crispy critter

Despite sunblock, I'm sunburned and freckled from spending the day reclaiming the garden chez les parents. Massive amounts of weeding, scraping off old mulch, filling wheelbarrows full of material, breaking up the crusted soil, transplanting, new plantings, sowing seeds. Good times.

Now I'm pooped and watching my DVDs from the library. At long, long, long last, Season One of Doctor Who came in. Nine is Ford Prefect. Good lord, that may be the single most geeky sentence I've typed in a long time-- seriously, British sci-fi comparisons? I don't think there's anyway I could possibly recover from this.

blog of the living dead

BRAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNSS
Originally uploaded by jcipa

Happy early Halloween. Here we have Zizi doing her best zombie (or zombi, if you want to get all continental on me) impression for you.

Following on that theme (the dead), a cold and wet summer makes for weak plants that have a difficult time resisting insects and disease even when not following organic principles strictly. Instead of Indian summer, this week has brought us frost, constant cold rain, and potentially slushy snow tonight and tomorrow. Le potager aux parents, c'est fini.

Le sigh. Le bleh. Etc.

My little indoor, er, collection is not so happy with the sudden lack of natural light and unceremonious transition to artificial lamps. Two orchids are limping along since being damaged; my large Alice appears to be sprouting a new pseudobulb. I added a Tillandsia to keep the orchids company, while the Euphorbia, Rosemary, and Dwarf orange were hurriedly brought in-- alas, they appear to have brought along some scale insects that are attacking Murray the Murraya. Boo, indeed. Murray's overdue for a repotting anyway, so I guess I'll give it a wash with weak Ivory while I'm at it.

It's been so long since I've posted, so let's see... I enjoyed my residency at a certain health insurer in the really tall building I mentioned in a previous post, but now I'm back to reality. Back to school. Now I'm working on Medicaid policy related matters, applying for fellowships, and trying to figure out what I'm going to do and where on earth I'm going to live when I graduate in six and a half months. Oh, yeah, and there's the whole school thing. I'm impatient to be out in the world DOING something now that I've had a taste. My application for my first choice fellowship is in, but that process takes until April (assuming that I make the various cuts). Bleh.

With this whole literally not knowing where I'll be in seven months, it puts a damper on the rest of my social life. I want to do things with people, especially when I think that it was potentially my last birthday in Pittsburgh in August, and it may well be my last Halloween/ last New Year's/ last whatever. But I'm so busy and I don't want to cry wolf if I do wind up with a job here. It turns the whole dating thing on its ear-- at first, I figured why bother dating, since I'm outtie in a few months. But I've been asked for coffee and such, so I thought maybe a short term thing would be fun. And aren't guys supposedly happy with a completely in the moment, pressure-free relationship that I fully expect to end when I move? But apparently it's a turnoff to date someone that detached, even if they don't want to form their own attachment. Go figure. Les garcons, I will never understand them. I'm too attached and emotional, so they end it. I'm too detached and methodical, so they end it. They know how tall I am, then tell me I'm too tall. They know my relative intelligence, then tell me I'm "snobby" because I read more books in a week than they do in a year. Of course, glutton for punishment that I am, I'm meeting someone completely ill-suited for me next week.

And I think that catches us up for now!

When it rains, it pours

Sunflower in technicolor
Originally uploaded by jcipa

And when it suns, it scorches. That is the theme for this summer-- averaging out to normal, but in reality fluctuating between extremes. Not particularly good for either plants or animals (or people). I've lost my little lime tree thanks in part to this awful, awful summer weather.

Oh well. You take the good with the bad, the blazing sunflowers with the scorched lime seedling, the delicious onions and garlic with the dead string beans.







Allium harvest:

So what is La jardinière jardinière-ing, anyway?

Unconstant Reader, let me show you what my garden grows:

An eggplant groweth!



As do plenty of green tomatoes



Even where I didn't plant any



And cukes



It helps when the pollinators have decided to move in



While Les Parents appreciate the garden (I think...), and they like the aesthetic of sunflowers and sweetpeas and nasturtiums... they're a wee bit put off that they're a wee bit too good at attracting pollinators to the deck area. Oopsie.

business is blooming

sweetpea
Originally uploaded by jcipa

Lack of regular internet access makes updating a little tough, to say the least!

The garden is almost a victim of its own success-- and the cool, wettish summer we've had so far. The radishes and strawberries are done, the lettuce is going, and we had beans with dinner on Sunday. I had to pull a few onions, so we'll see how well they go.

