticed that they had begun to grow, and I thought we might get a little crop of sprouts, after all. Today, I noticed that they are now green skeletons, thanks to some cute little green/black striped worms that have helped themselves to the leaves. I'm going to leave them - and the worms - alone to see what happens.

It's too bad that there aren't more resources for fall gardening around here, because gardening at this time of the year can be so pleasant. It's not too hot or too cold. The bugs (except for those pesky brussels sprouts worms) aren't too bad, so there's no need for pesticides. How nice it feels to eat vegetables that are fresh and crisp and, except for maybe a little bug poo, clean enough to eat while standing right there in the garden.

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Gearing Up for the Gearing Down

I walked down to the garden about 9 a.m. today, store-bought canes in hand (see last post), intending to string the wire between the green bean poles, stick the canes in the ground, and call it a day. I hadn't even made it all the way across the back yard when Nanny came out of the house and called, "Did you find the wire?" I hollered back that I knew where it was, and went on to the garden.

While I was pushing the store-bought canes into the ground, Nanny arrived with an arm-load of green canes that she had cut from the edge of the woods. We had just enough to do the green bean rows.

But when we finished that job, Nanny said, "Are these butterbeans the running kind?"

Pssshhht. As if I knew. They had foot-long runners on them, but I didn't see anything curling. And I didn't have any more metal posts and canes to make another fence.

I looked around. At the end of the garden was a small pile of 2x2 poles that had once been tomato stakes. I told Nanny, "Maybe we can go ahead and drive these stakes into the butterbean rows, and run some string between them later if it looks like they're going to be climbers." We gathered up the stakes and hammered them into the ground. Naturally, we didn't have enough stakes. But there were more pooped-out tomato plants in the garden, still attached to their stakes, so we stole those stakes to finish the butterbean rows.

Then Nanny said, "Are you going to plant greens? If you are, pull up the rest of those tomatoes, and I'll run the lawnmower through there to make it easier to plow." So we pulled up almost all the rest of the tomato plants, and Nanny hauled them away in the lawn cart while I pulled up and hauled away the sunflower trees that had long-since fallen over.

By then, it was 11 a.m. I hadn't had any breakfast and my stomach was rumbling. "I'm going back to the house," I told Nanny. "I've had enough for today."

I came home and fixed some breakfast. While I was eating, I decided that I ought to go ahead and plow up the spot for the greens and get them planted today, before the rain from hurricane Ike gets here. After breakfast, I went back to the garden. The big tiller actually cranked, and I steered it to the garden.

On the second round of tilling, something faintly intenstine-ish flew out from beneath the tiller and landed beside me. What in the world...? I stooped to get a better look. Ewwww! It was an animal - I'm not sure what it was, but it was pink (didn't have much hair), and it was gasping. I cringed, and stood up, not knowing what to do. Whatever the thing was, it was clearly in pain and needed to be finished off. But...geez.... Fortunately, while I was deliberating about whether to get the shovel or run over it with the tiller again, it shuddered and went still. I apologized to it and went back to my tilling, kinda grossed out by the thing, which I had to look at every time I passed it. Yuck.

I finished the tilling. By then, the heat had sapped my energy again, so I came back home. The ground still needs raking, and the greens still need planting. The sweet peas need a support system. They and the new green beans and butterbeans need fertilizing. The butterpeas, hot peppers, and okra need to be picked, and I'd like to get all of that done before the rain gets here.

But, right now, I have to run over to Mother's to change some light bulbs.

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Addendum:

Got the light bulbs done, came home to get my gloves, and went back to the garden to rake the tilled soil and plant greens. When I went to the shed to get the rake, Pop-Pop was on his back on a creeper under the big John Deere tractor. "Laying down on the job again, are you?" I said, as I passed by.

"Hey, what'd you do with my girlfriend?" he asked (referring to our stylish scarecrow - the one he calls "the Garden Ho'" - which I'd taken down earlier, when we were pulling up tomatoes).

"She's out there," I said, "laying on that pile of tomato stakes."

"I just can't keep a girlfriend," he muttered sadly.

I got my rake and went out to the garden. Before raking, I sprinkled pelletized lime over the soil to "sweeten" it for next year. Nanny came out to help about the time I finished spreading the lime, and we made short work of raking up some rows and planting the seeds. We planted turnips, spinach, kale, lettuce, and mustard. Oh, and a row of beets. (The beets I planted last time came up sparsely and have since disappeared. I'm trying them in a different spot this time. Never did get a single carrot to come up.)

Nanny and I tidied up - pulled some grass from around the three tomato plants that we'd left standing, and weeded the sweet peas. I hooked up the Miracle Grow sprayer to the water hose and fertilized the new beans. I even gave the old green beans a shot, just in case they still have a little energy left in them.

I picked a few squash, a few tomatoes, and an eggplant.

With my last ounce of energy, I hauled the scarecrow back to the center of the garden and put her hat back on her head. Can't have Pop-Pop missing her, can we?

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Negligence

Sorry, bloggettes, to have neglected you this week. I would like to say that I've been too busy gardening to write about gardening, but that would not be entirely true. The hurricanes have sent some rain our way for the past couple of weeks, keeping the ground too wet to work. I have been spending my time reading and cooking and otherwise piddling around the house. The grass in the garden is celebrating both the rain and my absence.

Since my last post, I've canned 17 quarts of green beans, and Nanny has canned five or six quarts. There's probably another pickin' on the vines right now, but it won't yield much more than a family dinner's worth. Fortunately, the new green beans are coming right along. Runners are about a foot long, and twisting around one another in the air above the plants. They need staking. Last weekend, I managed to hammer some metal fence posts in the ground between the rows while the ground was still wet. As soon as it dries up a bit more, I'll string some wire between the posts, and lace bamboo canes through it for the beans to run on (assuming my husband cuts me some bamboo canes, as he has said he would).

The billiard-ball squash I planted around the 4th of July are cranking out squash like crazy. The package said that the fruit matures fast, and it was not kidding. Today's golf-ball-sized squash is tomorrow's tennis ball. Seriously. Much of it gets too big before I get a chance to pick it. It's good squash, though. I've baked it, sauteed it, fried it, and eaten it raw. Its taste and texture is about like regular yellow squash, perhaps with less of that slightly-bitter aftertaste that some squash has. It may get the lion's share of the squash row next year. When I was patroling the edges of the garden earlier in the week, I saw that the squash and pumpkin bugs were having a street fair on the squash and pumpkin leaves. I dusted them with Sevin and did not feel the least bit criminal for doing it.

