Shoots and roots

Yes, I’m a dork. There are more marigolds, some cosmos, and new basil in here now as well. Also, we lost two sunflowers to slugs. :(

Leafy: Lettuce lettuce lettuce. From Front: Mass lettuce, Spinach, More Lettuce, Bok Choy, Celery, Edible Flowers

Roots: from front, parsely, carrots, beets, old radish patch, marigolds. Onions and Leeks are planted along side of this row.

Shoots: Through the pea vine.

Twice this amount, daily. When the next succession comes it we’ll be looking at 4x this amount daily. We need help!

Little rabbit. This was from a disposable camera so the quality isn’t so hot.

A little cuteness.

Hot peppers! I’ll be adding these to some of the tomatoes that we will hopefully be canning.

Peas are so incredibly beautiful.

There’s that weird white radish again. I took a lot of pics of that.

At the amusement park. I couldn’t not add this to the mix.

I thought I’d gotten some shots of our brassica and fruit rows. I guess those will be good for the next posts. I got behind on my photos because we had the Annual Camera Breakdown. Seems like I have to get a new digital camera every single year. Around Mother’s Day. Go figure. Little poky fingers in the shutter will do it every time.

The radishes are wiped out at this point, praise jesus. Now we’re trying to figure out what to do with all of crazy lettuces. And bok choys. We had to pull out a few bok choys because of bolting, but there are still mass quantities left. We also lost the beautiful central heads in our broccoli plants because they looked like they were going to seed. The side shoots are doing ok, however. Everything else is coming along with super speed. I’ve been running Egg Checks daily, flicking the little ‘pillar eggs off the bottoms of leaves, smashing the wigglers, picking any miner-filled leaves. Some odd insect has plagued the spinach and we haven’t been able to eat any yet, but after a freak storm the plants just took off and seem to have outgrown the pest problem. We are seeing more signs of slugs, and have lost 2 out of three sunflower seedlings. But, remaining sunflower is a bit taller now and might have a chance. Something weird is going on with the basil, as well. I thought the yellowed bottom leaves may have been a nitrogen deficiency and so I added some blood meal. Just a small amount, but I think it burned one of the plants and there hasn’t been any change in the others at all.

Anyway, this afternoon I made tacos and realized that each of the vegetables we were eating would soon be coming from the garden. Tonight we had collards from the garden, and of course the steady stream of lettuce.

 

Roots

Guess what these are

Radishly radishing.

The boy considers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who invited the white guy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Radish!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turns out I hate them.

The boy is FOUR!

The party was awesome. The boy is incredible. I am very lucky.

What do you think of this picture format? I tried uploading the usual way using firefox but simply hitting the picture button kept crashing the browser. Switched to explorer, and this was the easiest way to get photos up. Is it ok? I have some garden pics that I want to put up as well…

 

Guess who’s four?!

His present. Yes, dirt.

Happy kid :) Makes me happy every time I see this one.

They were a lot better looking in person. Better tasting, too.

My new hat.

This is apparently The Year That Nico Discovered PRESENTS!

Sorry, me no rotate.

His alter-ego. Or maybe Nico is Bob’s alter-ego. It’s a close call.

The aftermath.

a week of sunshine

Well, that didn’t go as planned.

Mom, Nico and myself packed our little behinds over to Astoria on Monday, sure. But Tuesday got started a bit early, with a wake up message from Nico: “Mom, get me a towel.” Translated, this means: “Mom, I’m going to puke.” And sure enough he did. For 3 solid days.

We were back home by Tuesday afternoon, after debating very briefly over the idea of staying. Afterall, when he has a stomach bug he’s usually better in 24 hours. But, I didn’t really want to risk getting sick myself, stuck in a hotel with my mother. It just wouldn’t have been the happy, go-lucky puke fest that it could be with my neurotic and high-stress mother around.

The next few days contained an unspeakable amount of Bob the Builder, put a halt to my glorious return to work, and amounted to 10 days off of work in a row. Some bitter sweetness there, with none of it lost on me.

