Garden of Summer-past

Goodbye garden. Hello garden-blogging fail.



I'm equal parts thrilled and cringing that October is almost here.

This is my very favorite time of year. Running through crunchy leaves, sipping spiced cider, listening to my chickens sing as they scratch up the last of Summer's bugs, tidying up the garden in perfect hazy afternoon light, hearing combines chewing through the fields surrounding us, constantly sampling bits of whatever is going on or coming off our overworked dehydrator, tripping over the produce that spills out of our entryway and into our home... The whole season is one great big sensory experience, and I love it.

Cringing because, well, these glorious weeks are so fleeting.

And here it is, yes, almost October.


{not snow - cattail seeds}

And I have failed to blog about... anything and everything. But the garden? I barely mentioned it three times. That makes me cringe too. Seedlings in eggshells, harvesting peas, and voluptuous eggplants. That was it.

I did the writing in my head.

Here are handful of abbreviated posts that never made it to press:

1. I neglected far too much of our garden the previous year. The perfect solution to that is obviously to add another fifty square feet and five NDSU home garden variety trials. The observing, learning, comparing, tasting, and ownership the kids had of their trials was a beautiful thing. I wholeheartedly recommend this program to my North Dakota friends!

2. Our pole bean tee-pee was magnificent. I've never grown pole beans before. I underestimated them. It was shocking how the tee-pee went from bare to covered to unrecognizable (in a matter of fourteen days) as the beans went beyond crazy. The cats loved that thing, far too much. They even left offerings exactly in the middle of it. So weird.





3. The younger boy planted sixteen watermelon plants. See variety trials above. See oppressed overworked dehydrator above.



4. Apples! Finally these trees produced enough to justify using the word harvest. And harvest we did. We waited four and a half years for this.


{maybe that one had a bug?}

5. I cannot imagine fall without winter squash. A whole long shelf full. Every one of my seeds rotted in the ground this Spring, and I was irrationally upset about it. Yeah, I know I can get winter squash at the grocery store or the Farmer's Market. It just isn't the same. Then I found a volunteer something among the sunflowers that looked suspiciously gourd-like. Sweet happy day when I realized it was, in fact, winter squash. God does answer insignificant little prayers.

Game on

Nothing says true love like:

Someone searching Asia for a meaningful, plastic, made-in-China souvenir gift for his wife. 'Cause Lord knows you can't get stuff like that around here. Even better, he had previously (repeatedly) told me not to purchase said item because of all it's redeeming plastic junk qualities. He settled for a chocolate candy bar instead. It had intriguing Chinese script on the wrapper which made it extra cool.


Nothing says irony (no, not ironing) like:

That fantastic plastic made-in-China itemapparently not for sale in China. Being a "piece of junk" is actually it's most endearing characteristic (I swear I'm not being sarcastic for once), which is why it has held a place of honor on my Amazon wish list for so long. You know how this ends, right? My sweet husband showed up with an empty Hershey's wrapper, because it would have melted on the way home anyway.

Not a unicorn

Accepting my fate of having lost my blogging mojo, with a stocking cap firmly on my head, unaware I was out of hot coca mix... I headed out the door determined to fill a bucket to the brim. Last time it was spinach. This time I was after the peas. A week ago I composed an Ode to the Glory of Home Grown Spinach in my head. But I dare not publish such a thing here lest it make me sound weird.

First, I managed to tangle myself in the no-chickens-allowed-on-the-greener-side fence. I mean like really, the toe of my rain boot got hopelessly caught in one of the square space thingies as I tried to step over it, and the whole wretched thing collapsed with me attached. I'm not a cowgirl (which I guess is obvious when I say "like really" and other hippie phrases) so I have to wear rain boots. But I did buy them from the farm store. So maybe I'm an imposter?

Anyway, that kind of fence doesn't stop adolescent cats. Well, no fence does. But that and the fact that the wild little beasties are almost as destructive in my garden as the goofy feathered rototillers are topics for another day. Okay. So I crashed to the ground, minus a boot (rain, not cow), and was instantly wearing a black and white cat on my hat.