The pepper plants are showing off. I picked most of them clean two weeks ago, but left the pods to turn red on one or two plants. I've not had much luck with bell pepper in previous years, but this year's crop has been impressive enough to break a few limbs off the plants. I should dig around in the dirt around those plants to find the plastic nursery stakes that came with them so I can get the same kind next year.



In the yard, the sweet autumn clematis is doing its thing. I planted it to grow on a fence, the one I installed to hide all the yard junk. Once I actually got all the junk moved behind the fence, the clematis broke the fence down, so now we have a spectacular view of all the yard junk, together in one place.








The clematis' original home was on a different fence. When I tore the fence down, I dug up the clematis, but, evidently, I left leaving a little piece of the vine in the old location. That little piece took a shine to a Crape Myrtle bush at the corner of my patio. I think I'll let it stay. ;)

News Flash

It's settled: green beans respond to threats.

Remember that last week I gave my green beans a talking-to because they hadn't produced? By the end of the week, they were looking as though they might have listened, for on Saturday I gathered a couple of handfuls of beans, and saw many more that were too little to pick.

You ought to see them now!

Mother says that the more you pick green beans, the more they make, so I went to the garden this afternoon to gather what beans were there, hoping to spur them on. I was expecting to gather maybe another handful or two of beans. Boy, did I underestimate them! The vines are loaded with beans, and making more. I picked half a sack full of beans from about half a row of vines before it got too dark to see what I was doing. I'll go back in the morning to get the rest. It looks like I might get to can some beans, after all!

We love them small and tender. I'll pack them whole into pint jars and process them in the pressure canner. (I am scared to death of that thing.) They'll be yummy this winter, sauteed in garlic butter with mushrooms and pearl onions.

The new crop of green beans that we planted on the 16th is doing well. The butterbeans that we planted that same day have sprouted, too, but they look funny - kind of...crinkled and nappy, like they just got out of bed. Heh, I guess, in a way, they did!

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The Ultimatum

I had a talk with my green beans today.

They've been sitting there all summer long doing nothing. Nothing. I've watered them, I've fed them, I've weeded them. The vines are beautiful - full and lush, loaded with blooms. But something goes wrong between the bloomin' and the beanin'; we've harvested one small meal from them the whole summer.

So today I told them, "You've got one week. One week to show me what you've got, or you're outta here."

I explained to them that there are two new rows of green beans sprouting, just on the other side of the tomatoes. Pretty soon, they'll need supporting. The old beans have a good fence. It can be moved, once I get the old bean vines off it. So I repeated my warning: "If you guys haven't wowed me by next weekend, you're history."

We'll see if they listened.

While I was in the garden, I cut four big sunflower heads - big as dinner plates - and put them in the shed to finish drying. If I can figure out how, I'm going to roast them. The rest, I left for the birds to eat.

Thumped the biggest watermelon again (not that I can tell if it's ripe by that method, but it is vaguely satisfying to thump them). Daddy says the curlique will dry up when the melon is ready. This one looks pretty far from dry.

The pumpkin vines have little pumpkins on them, soft-ball-sized, and bigger. Maybe we'll have some home-grown jack-o-lanterns, or at least a pie or two.

For the past couple of weeks, we've had some good rain showers, and the blight-stricken tomatoes have found new leases on life. They're showing new green growth and have begun to bloom again. It'll be interesting to see what they do before frost.

The billiard-ball squash is about ready to eat. I'm excited to see what they're like - would cook some for supper tonight, if I hadn't already told the husband he's taking me out to dinner. The seed packet said that the fruit grows rapidly once it starts, and that is surely the truth; only two days ago, the billiard balls were marbles. I hope they're not too big to eat by tomorrow!

Weekend plans: two buckets of pears await. I intend to make pear butter out of them. Let's hope it turns out better than the peach jam.

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Fall Gardening

I dug the potatoes this evening. They did not produce much of a crop. (Pop-Pop saw my two pitiful little sacks of potatoes and said, "Well, you got your seeds back.") If we were counting on the potato crop to get us through the winter, we'd be in trouble.

After I dug the potatoes, I tilled up the rows and planted sweet peas in their place. Even though the almanac says that the "moon favorable" days for peas have passed, the seed package said the planting dates were "Jan.-Feb." and "August," and, by golly, it's still August, so they into the ground they went.

I pulled up a few spent tomato plants. Since we've had a few rain showers lately, some of the tomato plants have started blooming again. I left those alone, thinking they might catch their second wind. Tomorrow, I'm going to cut the sunflowers and hang the heads to dry before the birds get any more of the seeds.

The billiard-ball squash plants that I planted about a month ago are blooming. I can't wait to see what they produce. Pumpkin vines are looking good. The watermelons have a few melons on them, one almost big enough to eat.

The pole bean vines may be the next to go. So far, they have been a huge disappointment. The vines are lush and gorgeous. They bloom. They just haven't made any beans. We've had one meal of green beans from those vines all summer. I keep hoping they'll wake up and make beans, but so far all they've done is take up space. The straight-neck squash have been almost as disappointing.

On the bright side, we've had a good crop of tomatoes, cucumbers, and black-eyed peas. The butterbeans outdid themselves. The jury is still out on the butterpeas. (I planted them a little later than the rest of the beans, and then the rabbits ate the first few sets of leaves, setting them back a bit.)

In about a month, it'll be time to plant greens - turnips, mustard, collards, kale, and spinach. Last year, I planted my greens W-A-Y too thick. Maybe before next month, I can figure out how to sow them properly.

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#)!@% Almanac

Yesterday Sarah, my daughter-in-law, voiced a hankering for some peas, so I took her to the garden, and we picked the last of the purple hull peas while Nanny & Pop-Pop babysat my grandsons. After the pickin', we retired to the back porch to cool off with tall glasses of iced water. While we were sitting there, I happened to look over and see this year's Farmer's Almanac laying on the porch rail.

An almanac is a mystery to me. It is full of strange symbols, disjointed maxims, and vague weather predictions (see, e.g., http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/frapop/index.html ). Though Pop-Pop can grab an almanac and figure out in 10 seconds flat (once he finds his glasses) when to plant something, I have never even been able to figure out which page that information is printed on. But, wonder of wonders, yesterday when I picked up the almanac, it flopped opened to the "when to plant" page, which Pop-Pop had folded in half for easy reference. As I have been intending to plant a second crop of peas or beans, I ran my finger down the list of vegetables, and there it was: Beans...Moon favorable...8/1-8/16.

