Gardening Is Tough This Year
While I lived up in the northwest for thirty five years I had three gardens at the three places where I lived. It was a wonderful learning process filled with ups and downs and oh so successful most years. This was between the volcanos and the tsunamis about 250 feet above sea level, actually right on top of a fault line that fortunately never cut loose while I was there, although there was one 5.3 earthquake nearby in the mid eighties.
I'm fixated on disasters for obvious reasons, just consult the nearest headlines. Mrs and I moved down to the southwest for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which was to get away from populated areas and live down where we'd been taking vacations for years anyway. (We're an easy day's ride from dozens of National Parks and monuments) We figured to eventually get a secluded place to live and try to be as off the grid and independent as possible. We're trying the best we can to prepare for whatever garbage comes our way. Of course putting in a garden was part of the plan and I spent the entire winter digging and putting in a big old raised bed backyard farm.
First, the rocks.
Not complaining really, after all you have to prepare the "soil" and down here there's unfortunately more stones than one would want so one has to dig them out to give roots room to flex their muscles. I didn't count on having to buy a pickaxe to be able to do it though. Also down here there's this stuff called caliche which is a few inches below the surface dust. It's basically a concrete layer that needs to be broken up and removed. All right, we do need exercise.
We loves the burping chirdies and find a lot of pleasure watching them crowd the feeders and strut their melodious, feathery stuff. They aren't the only critters who think seeds should be a staple food, however. Rabbits seemed to pass through pig fence with ease so I hung a much finer mesh. Gophers ran an extended system of tunnels straight to under the hanging feeders so I got some of those electronic gopher-B-gone underground shriekers. (Which they seem to think is dinner music, so thank you jeebus for the big stray cat we took in this winter who seems to relish the little critters.) Then all of a sudden the skunks curiously learned to scale the rabbit mesh and so I've been boiling up old habanero peppers from the freezer and pasting it all over their fence highways. It's heart rendering to hear their burning cries of anguish, but what can you do?
My wife, several weeks ago: "Holy mackeral Pig, look at all the hatched wormy things crawling around the porch!"
Shortly after: "Holy shit, what happened to all our peas?"
On the plus side, while they breached the barricades the skunks gorged themselves on the insects.
Now I'm well versed in gardening methods and I'm no stranger to the dangers involved, I can handle sudden pitfalls and shrug off temporary failure, and it's true a lot of what you'd want to grow really has no business living in certain places. But I've never, ever encountered such a wind problem than what we've experienced in this place. Windstorms that would have been a freak anomaly where I used to live, happen every few days here. And I mean land hurricanes. Long, dehydrating, steady 30 mph with 50 mph gusting blows that all living creatures with any sense seek shelter from. The worst one was a week ago which even though wasn't that cold, lasted 48 straight hours and destroyed the chard, beets, peppers and blackened even the magnificent potatoes for jeebus sakes. Fortunately like an iceberg most po action is underground and they're making a good comeback. Another one today flattened what tomatos were in the ground and they probably need to be replaced. Every time these viragos hit I rake up the tumbleweeds and burn them. I'm talking wind so fierce my highway utility trailer scraped around in a circle one time
This is a motherfucker of a neighborhood if you're a little vegetable start.
But inside a greenhouse today, giving me promise that perhaps my efforts at some point won't all be in vain, I found these radishy gems to have with supper:
I'm fixated on disasters for obvious reasons, just consult the nearest headlines. Mrs and I moved down to the southwest for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which was to get away from populated areas and live down where we'd been taking vacations for years anyway. (We're an easy day's ride from dozens of National Parks and monuments) We figured to eventually get a secluded place to live and try to be as off the grid and independent as possible. We're trying the best we can to prepare for whatever garbage comes our way. Of course putting in a garden was part of the plan and I spent the entire winter digging and putting in a big old raised bed backyard farm.
First, the rocks.
Not complaining really, after all you have to prepare the "soil" and down here there's unfortunately more stones than one would want so one has to dig them out to give roots room to flex their muscles. I didn't count on having to buy a pickaxe to be able to do it though. Also down here there's this stuff called caliche which is a few inches below the surface dust. It's basically a concrete layer that needs to be broken up and removed. All right, we do need exercise.
We loves the burping chirdies and find a lot of pleasure watching them crowd the feeders and strut their melodious, feathery stuff. They aren't the only critters who think seeds should be a staple food, however. Rabbits seemed to pass through pig fence with ease so I hung a much finer mesh. Gophers ran an extended system of tunnels straight to under the hanging feeders so I got some of those electronic gopher-B-gone underground shriekers. (Which they seem to think is dinner music, so thank you jeebus for the big stray cat we took in this winter who seems to relish the little critters.) Then all of a sudden the skunks curiously learned to scale the rabbit mesh and so I've been boiling up old habanero peppers from the freezer and pasting it all over their fence highways. It's heart rendering to hear their burning cries of anguish, but what can you do?
My wife, several weeks ago: "Holy mackeral Pig, look at all the hatched wormy things crawling around the porch!"
Shortly after: "Holy shit, what happened to all our peas?"
On the plus side, while they breached the barricades the skunks gorged themselves on the insects.
Now I'm well versed in gardening methods and I'm no stranger to the dangers involved, I can handle sudden pitfalls and shrug off temporary failure, and it's true a lot of what you'd want to grow really has no business living in certain places. But I've never, ever encountered such a wind problem than what we've experienced in this place. Windstorms that would have been a freak anomaly where I used to live, happen every few days here. And I mean land hurricanes. Long, dehydrating, steady 30 mph with 50 mph gusting blows that all living creatures with any sense seek shelter from. The worst one was a week ago which even though wasn't that cold, lasted 48 straight hours and destroyed the chard, beets, peppers and blackened even the magnificent potatoes for jeebus sakes. Fortunately like an iceberg most po action is underground and they're making a good comeback. Another one today flattened what tomatos were in the ground and they probably need to be replaced. Every time these viragos hit I rake up the tumbleweeds and burn them. I'm talking wind so fierce my highway utility trailer scraped around in a circle one time
This is a motherfucker of a neighborhood if you're a little vegetable start.
But inside a greenhouse today, giving me promise that perhaps my efforts at some point won't all be in vain, I found these radishy gems to have with supper:
posted by nolocontendere at 6:14 PM
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