Glory be. I had arrived.

There were the peas.

The belligerent things should have been ready to harvest weeks ago.



I found which way was up and extracted the cat from my head.

And a brisk forty-mile-an-hour fifty-degree North Dakota wind went straight down, as my little girl would say, "mine butt track".

Coincidentally, we washed sand out of hers yesterday.

Likely these new jeans don't fit me around the waist as well as I thought they did. The jeans that have these funny scratches on the thighs that made nervously interrogate the sales lady as to whether they were designed to fray, even though I already knew the answer. She looked me straight in the eye and lied to me. I bought them anyway because even once-a-year clothes shopping is complete ridiculousness and I'd had enough of it... and (I thought) they fit amazingly well - no small victory when you have the figure of Popeye's Olive Oyl.


From Wikipedia

However, that daring blast of wind proved it was much too miraculous to be true. I bet cowgirls don't wear their brand new jeans to the garden. They wear belts too. Don't they? To keep the wind and sand out?

The dog howled.

The cold wind blew.

The peas were harvested.

And then it happened...



Not a unicorn. Let me repeat. Not. A. Unicorn.

And don't any of you leave a comment saying, "Wow. A Monarch!". Not a Monarch. A Viceroy. They're a less celebrated butterfly designed to fool birds, kind of similar to how sales ladies are designed to tell customers exactly what they want to hear.

Now I'm going to make up a new batch of hot cocoa mix, because it's June in North Dakota and I'm cold. I'm going to outwit that sales lady and iron a patch onto the inside of my new Jeans, because I'm clever like that and not a bit stylish. And I'm going to insist the peas are delicious, but the spinach was better.

Love,
Olive

Oh... Hi blog

Oh, Hi there Blog.

We're all still here. Plus one.

Arnold is a daddy. Shhh... don't tell Red.

Mimi

This is Mimi. Notice her fancy light blue earlobes - all natural, I promise.



I almost almost named her Volta, on a friend's suggestion. But when my clever and sarcastic sister (that should really narrow it down for those of you who know us) mentioned the resemblance to Mimi from The Drew Carey Show, well, I had to admit she was really on to something.

See? Can't deny it.



I may not personally own a curling iron or even a thing of mascara, but I am aware that eyeshadow is not the same as earlobe coloring. Still... you see the resemblance, yes?

I had every intention of writing about her months ago, but you know how good intentions are, especially when combined with a white frizzy chicken. And besides, I had better things to write about, like tiny roosters gettin' it on with large hens.

But yesterday. Yesterday I thought Mimi was dead.

It is not easy for an animal to fool me into thinking it is dead. I have quite a bit of experience with living (and dead) critters. Somehow she managed it, though. I even turned to the dog (not that she cared), and said, "Oh my goodness. She's dead!". Maybe Mimi was in some sort of pre-egg-laying hypnotic trance. I still don't understand it. All I know is she scared me. Scared me bad. Because I only have one Mimi, and please don't take her away.



Then I realized I had never really blogged about her.

And I just can't blog about Mimi if she's dead.

But she's not.

So you get this. A completely meaningless and pointless post, with no real valuable information (except maybe for the bit about her smashingly pretty blue earlobes - which Arnold himself has finally noticed).

You're welcome.

Five-word Headlines

I've got an entire orchard full of blog topics just ripe for the picking. But you know how it goes, when ripe you must pick now, or they drop and rot into a squishy mess on the ground. And you have to make your way through what you've harvested within a relatively narrow window of time, or you're left with baskets of stinking blog topics in your entry-way that you really should have taken care of three days ago. By then, it's too late. And too dang bad if you used wicker baskets. Good luck getting those clean.

And so, I think (painful as it may be), I'll just let you skim the headlines. I haven't got a clue which to actually write. Eh, or none. Perhaps tomorrow will bring something even more exciting?


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