The Badass and the Beautiful

It's Monday afternoon. Well after noon. Let's get something straight - I'm not procrastinating. I spent the weekend at the cottage and need a little warmup before launching back into serious writing work... this is just the stretching before the marathon of the week. It's the vocal warmups before the concert. Je me dis. 

Besides, I am waiting for my sun tea to steep. Sun tea is an alchemical marvel: I don't understand why it works. It's somewhat related to gardening - because it sits in the sun, and it makes use of the copious mint patch gaily laying seige on the whole extents of your herb patch at this time of year. 

If you've never tried it, try it. Put some tea bags (any kind) in a clear glass vessel (plastic just won't cut it, I have been told). Muddle in some mint leaves or whatever. Put something lid-like on top to keep the flies out. Sit in sun - outside, or in a sunny window. After some time (maybe an hour?) when it looks like it has become tea, add honey and ice and maybe lemon and voila! Drink it, while cackling: nice try Nestea, you drool. 

Here are some hibiscus bags dropping delicious pink swirls into the water.

A brief foray into the cute: 

My first wee zucchini tackling the weeds, making its way into the world. How adorable. I can't wait to grill you. 

ON THE BADASS AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Duncan was recently commenting that his garden had maybe too much pretty and not enough badass, so I thought I'd write some more badass tips. 

I think badass is best thought of as a state of mind. Sometimes it's your mind, sometimes it's the plants' mind.  And like one's own mind, the badass parts are often simply hidden behind a harmless-looking, don't-ask-me-i'm-just-doin-my-job, vulnerable, crunchy visage. So I have listed a few important badass themes, or archetypes if you will, that I have found represented in my own postage stamp.

SABOTAGE

Take this lettuce for example. Lettuce is basically the milk-sopping pantywaist of the plant world, right? Not a chance - as the Whole Foods Companion* reveals, it was traditionally known as the Eunuch's Herb, because the resinous white goo in mature stems suppresses sexual desire. Not such a retreating plant after all. Lovers of the world beware, and don't overdo the salad. 

DEBAUCHERY AND THIEVERY

I think this broken gnome statuette is pretty badass. It looks like it's had a little too much dandelion wine, which is why it's hiding from the sun behind some virginia creeper. Oh, and it was stolen it from an old lady's lawn. . Well, this isn't strictly untrue . It's possible that an earlier tenant of my apartment *could* have stolen it. I mean, who actually buys those things?

WARFARE

I have an old tree-stump in my garden which supports many types of fungus and critters. Not that I really like critters, but I hear I'm supposed to. I do think it's kinda cool when critters take down other critters, as in the time when I saw an earwig try to make it across ant territory... man, did he get it. In any case, there was some mad ant action in the stump last week. Strangely, it has stopped as mysteriously and suddenly as it began. In the meantime, they made one hella pile of sawdust for having such wee mouths. 

These mullen plants emerged all on their own so I decided to let them do their thing. I think they're kinda pretty. Oh, I mean, badass. Watch the blog for tickets to the end-of season mullen swordfight.

DO-NOTHING POLITICAL REVOLUTION

Here, I am subverting the tyranny of the capitalist seed distribution system by making my own spinach seed. The trick is to be lazy, and let your spinach patch get completely overgrown.

Well, that's all the badass I've got for now. 

A brief, earnest remark: I recently went to the beautiful, woodsy wedding of some eco-conscious friends who don't like piles of stuff. Awesome. They asked for donations to Seeds for Survival - a project to "promote long-term food security for marginal farming communities in developing countries....  using time-tested farmer knowledge and practices" .. that is, to support biodiversity + local crops + sustainable farming practice. It made my inner gardener happy. And I didn't have to go the Bay at all. 

Sun tea time!

*Product endorsement - The Whole Foods Companion by Dianne Onstad. This book is amazing. If this wasn't a completely genuine endorsement, and I was at all profiting from endorsing it, I would probably be able to own a copy, instead of just coveting it. Did you know papaya seeds are edible and taste like really peppery capers? I didn't either. But it's seriously true. 

