In between all the things I am doing right now, I managed to harvest my garden. It was a little disappointing this year–stunted tomatoes, bolting radishes, weird problems with the zucchini, etc.–but there is still more food from it than I know what to do with.
Wow. Apparently plants ‘recognize’ their siblings, according to this article.
“The ability to recognize and favour kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plants” Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, said. “When plants share their pots, they get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbours get them. It appears, though, that they only do this when sharing a pot with unrelated plants; when they share a pot with family they don’t increase their root growth. Because differences between groups of strangers and groups of siblings only occurred when they shared a pot, the root interactions may provide a cue for kin recognition.”
How is this possible? They don’t have brains or memories, but apparently they are “capable of complex social behaviors such as altruism towards relatives.”
We know so little about this world we live in.
All I am doing is buying things from thrift stores (small red leather Guess purse for $2? Yes!), reading (poems, Faulkner, Tolstoy), and obsessing over my garden (Is the lime tree not getting enough iron? If not, then what is wrong with it?). Oh and writing. And listening to some new albums. I can’t imagine this is interesting to other people. So, since the peas have begun to sprout on my vines, I leave you with this:
They make me happy.
As I sit here at my desk, a blue scrub jay is sitting on the garage door about five feet away, looking at me through the window. It watches me every day. So far, it is the only bird that has shown any interest in my hummingbird feeder I put out–except for one brown hummingbird that ate from it but hasn’t come back.
Even the smallest spot of nature is full of life. The other night, I saw an owl in my backyard. It flew quicker than any day bird I’ve seen. So I assumed that it was deer that were snapping the buds off of my rose bush in my garden plot. Then I went to trim the roses back to let in more sunlight in the garden, and I took a closer look:
What could be doing this to my roses? It didn’t take long to deduce it was this little sucker:
That is a rose weevil. It is a small red beetle that was covering the rose bushes. It sticks that pointy black snout into the buds of roses and sucks out their life in true disgusting parasite manner.
Naturally, I was upset. Next Sunday, weather permitting, I plan to plant the rest of my garden and here I have an epidemic of weevils. My garden is surrounded by large bushes, including two giant rose bushes at least 20 feet high, making them a perfect refuge for hundreds of rose weevils to breed undisturbed.
I’m a garden novice. I don’t know much about pest control. I have been killing aphids since March, and there always seem to be more–although it is getting a little better, I guess–so I hadn’t even had a chance to consider there might be other pests too. I looked on the Internet for organic methods to get rid of the rose weevils. It told me to hand pick the bugs and drown them. I tried it, shaking at least 50 rose weevils into a tub of water.
Big mistake. Watching bugs drown is awful. They climb on top of each other’s bodies to get air. Some of them panic and cling to each other, twirling around in the water in a circle of doom. If a twig or leaf falls in, they climb on and start helping each other up just like humans would.
Forget that crap. Sometimes you have to use pesticides. I sprayed the roses with weevil spray and haven’t seen a single weevil since. I don’t know if that was the best solution and I don’t like using pesticides, but I didn’t know what else to do. And since I haven’t even planted my garden yet except for some spinach and peas, the pesticide should be gone by the time I do.
This garden stuff is confusing, man.
In other news, my oregano (far away on the other side of the house away from the weevil spray) is going crazy.
I helped my parents move this weekend… in the snow. They are moving to the Sierra Mountains, up by Yosemite. So we dragged my mom’s paintings and my dad’s tools through the muddy paths lined with three feet of snow. It was unpleasant, dirty, cold, and did I mention unpleasant? I do not recommend moving in the snow if you can help it.
To get to their new house, I took a three-hour drive through California farmlands, through Stockton and Escalon and Oakdale and other rural parts of California. On the way, I passed fields of fruit trees all ruffled and frothy in their spring blossoms. That was the best part of the weekend.
On Sunday, I planted some spinach. It’s probably too early, but the back of the package says to plant in early spring, and everywhere I look, it seems to be spring. The daisies I planted last year seeded and my garden is full of baby daisy blossoms, along with crocus and stock and sorrel. After that, I spent hours pruning the rose bushes in the backyard while listening to an audiobook by DH Lawrence on my iPod. There’s something so satisfying about snipping away dead branches to make room for new growth.
Having a garden means I have to find ways to use up the food it produces. This summer, I’ve made zucchini bread, quiche, pie, and muffins. I’ve made tomato sauce, tarts, and foccacia. I’ve eaten countless cucumber-and-tomato salads and countless mozzarella-tomato-and-basil sandwiches.
Still there is more. I saute it. I roast it. I give it away. Still there is more.
Yesterday, I decided to utilize my over-producing jalapeno plant and my zealously producing tomato plants by making roasted tomato salsa. This meant roasting nine tomoatoes, a half head of garlic, and three jalapenos. To do this, I had to split the jalapenos and take out the seeds. Although I tried to touch the jalapenos as little as possible, it somehow still got all over my hands.
I have been down this path before. You get jalapeno on your hands, you think it’s gone, and the next thing you know, it’s stinging your eyes, your nose, your ear, and everywhere else you have touched. So this time, I was smart. I called my scientifically minded husband and explained my predicament. He got me a glass of milk and told me to stick my hand in it (a base vs. an acid. Science!). I did so. The jalapeno seemed to go away. All was well.
Except, it wasn’t. This morning, I opened my contact case to put in my contacts and
oooooooooooowwwwwwww!
A flash of needle-poking stings and a desperate, desperate grab to pull the piece of plastic out.
Jalapeno: Polluting my contact case and contacts.
Luckily, I had one more pair left. Now I have to go to the eye doctor for a refill.
The good news: The salsa tastes yummy.
So, you go away for five days.
Your trusty and reliable friend comes over and waters your garden and pets your neurotic cat.
You come back, scamper out to your garden, and discover that your zucchini have grown to the size of a man’s forearm.
Ummm … yeah …
I guess I will be needing my mom’s zucchini pie recipe after all.
Yesterday I discovered that the aphids on my rose bush out front had begun to invade my vegetable garden. So I bought a pack of ladybugs, which love aphids, and released them on the plants.
The aphids didn’t seem alive before the ladybugs came. The other day, I scraped them off with the blade of my cutters and they barely moved. But when the ladybugs began crawling on the bush, the aphids sprang to life and moved to the underside of leaves to hide. Within seconds, the ladybugs were catching aphids beneath their bodies and raising their black bug heads to bring their mouths down, hard, on those tiny green devils.
Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home
Your house is on fire and your children are gone
All except one, and that’s Little Anne
For she has crept under the warming pan
There is also an older version of this poem:
Dowdy-cow, dowdy-cow, ride away heame,
Thy house is burnt, and thy bairns are tean,
And if thou means to save thy bairns
Take thy wings and flee away!
I love how those small things that have been around forever can suddenly become fascinating.