This weekend it is over 80 degrees. Thank the sweet lord, Nico has made a full recovery and we’ve been able to get out and enjoy it. We bought a super awesome grill and a new kiddy pool and have been really loving this whole “WE HAVE A BACKYARD!” reality. Very, very, so much very better than apartment living. No smoking neighbors to keep us from opening our windows at night, a cooooool basement in which to watch movies and play video games after the boy is in bed, and our very first harvest from the garden: lettuce. Also saw some broccoli heads poking out the other day. Wish my camera wasn’t broken.

I’ve also been preparing for Nico’s birthday next week. Just a little thing, with only the grandparents and aunts coming. But, I’m surprised at how much planning I’ve had to do. If it goes well I might consider a house-warming party later this summer. There is something very intriguing about being able to drink at a party without having to worry about driving home.

It’s May

I forgot to check the date on my last post. Was it a month ago? Longer?

The garden doesn’t feel new anymore, that’s for sure. We have greenary, and rootary, and cat shittary popping up, down, and all over the place. After another visit from our consultant coming next week, I believe we’ll finally have everything for the summer season planted. So far we have these showing in our garden:

gold potatoes

red potatoes

peas

cilantro

carrots

lettuce mix

kale

collards

broccoli

cabbage

radishes

carrots

boy choy

onions

leeks

spinach

beets

celery

parsley

bok choy

It’s amazing what we’re able to fit into such a small space.

I haven’t been just working on the garden this whole time. Of the two biggest things to have happened, the biggest would have to be our decision to pull Nico out of preschool. I won’t delve too deep into those waters, as I’m not yet sure  if the decision will be permanent, but I will say that it made me pretty miserable for a good long while. Nico seems happy with the decision, so I’m trying to put my focus on that. But the mama’s mind, with it’s swirling mass of millions of scenarios and decisions, does not let me be contented with our choice.

The other biggie has to be the in-laws month long trip to Europe. Even before we ditched the daycare, Ryan and I had been scrambling to figure out how to cover the two days that his parents usually care for Nico while we work. The only possible solution was for us to use up our vacation time, alternating weeks so that one of us was always filling in for the grandparents (who fill in for us ). Which basically means, no family vacation this year. Because I’m part time, taking a couple of days off during the week really opens things up for me, so my first week of “childcare” Nico and I were able to slip away to the coast for 6 days. Tomorrow, we’re going to head out to another coastal town for a brief, 2 night trip with my mom. So, less horrible for me than it is for Ryan. Compounding my schedule issues, my mom had a cataract lazered out of her eye, and I hung out with her for that on a work day. She also is having a colonoscopy that will likely impact my work schedule. And, all of this is going on during the annual review period at my work. I’m asking for a bigger promotion than what would be standard, so I’m having to fight a bit. Not so easy to do when I’m in the office one day a week.

<pant>

Why am I telling you all this?

It’s mother’s day. And I have the house to myself, is why. I’m supposed to be playing video games, but I’m slacking off Ryan made breakfast (egg foo young, because I was raving about some that we had at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago), cleaned the house, bought me some graphic novels, and tonight we’re seeing Cloud Cult. Good shit.

And finally, Nico’s turning 4 this month. Believe it.

ok. back to the game.

Family plot

Procrastination pays off again, my friends. A few days ago I wouldn’t have been able to include today’s most awesome details, now would I have?

See, last Thursday our backyard looked like this.

Specifically, Nico’s portion of the backyard looked like that. It was pretty much his favorite area to push the bikes around, toss sand up into his hair, throw rocks into the bushes, etc etc infinite.

But then this was delivered.

And his world was forever changed. He was a boy possessed. DIRT! DIRT! DIRT!

After a small brawl, I was able to get him inside, where I discovered his tongue, inside of his nostrils, and his EYEBALLS were covered in dirt. I had to hold him down and saline his eyes out, it was that bad.

But still, I had hopes that once we turned the dirt into soil, and the soil into a garden, he’d come to respect and even care for our precious, life giving dirt.

The Saturday after it was delivered, Ryan spread our leaves and compost out over the garden area.

We also plotted out all the rows and the footprint. Not super fun. Had to make a lot of adjustments on the fly. Had to put the boy in front of the tv to do it at all. Blah.