Mid July Melvegas Photographs

Some mid-July pics from Melvegas Garden. It's looking a bit pretty to be honest. Not badass at all. I really need to figure out how to infuse some badass into this thing.

Nasturtiums to the left, broccoli is the big leafy stuff in the foreground, you can see the peas and beans racing up the front trellis

the 'garden path' with zuchs on the left there. They are decidedly not of the 'vining' variety which I was hoping for (thus the trellis). Something that could be a cucumber is making use of the trellis though. Having spent some time perusing pictures of cucumber plants on line, I dont think that's what it is. Although I could have swarn that's what I was planting. . . a good link on zucchini flower here, which incidentally confirms my suspicions about female vs male flowers. The males are the ones with the skinny stems.

Nasturtiums and Broccoli, and CORN! Yeeeaaaaa - I'm very pleased about how that corn is doing.

Tomatos on the right there

Bottled Dandelion Wine and Some Garden Pics

So, a few weeks late, typical of me I suppose, I finally got around to bottling the dandelion wine that we started back in mid-may. For the last month or so it had been sitting in a lovely old earthenware jug into the top of which I had stuffed some bunched up cotton. This allowed for the appropriate gas-exchange to occur for the fermentation but also prevented bugs and stuff from getting in. It didnt prevent a raccoon from almost getting in however! When one got into our back room in June (I think hes friends with Gus) amongst other antics (including pooping in my seed trays) he pushed this makeshift stopper into the jug. Fortunately he didnt actually get into it though, or knock the jug over! Now basically we wait until winter to drink this stuff. I tasted some while bottling (pretty much inevitable with my syphoning skills) and it pretty much tasted like acetyl acohol mixed with water and ginger. . . hmmm. . . I dont know what this means, but I didnt keel over or go blind so it must not have toooooo high methyl content.

And here are some garden pics I took back at the end of May and just found on my camera.

Varmint Cong & The Unhappy Gardenerd

"License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote. " - Bill Murray, Caddyshack (1980)

SO... my first contribution. I am slightly embarrassed at the effort I have put forth, however, at the same time, my own blog was abandoned at nearly the same time as this one, dare I say it, sprouted. I just want to clarify that this blog wasn't ignored, my love of blogging was in general... and while life chores have eaten up all my blogging time. My "garden" has been eaten up by pests...

Of the 18 date palms I planted in November, 0.5 remain. The culprit - squirrels. Now, I would not have a problem with this if these squirrels were hungry, or demonstrated a shred of intelligent / adaptive behaviour (ie. all date palms look and taste the same, if you didnt like it the first time, dont eat 17 more). That being said, they have grazed on every potted plant I have, usually chewing off a limb / stem and just leaving it on the ground. This leads me to believe they are just bored with life (explains why so many jump infront of moving vehicles) and take pleasure ruining potted plants. Even with my degree in animal behaviour, there is no logical explanation for this maniacal, clearcutting-esque behaviour as of yet.

That being said, there has also been an explosion of earwigs with all this damp / cool weather in London, Ontario. Earwigs love chewing up foliage. So whatever stems/branches the squirrels are leaving, the earwigs are climbing up and chewing the crap out of. Earwigs are the worst insect ever, so nasty. I am a trained entymologist, so don't question my ranting.

Additionally, the plot I created in March to plant my indoor potatoes, is now completely shaded over. In fact, the entire back yard is shade. Where I used to be able to go out and do exercises in the AM in bright sunshine and gaze lovingly at my crop, is now a mosquito filled, creepy, sun-permanently-blocked, bog-like area. I am growing more and more restless with the amount of shade, mold, smell of rot and the amount of foilage in the tree's above. If only i could launch the earwigs up there... sadly no, so I will wait until my roommate / landlord is out of town, before I get to drinking one afternoon and fulfill one of my life goals of being a lumberjack. My fellow contributors are welcome to join, we can even blog / document while we get down to work. [Potential Title "Gravity and The Unbalanced Gardener"]

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