It appears that the eggplant is waiting for sustained hot weather before it goes nuts like the rest of the garden. Likewise, the zucchini are full of blossoms-- blossoms that are apparently dropped because it's too cool, especially at night. I would have definitely sown more lettuce had I anticipated this kind of weather!

In other plant news, I have finally added another citrus to my plant collection. Alas, it's not a dwarf improved meyer lemon (which i have wanted for three years now), but a dwarf orange variety called kinzu, about which information is scarce. Like my murraya Murray, it will be a bonsai. My oncidium Carnival Costume is in spike, and my NOID dendrobium appears to be heading that way as well. Keeping orchids in the shower FTW.

C'est la vie

I have been a very neglectful blogger, I know, but this little thing called life sometimes gets in the way. I love my residency, but it is a LOT of work. 7:30 am meetings one day, meetings until 8pm the next. This week, I'm actually going out of town-- I get to go to the capital and spend a day and a half attending hearings, observing lobbyists, perhaps meeting with a few officials... and be back in time for work on Friday morning.

But the garden grows (and how!). Aside from my spinach never really growing and the slug issue, I think we're doing relatively well-- especially considering that we went several weeks without any rain followed by extremely strong storms and flooding (about 4" of rain over just a few hours!). Pictures soon.

Saturdays are for planting

The plants from Tasteful Garden arrived this week. They seem to be mostly okay, but rather tall and leggy-- the tomatoes already need cages tall. There were a few substitutions-- a regular Italian eggplant for the Bianca di Rosa eggplant, and Carmen, Lipstick, and ruffled red peppers instead of the Italian yellow bell, Mini red bell, and Italian red bell peppers. The tomatoes came as expected (San Marzano Redorta, Classica Roma, Italian Sweet Beefsteak heirlooms and sweet million hybrid), as did the itty bitty basil and large horseradish. Some of the plants already had flowers, like the eggplant:



All of the flowers were removed shortly after planting to encourage root growth, of course. There was also a RED strawberry already.



I sowed cilantro seeds, and... I think we're about done with the planting for now. The spinach and lettuce have been the only real disappointment so far, and that's more due to slow growth than anything else. So here we are...





In other news, it's weird being at my parents' house. When I did live there and maintained the current garden as an herb garden, Lucy would sun herself in the mulch while I worked and rolled around on top of the catnip and any plants unfortunate enough to be nearby. I'm not sure what to do with her cremains. I don't know what part of my parents' yard is not going to be dug up at some point in the near future, and it's not really "my" house anyway.

Grr, frost

Today is technically the last frost date. Of course, we went from 80 on Friday to a freeze last night and frost tonight. Lovely. Here's how things looked on Sunday:

The rightmost side, with radish bonanza



The left side, with the strawberries that ate Export



I'm starting to think that the cow manure I put on the strawberries came from cows on Three Mile Island. The strawberries are huge, spreading at a frightening pace, and scaring me a little. I'm afraid the plant will be sentient soon.



The beans have shot up, and zucchini are in.



Of course, the cats are interesting in all the activity. Oh, did I mention the catnip?



As the elder statesman, Tiger prefers to just sun himself and watch.

Win something important, lose something important

The Newton-Murphy Laws dictate that nothing can happen in life without an equal and opposite reaction. I appear to have attained a GSR position for next year (yes, I will graduate in April instead of December as per the terms of the GSR and thus be in town at least four months longer), which is very YAY! But this morning I woke up to the realization that my supervisor probably sent back my time sheet for this month-- which means no pay-- and I dropped my phone and SOMEHOW managed to lose the battery in my STUDIO apartment. And then when trying to recreate the drop, I then lost the SIM CARD. And almost four hours of searching a room that's 250-odd square feet have yielded nothing but three broken nails.

Lovely.

Did I mention that I'm waiting on a very important phone call? Great. Given my luck, my parents probably should have given me Jude, Anthony, or both as patron saints instead of John the Baptist.

(Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Stop panicking. Listen to the Tchaikovsky that the classic station so thoughtfully decided to play. Sure, it's the Romeo & Juliet suite, but it's beter than nothing.)

Let's look at some pictures. They're crappy because it was getting dark and pouring rain, but ten days has made a HUGE difference.

Look at how nicely the thyme and sage are establishing themselves:



The bushbeans are sprouting, the garlic is going wild. I know that beans and garlic aren't friendly, so I'll probably plop an oregano between the two.



I gave the established strawberries a little manure top-dressing in March, and now they're the strawberries that ate Pittsburgh. I... wow. I know that manue was supposed to be a good fertilizer, but this is crazy. I will never doubt again. Composted cow dip FTW.