"Aw shoot...!" I said out loud. THIS was 8/16, which meant that if I did not get my second crop of peas/beans in the ground THIS VERY DAY, the moon would not smile favorably on my effort.

"What?" said Sarah.

"The almanac says I should plant beans TODAY."

"Well, let's get at it," Sarah said. "I'll help."

I stalled as much as I could. Truth was, I did not want to work in the garden at 3 p.m. "We can't just PLANT," I told Sarah. "First, we have to pull up the pea vines, then we have to plow, and I probably can't get the tiller cranked, and . . . "

"I can pull up pea vines," Sarah said.

"The tiller'll crank," Pop-Pop chimed in.

They were ganging up on me.

While Sarah and I pulled up the old pea vines, Pop-Pop gassed up the tiller and sprayed it with something that smelled vaguely like...fingernail polish remover. My husband gave the cord a couple of yanks, and the tiller started. Within a few minutes, we had a brand new puliverized seed bed for the second bean crop. My grandsons had a heck of a time swimming in the soft, warm dirt.

We marked off 4 rows on which Sarah planted 2 rows of butterbeans and 2 rows of green beans.

I hope the moon approved.

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Totally Peachless

The peach lady was back in town last Wednesday. I bought 1/4 bushel, intending to come straight home and peel them for peach jam, but they were not quite ripe enough, so I left them in the bag to ripen. By Friday, they were perfect. I peeled and chopped them, and put them on the stove to cook. After about an hour, I added spices and sugar to the pan, and turned the heat down to a simmer. I set a kitchen timer to alarm in 10 minutes to remind me to stir the mix, and then I went to the sewing machine to start sewing an outfit I'd cut out for Maddie a week earlier. The kitchen timer idea worked wonderfully for about three stirrings...then I forgot to re-set it. Some time later - not sure how much later - as I was at the sewing machine, I smelled a sharp, peachy smell. I dropped the sewing and ran to the kitchen, but it was too late; the jam had scorched.

About an hour later, my husband came home with two gallons of fresh figs that a co-worker had sent to me. I groaned at the sight, considering my luck with jam this year, and knowing that there were peas and tomatoes in the garden that needed my attention.

Yesterday morning, I got moving early. I sliced about half of the figs and put them in the food dehydrator, then I went to the garden. Nanny had already picked the peas and tomatoes. She was in the process of shelling the peas, and had lined up the tomatoes on our "ripening table" under the tree. I took the ripest ones and brought them home to can. While the tomatoes were cooking, I ground up some of the figs and used them in a fig cake. (Boy, was it GOOD!) The rest are soaking in sugar syrup in my refrigerator.

Maybe I should forget the whole jam idea, and just make cakes.

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The things I get myself into....

I ought to be in the garden. I need to be in the garden. The tomatoes and the peas need to be picked. I bet there are cucumbers thicker than my wrist dangling on the fence. There is weeding to be done. Under a tree in my back yard is a table full of already-picked tomatoes that need to be scalded, peeled, and canned.

It must be 200 degrees outside.

Why do I keep doing this?

About this time every year, I think about our ancestors, and wonder how they survived. What did people do when they couldn't run to the supermarket for food? When my grandparents were raising their families, they didn't have power tools, electricity, and air-conditioned kitchens. I cannot imagine how they managed to grow enough food to feed a family for the summer, much less preserve enough for the winter. Here it is, the first part of August, and my garden is just starting to produce more than we can eat. A hundred years ago, we'd have starved to death by now, if the vegetable garden was our only source of food.

Bah, this morose train of thought is getting me nowhere. I'd better see to those tomatoes before they spoil.

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Okra Abuse

The okra is knee high and is beginning to grow pods. I guess it's about time to give it a whippin'.

Yes, that's right...a whippin'.

A couple of years ago, my mother said she wanted some okra when I had some to spare. When I told her that my okra hadn't even bloomed yet, she said, "Maybe you ought to whip it."

What?

"Evelyn whips hers," she added, as if that ought to settle it.

I had a sudden flashback.

Miss Evelyn and my mother are distant cousins and life-long friends. Our families spent a lot of time together when I was a child. I once saw Miss Evelyn yank her husband out of the passenger seat of a station wagon and whack him in the head with the heel of her size 5 penny loafer when he came home late, and blissfully inebriated, from a fishing trip. I did not doubt that she had it in her to light into a stalk of okra. But why? And with what?

Mother did not know precisely why Miss Evelyn whipped her okra, only that she did it with "a keen cane," and that it helped.

A keen cane.

I pictured Miss Evelyn in the garden, wielding a cane fishing pole, its tip whistling through the air like helicopter blades, okra tops whirlwinding around her....

I could not picture myself performing such a maneuver in a fashion that might benefit the plants and boost production, so I dropped the subject.

Later that evening, I went back to Mother's house to visit with my sister and her husband. As we were sitting around the kitchen table, Daddy (who had been napping during my earlier visit) asked how my garden was doing. "I sure could go for some good fried okra," he said. I told him my okra wasn't making yet. He said, "They tell me you can whip it with a keen cane, and it'll really help it."

"I told you so," Mother said, all smug-like.

I looked across the table at my sister. "They want me to whip my okra. With a keen cane."

She looked astonished. "Why?"

I shrugged. "Ask 'em."

She couldn't make any more sense out of it than I could.

Fast forward a week. My husband and I walked down to check on the garden. As we passed the back porch, Pop-Pop called from the shadows, "I b'lieve y'orter take that keen cane leaning there against the porch and whip your okra with it."

I whirled around. "Have you been talking to Miss Evelyn?"

"Who?"

"Why would I want to whip my okra?"

"Make it b'ar," Pop-Pop said.

"How does whipping it make it bear?"

"Don't know. Just does."

"Couldn't I just cut it?"

"Reckon y'could," he said.

I got some clippers from the shed and, thinking that the objective was to make the plants bushier, I snipped the top out of one of the plants.

"Not like that," Pop-Pop hollered. "Take off the bottom leaves."

I was glad my back was to him, so he couldn't see the face I made, but I went ahead and cut the bottom two leaves off of each plant, still baffled as to how this might help. (Didn't they need those leaves for photosynthesis?) When I finished, I went to the back porch. "There. Satisfied?" I asked him.

"Didn't cut off enough," he said.

