balls.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the loathsome squash vine borer...

...or, as I briefly considered titling this post, "MOTHERF*@KER!" Imagine my surprise when I dug up a zucchini plant whose stem seemed to have rotted and discovered one of these fellows pulsing cheerfully away, a silent, slimy death knell. He and his buddies have found their way into the roots of my zucchini plants and rendered them unable to take up water, which is the real reason for their recent wilted look and not, in fact, the extreme humidity we have been facing around these parts. They've all since been dug up and laid to rest in one of the yard waste bins. Disappointing, but the show must grow on.

surprise hosta!

Observe the wonders one discovers upon cleaning years of weeds and accumulated detritus from one's garden. This is a hosta (presumably planted by the previous homeowner) that flowered just recently. Bellissimo!

small victories: green pepper

Dear First Green Pepper,

I'm afraid I owe you an apology. Hand to the stars, I swear I followed this recipe for Vegetarian Korma to the letter! Okay, okay, I omitted the carrots, because they make the husband whine, and I left out the jalapeno peppers, because the kids don't like too much spice, but other than that, everything was by the book! Nevertheless, the end result was bland, and for that I am sorry. You deserved a debut worthy of all your shine and green. You have to admit, though: it did look pretty.

Alas, something had to have gone awry in the making of the dish to make it, flavour-wise, such a snore. It wasn't your fault, green pepper. It was bad korma. Bad korma, indeed.

small victories: zucchini

Note: I realized too late that the frost on the frozen store-bought bananas looks a bit like mould. You'll have to take my word that it is, in fact, not.

Yes, I shall call my first zucchini a small victory because it was an incorrect ratio of wet to dry ingredients that caused my interpretation of the Wednesday Baker's recipe for zucchini banana bread to turn out more like bread pudding even after 20 minutes of extra baking, and not any lacking on the part of this green giant. (Next time, self, strain the wet ingredients after food processing, or don't be lazy about it and just grate and mash as needed.) Fortunately, though the lolling loaf received an F from me for structural integrity, on the taste front it was gold stars across the board.

I did manage to wiggle out a satisfactory slice for photo-taking purposes.

A parting - albeit unrelated - bit of news: there were fireflies in the fairy garden tonight. I fell a little in love with at least one of them, which I guess means that my sense of wonder remains intact. Always good to know.

small victories: cilantro

easy butter chicken

Upon second glance at this recipe, I noticed that it read "coriander" and not "cilantro". As it turns out, they are essentially the same thing, with coriander referring to "the dried seed of the cilantro". As the accompanying photograph to the recipe would indicate, it was the author's intention that the leafy cilantro be used by us home cooks rather than the seed. Learn something new every day, you do.

one toe into summer

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince)

Now that I am a little over a month into this experiment, I thought I would do a quick progress report. Playing in the garden has been a positive experience thus far, aided in part by my attempt at practicing an easy-going, optimistic attitude. For every misadventure, there is a lesson learned.

Misadventures

• The Case of the Melting Peony


• broken/bent stems on the behemoth, one celosia plant, the remaining un-chomped rose bloom. I am uncertain as to the cause of the breaks, but I have a list of suspects: recent heavy rainfall and winds; the local fauna holding careless aerobic sessions in my backyard; our long, unusually harsh winter (in the case of the JFK rose bush only). My salvage mission consisted of extracting the broken out-of-place sunflower and laying it to rest in a yard waste bin, staking the bent celosia (as well as the other as yet upright and healthy sunflowers), and saying a prayer to Chloris for my roses. Also, Miracle Gro (c/o Mumsie, yet again).


• the Irish moss' failure to flourish. The moss seems to be stuck in Garden Limbo - neither perishing nor spreading like the carpet for faery feet that I hoped it would. I am still hoping this problem is merely a result of transplant shock and will resolve itself in time. Until then, a little magic blue dust + water never hurt anyone.

Looking Forward

• Next week: The cilantro is going places! First stop, easy butter chicken.


• I am longing to see the lavender in bloom.


• July garden tour!

Monday discovery: macro function

May 28th: veggie garden, WIP

Cleaning up the backyard, I decided, would have to be an ongoing project, and it could take all summer to pull all the weeds and other undesirables. I would have vegetable plants, and I would have them as soon as I could get my butt out to a store that sold such things. Without a real plan or budget in mind, I traipsed off to Wal-Mart (the ninth circle of Hell) and loaded my cart up with the following:

• cherry tomatoes
• green peppers
• red peppers
• lavender
• cilantro
• basil
• strawberries
• blueberries
• a peony bush
• daisies
• zucchini (seeds)
• sunflowers (seeds)
• two bags of topsoil
• pretty printed gardening gloves
• one metal watering can

(I also bought a copy of Inception on DVD, a pair of underwear, a shower cap, and a bottle of Diet Pepsi, none of which are relevant to this particular project. Ahem.)

My husband provided most of the muscle on planting day - (though he shook his head at my request he appear shirtless and leaning wearily on a dirty shovel in a photo for this post) - by turning over the sod to expose soil. I followed close behind, digging with my trowel and putting green leafy infant plants or seeds into the earth. The children ran wild through the yard like sprites with plastic shovels and watering cans in hand, eager to help Mommy and Daddy. A late start and a gloomy sky meant we had to rush just a bit, hence the messiness. My intention was to line the garden with plastic edging, but I had been unable to locate any at Wal-Mart, so that would have to wait.

The majority of the planting was done in region 1, but I also planted a few of the sunflower seeds in the recently cleared region 2. Another note: don't tell PETA, but I sprayed a combination of Tabasco sauce and water on the grass all around the garden and directly on some of the plants, so as to ward off any hungry invaders. It had no effect on most of the plants, but I may have overdone it by spraying the peony, as it eventually discoloured. What a pity. I felt and still feel quite a fool for that move, and I hope the bush grows more flowers, which I vow to leave unseasoned. Pretty please?

Onward germination and photosynthesis!

that sounds like a personal problem

I think I put too much Tabasco sauce on my peony.