The strawberries are trying to colonize the rest of the garden. The onions are growing well, the parsley is extremely happy, and there are tiny carrots starting to sprout amidst the onions.



The sweetpeas will need a trellis soon, and the borage is sprouting



I know it's hard to tell what's going on here, but there's radishes interplanted with lettuce and spinach, basils and rosemary, the lemon balm that won't die (it's been dug up, sprayed with roundup, buried under rocks, and still it comes out).



I pulled a radish to check their growth. It's adorable.



So the garden appears to be goig well so far. In about two weeks, the plants from Tasteful Garden should arrive and we'll be pretty much done with the planting stage. In other news, oncidium Carnival Costume is blooming.



Now if only I could find my phones battery and sim card.

Win some, lose some

Disappointment abounds lately in many aspects of life. It's even more frustrating that I can't visit the other garden this weekend to work out some of that furstration, and inspection of the few plants I have here on the fire escape yielded the unpleasant discovery of mint rust on the pennyroyal and powdery mildew on the catnip in the same container. Plus I found a dead grub in the pot-- both plants are supposed to repel insects! On top of the rosemary purchased from the same store (from the same supplier) having issues, I'm extremely disappointed. It can't be a soil/ cultural issue, because the spinach/ nasturtiums/ moonflowers planted in the same soil & kept in the same conditions are doing just fine. See?





My itty bitty lime tree looks like it's about to explode with new leaves (after losing every last one in the past few weeks...) and possibly... flowers?!



With an orchid damaged from a fall on top of the rust/ mildew issues, I'm glad to at least have that bit of good plant-related news. Oh, and that one of my oncidiums is budding again.

This in-between period is so strange. I'm not used to so much, well, leisure time. Leisure time without any money to actually do very much, that is, which makes me less attractive to other people because I can't afford to drop a ton of cash going out. I've read about 15 books in the past week, and I joined the JCC (veddy nice place, might I add) and I've picked up a few hours at my student job. I'm a nervous wreck worrying about my residency and grades (I totally got screwed out of an A in one class, and now I'm trying to think of the best way to argue my case when it was purely subjective crap that torpedoed me), and yet I'm feeling so unmotivated lately. It's quite strange. I'm used to non-stop mental stimulation (hence the near-constant reading), and this idleness gives me far too much time to think (and brood). Oh well. Just a week and a half to go, and then I'll be too busy to think.

Weekend warrior

Yesterday I attacked the garden... in a nice way. Some weeding (surprisingly few, given the wide swath of fertile soil they could have colonized..), some thinning. The garlic has really taken off-- it's about a foot tall. The onions aren't far behind. The lettuce and spinach are sprouting amidst the radishes (whose roots are starting to fatten), and my sweetpeas have finally made an appearance.

I sowed borage, sunflower, carrot, bean, and dill seeds yesterday. The carrots went between the onion rows, the dill hopefully far enough away by the beans that there won't be problems. We bought basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, & thyme plants and planted those after a light topdressing of composted manure across the entire garden. And then mulched everything to keep the ground from drying out-- it's unseasonably HOT lately around these parts. 87 in April is just not. right. The sudden heat and lack of rain have made the tree pollen situation untenable. My eyes itch constantly, with allergy meds just lessening the degree of itch slightly. The only thing that seems to work is Benadryl, which is (of course) making me very sleepy. Wanting to scratch my own eyes out on top of my disike of heat and the near-constant headache has made me incredibly irritable lately.

But Lambert-- a part of my integrated pest control system!-- is always cute



The garden as of yesterday afternoon

busy busy busy

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is. -Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

I'm in the midst of finals following a busy Easter weekend. BBL. In the meantime, here are some pictures.

Cute cats!





Tasty baked goods!



Pretty orchid reblooming!



Truly baby spinach (which has just been moved back outside to toughen up and grow)!

heavy day

Today was a rather emotional day in Oakland, with a memorial service for three Pittsburgh officers killed on Saturday attended by thousands of police from all over the country and Canada. There were literally miles of vehicles lined up.



The whole thing was incredibly emotional, but the saddest part was when the hearses arrived. The families were riding in limos and charter buses and vans behind them. One of the vans had two children riding in the back, whom I presume were a niece and nephew of one of the officers. The little girl waved at all of the people who had gathered, while the little boy wore a police cap and saluted back at the saluting cops.

Like I said, a very heavy, very emotional day.

In less heavy news, my windowbox spinach sprouted. Hopefully it'll be warm enough to put it back outside again soon.