The next day, after Sunday dinner at Mama Jewell's, Uncle Jack explained the whole business to me: taking the lower leaves off of the plants stresses them, and makes them eager to hurry up and reproduce. He said I ought to take off every leaf where a bloom wasn't forming at the junction of the leaf stem and the main stalk. He said every time I cut a pod of okra, I should take off the leaf adjoining it. Thrashing the leaves off with a cane allowed one to stand back from the plants, away from the invisible nettles that would be raining off the leaves. It should be a vertical strike, not a horizontal one, as I had been imagining. And one doesn't use a whole fishing pole - just a short piece, "the keen end," he said.

Even though I didn't quite buy the okra's reproductive logic, the idea of removing the leaves was beginning to make a little sense. That evening, I went to the garden. The cane was still leaning against the back porch. It was only about 3 feet long. Still, I'd planted my rows close together. I imagined that swinging that cane among the plants would tear them all to pieces. I took out my clippers and snipped a few leaves off of each plant. The next day, feeling braver, I cut off even more leaves. Within two days, the okra was blooming, and a couple of days after that, I was cutting okra for supper.

As the summer passed, I learned that I didn't actually have to cut the leaves off the plants; I could just knock them off with the closed clippers if I gave them a swift whack where they connected to the central stalk. I learned that fewer leaves on the plants made the picking job less itchy. I learned that dropping the big leaves, stems and all, between the rows eventually creates a carpet that weeds won't penetrate. And I learned that cutting off the lower leaves turns dwarf okra plants into giant, redwood forest okra trees. By the end of the summer, I needed a step-ladder to reach the pods.

In any case, I'm sold on okra whippin', though I'm still not brave enough to have at it with the cane.

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Butterbean Pickin'

Nanny loves butterbeans and has been anxiously watching the two rows we planted. We've been walking the rows together, feeling of the fattening pods. For the past couple of weeks, we've held off on the picking. At last, they're ready.

Butterbeans - at least the bush variety - are a b*tch to pick. They are low to the ground; each pod must be fondled to determine if the beans inside it have matured; there are millions of pods. This makes for slow going come picking time.

Nanny picked part of the butterbeans yesterday morning. She made it about 1/4 of the way up the rows before the sun became too blistering hot and drove her indoors. When I came home from work yesterday, I started where she quit, picked for two hours, and ran out of daylight about 10 feet from the ends of the rows. Between the two of us, we picked five 2-gallon buckets full of beans. There's probably one more bucket-full in that last 10 feet. Not all of the beans were ready; we'll have to do this again in a few days.

The black-eyed peas will be ready to pick about the time the butterbeans finish.

Meanwhile, the tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash are ripening like crazy. I've made all the pickles I need, and Nanny has made a dozen jars of cucumber relish. We're giving the cucumbers away (twice a week) by the sack-full. I spent the past weekend canning tomatoes, and it looks like I'll be doing the same thing this coming weekend.

On Monday, I bought half-a-bushel of peaches from a local grower who had set up a make-shift peach stand on the tailgate of a truck in a parking lot in town. They were fat, juicy, clear-seed peaches, and I brought them home to make peach jam. I should have known better than to commence the process at 6 p.m., but I was anxious to get to them before they ruined, so the minute I got home I changed clothes and started peeling and slicing the peaches. The cooking started at about 7 p.m. By 8:30, the stuff in the pan was still too loose and runny to suit me. I did some calculating: they'd need to cook for at least another hour before they could be put into the jars; it would take at least 30 minutes to get them ready to go into the water-bath canner, and another 30 - 45 minutes to get the water boiling and do the processing. It would be 11 p.m., at the earliest, before they'd come out of the canner. Yuck. I considered taking the pan off the burner, refrigerating the mixture, and finish cooking it the next day, but I remembered those butterbeans waiting to be picked the next afternoon....

So I came up with Plan B: put the stuff in the crock pot on low heat, cook it all night, and put it in jars early the next morning before going to work. Problem solved.

Right.

Yesterday morning when the alarm clock beeped, I rolled out of bed and went straight to the kitchen. I raised the lid on the crock pot, expecting a thicker version of the beautiful translucent gold mixture that had gone into the pot. Instead, I found a slowly-bubbling black ooze.

I turned the crock pot off in disgust, and left the mess where it sat.

It's still sitting there, mocking me every time I walk by.

Tonight, I'm coming home with more peaches, if the peach lady is still in town. And I'm going to put a beautiful translucent gold mixture into some jars if I have to stay up all night to do it.

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It's nearly 11 o'clock at night, and I'm sitting here waiting for the food dehydrator to finish.

Note to self: start early in the morning next time.

I put these tomatoes - 5 trays of slices - in the dehydrator at 11 this morning. The instruction book said it would take 10 - 14 hours. The bottom tray seems to dry faster than the others, and I took a few brittle tomato slices from it about 2 hours ago. Just took out a few more, and consolidated the rest into 3 trays. Some of the remaining slices are almost ready, but some are still kind of mushy. They may need the full 14 hours to fully dry, but they're coming out when the rest come out, regardless. (We'll have them in an omelet in the morning if they're still wet.) The whole dehydrator full of tomato slices is going to result in about 3/4 of a quart bag-full of dried tomatoes.

I tasted one. They are yummy. Very sweet. I used several different kinds of tomatoes - Juliette tomatoes (which are bigger than a grape tomato, but smaller than a Roma), Roma tomatoes, and some of the round variety (Early Girl, most likely). I also experimented with different cutting techniques - i.e., cross-wise versus length-wise (which explains the various stages of wetness, I expect). The Juliette tomatoes, cut cross-wise into Quarter-sized circles, withered up into chewy, raisin-sized knobs. They ought to be good in salads! Cut length-wise, they sort of rolled up into a miniature scroll, about 1" long. They're among the "still mushy" ones. I cut the Romas and the round tomatoes cross-wise. They are almost crispy. They would make a great alternative to potato chips, especially if seasoned before drying. (Doesn't a tomato chip dipped in queso sound good?)

The book says you can grind the dried tomatoes into powder, and add liquid to it to reconstitute it into paste or sauce, depending on how much liquid you add.

I bet squash and zucchini would make great chips, too. We'll know by tomorrow night, assuming there are squash in the garden in the morning.

Varmints

Yesterday afternoon, just before sunset, I went down to the garden to check on things. I'd barely made it to the first row when Nanny hollered from the back door, "Need some help?"

"Nah, I just came to putter around," I told her, but she came out, anyway. She'd already picked most of the ripening tomatoes. They were laying under the cherry tree on a sheet of plywood propped between two sawhorses. When I passed by this make-shift table, I noticed a half-eaten tomato, but didn't say anything. When Nanny passed by it, she said, "OH, NO! The squirrell's already been here!" She said she'd seen him in the garden earlier in the day and had decided to pick the tomatoes before he did. "I guess I just saved him some work," she said. She put the half-eaten tomato in the garbage can and joined me in the garden.