Sunday, Ryan spent a LOT of time moving the dirt to the backyard. He probably put in 7-8 hours filling the wheelbarrow, carting it back, dumping it out, wash rinse repeat. I put an hour or two in as well, just so you know, but he really put a lot of time and energy into what was very back breaking work. At the end of the day, we had this.

Which looks pretty good. Unless you realize that there is still a row and a half undone, and we thought we were out of soil. Ryan and I were pulling our hairs out, trying to figure out if our consultants had fucked up this equation they’d given us to work out how much soil we’d need. Or maybe we’d fucked up. Or maybe the soil company had shorted us. All we knew was we were expecting to be done, and didn’t have enough soil to get there. And could possibly have to spend a few hundred bucks getting more. Pretty anti-climatic after all that work.

The next day, our consultant came by and told us the beds were to high, praise the lord. And over the next week we both took turns, doing what we could before or after work. And today, sweet sweet Thursday, we now have this.

It’s truly a marvel to behold. I had been skeptical and sad about losing so much of our yard, but looking at our sweet virgin garden wiped away any doubt. You can imagine what this guy thought when he saw it.

In fact, it was actually a very challenging day today, as I was trying to get him interested in planting the peas and potatoes that needed to go in, and all he wanted to do was run up and down the rows. A big fat NO in soil management. I could hardly blame him, but I was very stressed, and the physical acts of chasing him and lifting him off our beds was very trying for me. In the end, I was able to get the veggies planted but our rows do not look nearly as nice, and we may have to buy a bit more dirt to fill in the spots that were messed up. I feel awful for taking his favorite play space, covering it in something that he would really love to play in, and then making it off limits for him to play in the way that he wants. There’s no way it makes sense to him right now.

But, luckily everything that needs to be planted right now is, and it will likely be raining for a good while yet, so we’ll have plenty of time for chats about gardening, and what we’re doing, and all the fun things that we CAN do in a garden. I hope it helps.

Now, to have a heart to heart with the cats about shit, and where to put it.

oh pish

All right. I guess it does bother me that a whole month might go by without me posting. Thanks for mentioning it. Not so worried about the random asshole getting disgusted with my laziness. Pretty sure the random asshole has no idea.

No March posts. Sooo, nothing about Nico’s school daze. Nothing of the new garden. Nothing of my nothing writing. Nothing of the painting I’ve been working on. So very much nothing.

Nothing much different here. I’d intended to give a couple of updates on the book mentality and The Impact of Creative Desire, as well as get some garden photos out there, since those are a couple of things which dominated the month of March. Some hilarious Nicosities would have surely interspliced my exceedingly witty bloggy banter. But, with my attention refocused on getting something filed for the 3rd month of 2009, I think I’ve done my part.

Depending on the timezone.

it’s a baby kitty clip show

The birthday boy asks for pics, the birthday boy gets pics. It’s true, I am pretty over due.

Just a quick aside, my computer is in recovery after being hit by a trojan a week and a half ago or so. I let the IT guy from work work on it, but lost a lot of faith when I watched him type, letter by letter, “www.google.com” into the address bar in order to start a search for virtumonde removal software. My worries were confirmed after he managed to remove the trojan (I think), but leave my computer in such a state that I can’t defragment my harddrive. WTF? That’s a basic, necessary computer function. The software he told me to pay for and download from the internet to fix this problem turns out to be a scam. Luckily, the vibe I was getting from this guy was strong enough to get me to research the software before I plunked down any plastic money. So, to a computer repair person I go. Hope it doesn’t cost too much.

Anyway, pictures. Not going to be too wordy, here. It takes forever to upload these things to wordpress and I’m missing out on game time and dvd time. This is my last night with Ryan out of town, and I’ve got dr. who’s to catch up on.

Soooo. December snow storm. The one that had my mom bunking with us for 2 glorious nights. I’ll start out with some “for scale” pics, then toss out the cute kid stuff.

These are some compost bins after the first night or two.

Here they are after the 3rd or 4th day:

Finally, this is the lid to one of those turtle shaped sandbox/swimming pools. Not saying it’s much to look at, but you get the picture. (BTW, Ryan left no evidence in the snow that he’d peed, so I think it was just a brilliant trick of the camera.)