I love springtime in Pittsburgh

The streak of nice, warm weather drew out hibernating plants and animals alike, and treated us to sights like bold, graphic daffodils.



But it's supposed to get cold and rainy (indeed, the temperature has been dropping since I woke up this morning) and even... snowy. To the indoor garden!



Yesterday, I obtained rosemary, pennyroyal. and catnip plants. Since they (obviously) can't be planted outside just yet, and the mints need to be contained and the rosemary can be overwintered indoors anyway, I planted all of them in pots that can be buried in the garden (catnip and pennyroyal in one, rosemary in another). I also found borage seeds (!!) and selected snap bean and sunflower seeds. The brats have gone absolutely nuts about the catnip plant, tearing the bag I carried it in to shreds. My DamnCat in particular wolfed down the few leaves I gave her.



Oh, and I sowed some spinach seed in a windowbox, but now I have to keep it indoors until this funny snow business clears up. Invisible spinach!

In non-stasis news, my mystery orchid that lives in my shower dropped its original flowers but is setting buds now.

les pyjamas du chat

I was thinking about the cats. There are five that live at the parents' (home to the garden, since I lost almost all of my fire escape real estate in the move and still can't get into the Homewood garden despite waiting over two years and watching some of the plots go sadly neglected). They provide, shall we say, integrated organic pest management. That is to say, they eat the chipmunks, crows, rabbits, et al before they eat the garden. So to thank the felines for their effective (if mercenary) methods, why not a cat garden? If not actually IN the garden, then adjacent?

So I'm thinking of cat plants. There's obviously catnip and catmint, but also cat thyme, valerian, and pennyroyal. There's also wheat, oat, rye, and barley grasses. A little searching yielded this list

* Alyssum (lobularia alyssum or lobularia maritima).
* Baby's breath (gypsophila paniculata).
* Blue fescue grass (festuca glauca).
* Calamint or lesser catmint (calamintha nepeta).
* Cat mint (nepeta x faassenii). (Note: Now known as nepeta racemosa.)
* Cat nip (nepeta cataria).
* Cat thyme (teucrium marum) (Note: Not a true thyme).
* Creeping (trailing) rosemary Santa Barbara (rosmarinus officinalis lavandulaceous).
* Creeping thyme, red (thymus serpyllum coccineus).
* Heather (calluna vulgaris).
* Lamb's ears (stachys byzantina).
* Organic wheat, oat, and rye grass (agropyron, avena, and lolium respectively).
* Valerian (valeriana officianalis). (Note: may attract rodents, esp. rats, but not a problem when planted with lots of repellent catnip and if the cats are good hunters).
* Barley grass, organic (hordeum vulgare)
* Flax (linum usitatissimum)
* Jacob's ladder (polemonium caeruleum), needs shade.
* Lemon grass (cymbopogon citratus), zone 7; bring indoors in winter.
* Liriope (liriope muscari), zone 6; will need protected area or bring indoors in winter.
* Miscanthis grass (miscanthus sinensis)
* Pennyroyal (mentha pulegium), is a mint, will spread.
* Purple fountain grass (pennisetum setaceum)
* Silver vine (actinidia polygama)
* Striped ribbon grass (phalaris arundinacea), can be invasive.
* Sweetgrass (hierochloe odorata)
* Tufted sedge (carex elata), needs shade.

In other news, magnolias all over the city exploded today.

Plotting

Some days are smart days, ad some days are stupid days. Yesterday was a smart day. Today, well, I thought it was a smart day, but now it's looking stupid. Trying to navigate the complexities of failed attempts at health care reform (and what they should have done) does have the effect of turning your brain into jello. Especially if you're not trained for this sort of thing. That's why I liked science-- right or wrong. The reaction worked or it didn't. The proof is true or it is false. I like the numbers, the economics of the issues. They will tell you if a policy is a success or a failure better than political "feelings." They're just small parts of a huge combinatorics & optimization problem, like everything else in life. Hey, I like that metaphor. Life is just a huge fractal, comprised of combinatorics & optimization problems.

At any rate, the brats will be sad that there will be just a teeny fire escape jardinet this year due to my decreased fire escape real estate. They enjoyed it.





Last year's jardinet, maybe two weeks after planting:



This year, there will be more space chez mes parents, but it will be enjoyed by the cats that live with them, and not the two brats who live with me. Alors! I shall have to make it up to them in some way.

I ordered some plants from The Tasteful Garden this morning, with delivery next month.

• One horseradish
• One "sweet million" cherry tomato
• One "Mangia Italian combo"
• One "Pick of peppers"

Apparently the radishes are starting to peek out. I'll see them tomorrow.