We picked a few squash, some cucumbers, and some hot peppers. As we were examining the butterbean rows, trying to guess when they might be ready to pick, Nanny suddenly pointed behind me and exclaimed, "There's the little rabbit! Keep your eye on him while I get the hammer!"

The hammer? Good heavens.

"You'll never catch that rabbit to hit him with a hammer!" I said to her back as she was running up the row.

"No, but I can FLING it at him," she hollered over her shoulder.

Fling it at him? I looked at the rabbit. He was crouched beneath the tee-peed green bean rows. I had visions of that hammer hurtling through the air, taking out the green bean supports and levelling everything else in its path. But Nanny meant business. "Let me see if I can at least run him out where you can get a clear aim at him."

"I've got the hammer," she said from the end of the row where we'd earlier hammered a tomato stake. "Shoo him up here."

Shoo him up there. Right.

I probably don't even need to tell you that we did not nail the rabbit with the hammer. He zigged and zagged all over the place, and then, when we thought we'd finally run him off for good and had put the weapon away, we saw him dart from beneath the butterbeans and make for the woods. Truth be known, Nanny could not have coldly bludgeoned that little bunny any more than I could have done. She later admitted this. "But I could have scared him really bad," she said.

We finished our work and started back toward the house. I glanced at the tomatoes on the trestle. There was another half-eaten tomato in the pile. Mr. Squirrell had probably had a good laugh from his vantage point on the table, watching us chase the rabbit while he enjoyed another juicy tomato.

I gathered up the remaining tomatoes, brought them to my house, and laid them on my patio table to finish ripening. We have squirrells around our house, too, but I counted on our cat, Lucy, to keep them at bay. So far, so good. If they make it through the night, tomorrow I will slice them and try drying them in the food dehydrator.

Mmmmmm...!

The first picking of great northern beans happened yesterday while I was at work. As soon as I got home, Nanny called and said that she had already cooked them, and that I should come get some for supper. I hurried across the road with a bowl.

I'd never had fresh great northern beans, only the dried kind. Nanny had cooked them only with salt and pepper for seasoning(no bacon or ham). Man, oh man...they were delicious! We had them with some of Nanny's cucumber relish, meat loaf, baked sweet potato fries, and sliced tomatoes. Mmmmmmmm...!

Nanny think there'll be one more picking. I wish I'd planted more. Next year, I'm doubling the great northern bean crop!

Uh-oh....

Nanny stopped by my house today and said that she has picked a bucket of cucumbers, a bucket of tomatoes, and a bucket of squash. (Guess that rain helped, huh?) Based on prior experience, these buckets could be anything from 1-gallon ice cream containerd to 5-gallon tubs.

Looks like I'd best be laying in some canning supplies. I have the jars and the lids, but no pickling spices. My water-bath canner sat outside on the patio all winter and rusted; I'll need a new one. I want a food dehydrator to try on the Juliette tomatoes. (Someone once gave me one of those things, back before I started gardening; I probably moved it from cabinet to cabinet for a few years, then chunked it.)

You might know that this would happen when I am busier at work than I've been all year.

Since the rain, the squash seeds I planted over a week ago have sprouted. I'm seeing little stuff with red stems in the row where I planted the beet seeds, so maybe they're coming up, too. No sign of the #(@!*&% carrots, yet. I hear they take a little longer to sprout.

Two of my tomato plants up and died. They just wilted, as if they'd been cut. I heaved them up and tossed them over the hill, tomatoes and all, for fear of blight. Let's hope they didn't start a trend.

Whoooo-wee, it's hot!

Last Sunday, the husband and I hitched up our little camper and towed it to Alabama, just south of Birmingham, for a few days of R & R. It was a good trip, but the weather was hotter than blazes. It rained every day - just quick showers, enough to turn the place into a steam bath. Every time it would rain, I would think about my garden and hope was raining at home.

We came home yesterday. This morning, I went to the garden. Nanny had been picking tomatoes and cucumbers all week and had a few jars of relish on the counter to show for it. The butterbeans are blooming up a storm, but we still don't have much of a crop of anything. It rained here on Thursday; maybe that will help.

The seeds I planted last week - squash, carrots, and beets - still haven't sprouted. I noticed that some large animal or some small human had walked on the "hills" where I had planted the squash seeds. I do believe that Madison may have done a little gardening while I was away.

My sister learned about a greenhouse that was giving away tomato plants, and she brought some to me. They are unusual varieties that bear fruit that's striped, or some color besides red. I'll be setting them in the ground this afternoon, after the sun goes down.

Check-Up #3

This weekend, Pop-Pop said, "It's time to start planting your fall garden."

I said, "Ok. What goes in a fall garden?"

"Carrots."

"Ok. What else?"

"Don't know. Never grew a fall garden."

I stopped by the garden center on Tuesday. An attendant showed me a list of fall garden plants. It didn't excite me much. However, I did buy a few packs of seeds: carrots, beets, lettuce, and radishes. I also bought some seeds for some cool-looking squash, but I don't recall the name. The package showed a smooth, round, yellow fruit, and the instructions said to harvest it when it grows to the size of a billiard ball. Sounds easy enough. It's probably a summer squash, but there's probably enough warm weather left to grow it.

I planted the carrots - a "regular" carrot, and some short, fat ones - and the beets. I'm not sure that anybody in the family actually likes beets, but, hey...I had empty space. I'm also not very confident about the carrots. This will be my third attempt at growing carrots. So far, I've not had the first seed to sprout, much less had a harvest. Thinking my soil might be too hard, I dug a big bag of spaghnum moss into the row. We'll see if that helps.

Overall, I'm not yet very pleased with the way the garden is producing this year. We're getting enough tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash to eat, but not enough to preserve. The green beans have run up their canes like crazy, but they have barely bloomed. As usual, the hot peppers are making lots of pods, but the bell peppers are coming slowly. Pop-Pop says that everybody is complaining that their gardens aren't producing well. They are chalking it up to a cool, wet spring, late planting, and recent lack of rain. I am hoping that things will pick up as the summer progresses.

R.I.P Rabbit(s)

Thursday evening I went to the garden to see what needed to be done. As I was walking the rows, I heard a buzzing sound. Then I saw it: a dead rabbit, lying between the green bean rows. Flies were buzzing all around it. I yelled, "YUCK. There's a dead rabbit out here."