Long time readers may remember seeing this thing hanging out in the background of some “snow” pictures in previous years. It hasn’t seen this many flakes before.

Good to eat.

Obligatory hot chocolate. Had to be done. And yes, you need a spoon for the high quality shit that I make. (and yes, it’s soy. So you may, in fact, think it’s shit. (JK soy rocks))

On his way to school a few weeks ago.

Valentines day cupcakes. Nico was freaking out, ready to eat those things, super excited. I told him to slow down and let me take a picture and he immediately started voguing, super cute style.

Worthy of two, I think. He definitely ate more than 2 cupcakes.

These are from today. He made me help him build a tunnel on the floor with pillows, but then he got sucked into the top of the couch. Weirdo. Also, I think I mentioned how he thinks he’s a baby kitty, and I am the mommy kitty. Here you can see him being a “naughty baby kitty,” complete with “scratchers.” It’s not a small bit hilarious to witness.

Happy Birthday John! Hope it was a good one.

Pain

Well, my secret hidden goal of pulling off a surprise NaBloPoMo February sure didn’t pan out. Don’t cry.

Apparently, I have not yet secured my position as controller of the world and all of it’s little monkey inhabitants. Nor the monkey’s bosses.

I suppose I never mentioned here Ryan’s boss decided to declare his work schedule unfit for employment and demanded that he start coming to work earlier on Fridays. This is the one day that Ryan watched Nico while I was at work. A kind of “dad and me” type day that was nice for everyone, and kind of necessary for me to stay employed. So, after having a series of small strokes, I started looking for childcare early last month.

It has been excruciating. A couple of you may remember the sheer hell that I entered into as the end of my maternity leave approached a few years back. This process has been very similar. Very, very similar. Except far worse. So bad, that I don’t even want to rehash it and will simply say that my latest dental problem is TMJ. Go figure.

Friday was his first day. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I went to work that day instead of working from home, and so when I got the call that he was scared and crying and inconsolable I had to travel much further as I desperately maneuvered through traffic to get to the boy. I guess the day was an overall success, but my jaw still hurts. And there’s not a lot of hope in my heart. But I’m open. We’ll see.

The process has been consuming.

So, even though the impression that I gave with my last post was wrong, and in fact I have not given up on the book idea, the simple reality of my non-writing remains.

The rug, it’s not under me.

I’ve been takin’ it pretty easy on the whole book writing thing. Just turning some ideas over, figuring out who the main character is and the surrounding environment. Play, really. No commitment, aside from some brief notes. No risk, aside from the low-level embarrassment I might feel here in the bloggysphere. Still, I’d managed to loosely assemble a plan that I would feel things out for the next couple of months and then see if I found any real inspiration after attending that Lynda Barry workshop. It seemed like a pretty perfect idea.

Apparently I was counting on it a little too much. I found out yesterday that April is just the month when she’ll start offering workshops again, not that she’ll be in Portland that month. In fact, she may never be in Portland at all. Ryan’s gift was to be that I could pick the workshop that I wanted to go to, and then fly there by myself for the weekend. Not something I’m likely to do.

Upon hearing this, my disappointment was profound. In many respects, that’s probably reasonable. I’d been making plans, setting expectations, and generally looking forward to this for the last month. Of course, it’s disappointing to find a foot in your stomach.

But, I will have to admit that the rest of the disappointment was a direct result of allowing myself to let too much ride on this one little thing. Putting something off in anticipation of another thing that I have no guarantee will ever happen, that I have no guarantee would give me results even if it were to happen… just a brilliantly designed way to postpone anticipated failure. Which of course is what my entire history of not-writing boils down to.

So, I suppose this little disappointment is really an early-opportunity. Total deconstruction of a plan that I had, albeit logically, designed from a place of fear. A second chance at preventing what could have been a devastating disappointment, had it turned out that the inspiration that I’d been looking for couldn’t be found in a Lynda Barry workshop. In fact, this may have halted a very ugly cycle.

Maybe I’ll be grateful tomorrow.