I heard Pop-Pop chuckle. "I reck'n he got 'im."

While my husband got the shovel and disposed of the rabbit, Pop-Pop explained that my brother-in-law had taken a shot at a rabbit the night before, but thought he'd missed it. Apparently not, eh?

Since then, Pop-Pop has seen "a mangy 'coon" out there in broad daylight, and I have seen a couple more rabbits. In fact, just yesterday when I was out there running the tiller, I saw one run for the woods.

Tonight, the husband and I walked down to the garden to see if any beans were still standing. My brother-in-law was there, eating supper with the folks. After the table was cleared, we all migrated to the back porch. Brother-in-law reached behind the back door and grabbed the shotgun on the way out, just in case any varmints showed up. Several minutes passed. I said, "They're probably on the back side of the garden, living it up where we can't see them."

Brother-in-law dropped a shell into the shotgun and eased toward the south end of the garden. He'd only taken a few steps in that direction when he stopped, raised the gun, and fired. BLAM!

I kinda felt sorry for the poor little fluffy-tailed b*stard.

But not too sorry.

#)@% Rabbit

All has not been so wonderful in the garden this week. The black-eyed peas popped right out of the ground almost as soon as I planted them. While that was happening, the #)@% rabbit was on the other side of the garden, eating the butter peas that had sprouted a few days earlier. I'd also planted green beans in the "skips" in the green bean rows, and he ate those, too, and even nibbled at the older beans. I actually caught him doing it.

I yelled, "Heyyyy...GET OUT OF HERE!" He made a dash for the woods, but stopped about 10 feet from the tree-line, and turned his profile to me. I knew he was eyeing me out of the one beady eye that was turned toward me. I hollered at him again. He just sat there. All the hollering drew the dog to the garden. I pointed at the rabbit. "Bailey, there's a rabbit. GET HIM! Get the rabbit!" He just panted and wagged. Finally, the rabbit moved. Bailey saw it out of the corner of his eye. He shot in that direction like he'd been fired from a cannon. Alas, the rabbit was too quick.

Pop-Pop also heard the yelling and sauntered out to the garden to discover the cause of the commotion. I showed him the damage. While we were standing there, contemplating what to do, ANOTHER rabbit hopped out of the field to the south of the garden, and leisurely made his way across the corner of the yard. Pop-Pop studied the situation and said, "Maybe y'ought to dust 'em." I went to the shed for the pesticide powder (hate using the stuff, but I didn't have any better ideas), and sprinkled every bean plant in the garden.

Apparently, it worked. Apparently, rabbits are smarter than humans and won't eat stuff that has poison on it. No more beans are missing.

As the vegetable garden is on auto pilot for a few days, I decided to have a go at the yard today. There is (was) a Carolina Jessamine growing near my front porch. I have tried to train it up the porch post, but it preferred to go the other direction and climb all over the boxwoods, instead. It was a huge, tangled mess, and I decided it was time for it to go. I got out the loppers and snipped the thing off at the ground, then I grabbed the vines and started pulling. Boy, was it ever wrapped in the boxwoods. After some gentle (but unproductive) tugging, I gave the vine a good yank, and when it came loose, I sailed through the air on my back for about 6 feet, then fell flat, right into my heap of vine rubble and boxwood clippings. Lost both of my shoes and my hat. My husband happened to be standing on the porch, watching. To his credit, there was only a slight delay before he stopped laughing and came to help me up.

I'm feeling a little stiff in the get-along, already. :\

@)#! Dog

I went to the garden today with the intention of doing a little maintenance, like tying the tomato plants to their stakes, and training the pole beans up their poles. As I was tying the tomato plants, I found three big ripe tomatoes and a small ripe tomato, just right for picking (giving me visions of BLT sandwiches for dinner). I also found some blight on the tomato plants. Now, I don't like using chemicals, but I don't like losing all my tomato plants, either (been there, done that), so I mixed up a little fungicide in a pump sprayer and prepared to spray the plants. Before I sprayed, I picked the ripe tomatoes and laid them safely in the grass at the end of the garden.

My son's dog, a Cocker Spaniel named Bailey, had followed me to the garden. So had my mother-in-law. As I was spraying the tomatoes and she was weeding, I heard her yell, "Bailey, NO!" I looked up to find him running away, with one of my ripe tomatoes in his mouth.

I chased him down, took the tomato from him, and turned back to gather up the rest of the tomatoes. They were gone! I looked around. One was laying in the grass a few feet away. It had dog-tooth holes in it. So did the one in my hand. The third tomato, the ripest of the bunch, was nowhere to be found. I assume Bailey ate it.

Butthead.

We still had BLTs for dinner, dog-tooth-prints and all.

Mission Accomplished!

Finally got the damned black-eyed peas planted.

Friday afternoon, that persnickety tiller cranked and, mercifully, continued to run long enough to let me finish preparing the pea patch. Pop-Pop has a gizmo - a thing that looks like a miniature bicycle-on-a-stick - that plants seeds and covers them up as it goes. After about 8 hours of tilling and raking, the planting took about 2 minutes.

Just after dark that very evening, Mother Nature gently watered the garden. Those peas should be up in no time.

We had enough seeds to plant four half-rows. This means that I now have four empty half-rows. In that space, I may plant a few more tomatoes for a late crop. Might also plant some pumpkins for the grandkids, just for fun.

The butterpeas I planted earlier in the week are beginning to sprout. Mattie's lettuce is coming up, too.

Yesterday afternoon, when I was walking the perimeters of the garden (it's still too wet to walk down the rows), I saw a brown rabbit, as big as a Cocker Spaniel, sprint toward the woods.

I hope he doesn't like peas.

And we're off...or not.

Nanny called on Tuesday night and said that Pop-Pop had the tiller running. The best news was that Chris, one of the strapping young men in neighborhood, had been there when it happened, and he had tilled up the entire pea patch. Woohooo! I said I'd be down there the next evening to plant the peas.

I went to the garden about 4 p.m. yesterday. The newly-plowed spot was bristling with bermuda grass roots. I decided to rake out the grass before I planted the peas. Four hours later, I staggered to the shed to get the tiller, intending to turn up a little more grass from the depths.

That's when I discovered the tiller's real problem: it is deaf.

Before I yanked the cord the first time, I said to it, "Ok, I heard you're a go-getter. Show me what you've got." I pushed all the levers, shifted to neutral, and pulled. The tiller did not seem mildly interested in cranking. I yanked a few more times, adjusted the levers, gave it a pep talk, yanked again. And again and again and again. Finally, it coughed and sputtered to life. I herded it to the garden and had tilled up about three strips when it quit.

I checked the gas, and topped off the tank. I adjusted levers. I cranked and cranked and cranked. I cajoled it, cussed it, and shamed it. "This is your last chance, buddy." Yank. And it absolutely refused to start.

Hmph.

I left it where it sat.

Scares Me.

Tiller CPR

The tiller still isn't running. Pop-Pop says the gas tank and carbureator are full of rust, and the rust is gumming up the works. So he took the thing apart and cleaned it out. When I left him yesterday evening, he was trying to figure out how to get it back together.

On the gardening front, I transplanted some Great Northern Beans from the "skippy" ends of the rows to the gaps in the "less skippy" ends of the rows, ending up with two nicely-populated half-rows of beans. We'll see whether they can tolerate transplanting. I then planted the remaining two half-rows in butter peas. I also re-planted the "skips" in the pole beans. Yes, I should've done that three weeks ago, but I didn't have any seeds.

Nanny picked the first squash yesterday. It came from one of two plants that she bought, already sprouted and potted. The day I set the squash plants in the garden, I also planted some squash seeds. The plants that came from those seeds already have little squash on them. Thus, it appears that buying already-growing squash plants doesn't result in a plate of fried squash much faster than planting squash seeds does.

We'll be picking 4 ripe Juliette tomatoes this evening, assuming the squirrells didn't get them last night. Since they grew in Pop-Pop's dirt, we'll let him have the first taste. Assuming the tomatoes are still there, of course. Big assumption.

Last year, the squirrells vandalyzed the tomatoes something awful. When it first started happening, Pop-Pop offered to shoot any squirrells he caught in the act. I hated for him to do that. I mean, they're just trying to make a living like the rest of us, right? I didn't begrudge them a tomato or two.

It wouldn't have been so bad if they had eaten everything they picked. But I found not-quite-perfectly-ripe tomatoes lying between the rows. They had little claw-cuts on their sides, but they had not been bitten. It was as if the squirrells picked them, looked at them, said, "Nah, I can do better," and chunked them over their shoulders. Pop-Pop's mother said that she heard that squirrells eat tomatoes not so much because they are hungry as because they are thirsty, and that we should try setting out a pan of water for them. I secretly thought, "Puh-leeeeze," but I set out an ice cream bucket full of water between the garden and the woods. Didn't work. Finally, Pop-Pop said, "I'm g'on shoot 'im if I catch 'im."

Some few days later, Pop-Pop's friend, Charles, dropped by to visit. As they sat on the back porch talking, Charles (who is tongue-tied) pointed and said [Lord, forgive me for this], "Deah doze ye twuhwhl. He tame outta woods wight oveh deah." Pop-Pop went and got his gun. He propped it on the porch rail and waited. A minute later, the squirrell reappeared; he had a tomato in his mouth. Amazingly, he stopped at the edge of the garden, sat up on his hind legs, and began to eat the tomato. Pop-Pop drew a bead on him and fired. The tomato exploded. The squirrell ran for the cover. Pop-Pop shouted, "Damn!" Charles roared with laughter. "You tuddna done 'at if you'd twied!" He would periodically break into giggling fits for the rest of that visit, and for the rest of the summer would ask, "You chot any twuhwhls waitwy?"

Note to Self:

Planted carrots, lettuce, and zinnas last week.

Actually, my 3-year-old granddaughter, Mattie, planted carrots, lettuce, and zinnas last week. All in the same spot. Right between two of my tomato plants.

I knew I shouldn't have put her in charge of those seed packages while I prepared the rows.

The Pea Patch

A month ago, Pop-Pop said, "Where we go'n put the peas?"

I looked across the newly-planted garden. Uh-oh. I'd planted all the rows, already, leaving no room for any black-eyed peas.

"Don't matter," he finally said. "We'll break up a pea patch."

I sensed trouble on the horizon.

You see, although Pop-Pop has two - count 'em, TWO - tractors, he has no breaking plow. For the past few years, he has conned a friend or neighbor into breaking up our garden. Typically, this means that we don't get our garden plot broken up until these friends or neighbors decide it's time to break up their gardens. At this time of the year, the breaking plows have long since been put away. And my little 4-tine tiller simply won't do to break new ground for a whole pea patch.

But this past Friday evening, when I went to the garden to plan the weekend's work, there sat the little Ford tractor, with a borrowed 2-row breaking plow attached, ready for business. Pop-Pop said to send Joel (my husband) or Clay (our son) to break up the pea patch the next day. Neither of them looked happy about the job (I don't know that either of them has ever driven a tractor with a plow attached), but Joel reluctantly said he'd do it. Saturday evening, he finally said, "I'm going to break up the pea patch." I finished what I was doing, put on my gardening apron, and started across the road on my bike (the driveway is l-o-n-g) to see how "The Breaking o' the Patch" was coming along.

I could hear tractor parts whining and grinding long before I spotted it in the shade at the back side of the garden. Wait a minute...back side of the garden? The peas were to go in front.

I pedaled faster.

But there was Pop-Pop in the driver's seat, twisted around to watch the plow behind him. Joel was standing nearby, hands on his hips. What in the world...? Were they practicing? I stopped at the corner of the garden, got off my bike, and stood there, listening. It seemed something was amiss; the plow wouldn't lower properly. Oh, dear.... But, yes, they knew the pea patch was to go in front of the garden.

Wisely, I refrained from suggesting that they "practice" in the vicinity of the actual pea patch. Instead, I quietly took up a hoe and did some weeding.

Within a few minutes, there's movement in the shadows. Here comes the tractor, with Joel in the driver's seat, looking amazingly confident. He lines 'er up with the intended ground. The plows goes down, the tractor lurches forward, the first rows break apart. Pop-Pop rolls along beside the tractor on his electric scooter, monitoring the work. Oh, we're cookin' now!

But at the end of the first row, the progress stops. The plow won't come up, not all the way. It raises enough to bring the tips of the blades to the top of the soil. Joel swivels around to look for Pop-Pop, who motions with his hand and yells, "Go 'head." Joel puts the tractor in gear and drives around the garden to line up for the second pass, with the plow blades scoring two shallow grooves in the grass.

I said nothing.

At the end of pass #2, when the plow wouldn't come up at all, there was some off-tractor conferencing. After a minute or two, Joel unhitched the tractor and drove it to the shed, abandoning the plow where it sat, half-buried at the end of the row. I walked over to where Pop-Pop sat on his scooter. It seemed the tractor would need some tinkering before any more plowing should occur. Meanwhile, the concensus was that Uncle B. (next door) should come on HIS tractor to get the plow out of the ground and finish the breaking. I looked across the pasture. Uncle B. was at that moment on his tractor, mowing the field behind his house.

I could see that no more pea-patch-breaking would occur that day, nor probably the next day, as the next day was Sunday, and you generally don't catch Uncle B. on a tractor on Sunday.

I made a suggestion: there was a tiller orphaned in the shed of a family member. I had been offered use of the tiller. It hadn't been used in a few years, and probably would need some T.L.C., but surely all the mechanical geniuses in the family could get it running. Joel and I climbed into Pop-Pop's old truck, and fetched the tiller, which turned out to be a honking big, rear-tine, power-driven piece of machinery.

The men-folk gathered around it in the shop yesterday morning. Since Clay is the youngest, and, presumably, the most able-bodied, the honor of yanking the starter cord fell to him. After a few non-productive pulls, they tore into it, and began to do things to it, like propping flaps open with screwdrivers, and pouring gas into places that didn't say "GAS". Clay grabbed the pull cord again. I stood back. It fired up and ran for about 5 seconds, then died. More parts came off. They moved the tiller to the yard, under a shade tree. A neighbor came up, and said they ought to pour gas in a hole. They'd already tried that.

If you're looking for me today, I'll be out hunting tiller parts.

Check-Up (for real this time)

When I started the previous post (Check-Up), I intended to talk about how this year's garden was coming along.

You see how easily I can be distracted.

This time it's for real.

Tomatoes: Coming right along. We planted several varieties - 55 plants, total. Many of the plants have small green tomatoes on them. The plants that don't have any fruit are a bit puny. I'm worried that we drove stakes through their root systems as we were staking them. Maybe they will recover.

Squash: Blooming, some with small squash.

Potatoes: This is the first year I've grown potatoes. The plants look nice. Who knows what's underground? Pop-Pop says I should heap dirt around the stem of the plants. I did that yesterday, until I ran out of daylight (and loose dirt).

Green beans: Just beginning to run up their bamboo-cane teepees.

Great northern beans: I planted dried beans from the grocery store, as the seed stores around here typically do not stock "white beans." The rows are skippy - I should have replanted the skips.

Lima beans: The first planting did not sprout, but the second one did.

Cucumbers: I hope that they find the fence I made for them when they begin to run. Last year, I let them run on the ground, and and we had cucumbers hanging from the tomatoes and the okra.

Eggplants: Leaves look like lace, thanks to some crunchy bugs (no, I didn't eat any; I thumped them off the plants, and stepped on them). They look like orange-black-striped jelly beans. What ARE these bugs, anyway?

Sunflowers: I swear they grow a foot a day!

Herbs: Dill is about to bloom. So is the basil. (I'm pinching the basil back, trying to keep it from blooming, as I hear it gets bitter after it blooms.) The parsley is bushy and green. Garlic - I swear I planted some. Just gotta find it.

Zinnas: Volunteers from last year's crop. They're coming up in the middles of the rows and in the grass along the edges of the garden. I transplanted some of them from the middles to the rows (between the tomatoes) yesterday, before my husband could grind them up with the tiller, but did not get around to watering them after the move. I hope they don't croak in the hot sun today before I can water them this evening.

Onions: Nice blades. I'll need to pull up a few soon, to give the rest room to grow. My friend, Denise, gave me some "multiplying onions." It was almost a week before I planted them, and I was sure that all of them were viable. I stuck them at the end of an empty row that I was saving for okra, so as not to confuse them with the regular onions. My husband tilled that row yesterday afternoon. I forgot to tell him about the onions. He probably plowed them under. Wonder if I can find them today?

Okra: Seeds soaking in a bowl right now. Planting them this afternoon.

Black-eyed peas: Haven't planted any yet. Pop-Pop meant for me to plant some, but I used up all the garden space for other things. Right now, we have tarps laying on the ground in an annexed area at the edge of the garden, trying to kill some of the grass before we till up the spot and plant the peas.

We did a little maintenance work yesterday, tying the tomatoes to their stakes, running the tiller down the middles of the rows, and running the hoe where the tiller couldn't go. More weeding (and dirt-heaping on the potatoes) to do this afternoon.

Check-Up

My garden is not even on my property. I don't have enough sun for vegetables, so my in-laws (across the road) allow me to have a garden in their sunny back yard, where their garden once was.

It's kind of nice to have experts on site. They point out ways to do things that would never have occurred to me. Case on point: The Scarecrow.

Last year, wee beasties of the furry variety attacked my garden. My father-in-law, who is disabled with arthritis and can no longer run the business end of a hoe, suggested a scarecrow might help.

A scarecrow. How cool! I began to ponder what kind of scarecrow I wanted, and what materials it would take to make one. I thought and thought.... Days passed. A week. Finally, my husband found in our shed an old Halloween scarecrow, a yard ornament I bought at a craft store a few years ago, and suggested I might make do with it until I could come up with a clever idea. I headed across the road with it.

Meanwhile, Pop-Pop, having seen that the beasties were getting the best of the crop while I pondered, had run a broom handle through the sleeves of an old flannel shirt, affixed it to a stand, and had set it between the rows at one end of the garden. Okay, fine. We could have two scarecrows. I set my store-bought version at the other end of the garden and squatted down to weed the tomato plants.

A few minutes later, I heard Pop-Pop yell something - I caught the words "pee" and "scarecrow" - from the back porch. "WHAT?"

He said, "I said you oughtter pee around you scarecrow while you're squattin' there."

That's what I'd thought he'd said.

I stood up and turned toward the house, hands on my hips. "Now, why do I need to PEE around my scarecrow?"

"Keep the varmints out," he said.

Isn't that what the scarecrows are for? "Well, YOU pee around them," I said. "But wait till I go home."

"I done peed around mine," he said proudly. We dropped the subject.

I did not pee around my scarecrow.

And I still haven't thought up a stunning idea for a scarecrow.

The Accidental Blogger

This morning, I accidentally created this blog-space while trying to leave a comment on someone else's. Poop. It's like being given a house plant that you really don't want but can't stand to kill.

I've thought all day about what I'd write about. Finally, it hit me: I can talk about my vegetable garden.

So, here it is, folks. Welcome to my gardening blog.

Pictures coming soon.