State of the Garden Report, last week of May

I grew a carrot!  (Happy dance!)




Who cares that it's two inches long?  It tasted great, all three bites of it.  There are more out there, too--I'll treat myself to one a day until they're gone.



If you're not a gardener in North Texas you won't understand what all this hoopla is about--carrots don't grow well here. I bought a tiny bunch at the farmer's market and they were skinny and tough. My soil is especially antagonistic to carrots--it's heavy, black clay.  Someday, if I get it built up with 4-6 inches of compost and if I luck out with a cool, damp and very long springtime, maybe.  But not likely.








I also harvested some potatoes and a pretty crop of rather smallish onions, too.  The picture of potatoes here may look impressive unless I admit how much I zoomed the the camera.






In the cucumber patch, I found a couple of these:




What in the world?  It looks like a spiny wartnock from outer space, or a cucumber shell with the juice sucked out. Where's the juice? 




My tomato plants are up to chest-high. If they get any taller then on the next thunderstorm we'll see how well I did my caging and staking job.  There's nothing so sad as going out after high winds and finding your tomato plants laying on the ground.  (A little hyperbole there, but not much!)








Look at this work of art.  A bean plant leaf, skeletonized. It's kind of pretty so long as there's only few. Any more would be a criminal act of sabotage by the animal kingdom.

Big on encouragement, small on details

Texas
Fruit & Vegetable Gardening

This picture looks just like the peppers in my garden!

It was good to read this:

Many beginning Texas gardeners make huge mistake by trying to grow all the things they'd like to eat without finding out whether they even grow here. Some plants are virtually impossible to produce here, such as rhubarb, raspberries, and apricots. Don't waste money and time on plants that are doomed to failure.

That was useful, along with warnings such as:

I can assure you the seed companies have never printed a catalog or a seed pack with an ugly picture that says, "This won't grow in Texas." 

He also points out that just because you see plants for sale in the nurseries that doesn't mean its a good time to plant them. Don't I know it!  It's almost June and Home Depot still has tomato transplants for sale.

So I enjoyed the advice and got a lot out of the book, but not everything I was looking for.  I wanted guidelines for a fall garden.  He says that:

...you can basically grow all the same crops in the fall that you do in the spring; you must plant them in reverse order.

Helpful, but I want more.  And in his detailed plant-by-plant description, almost every plant says,

   ... a second fall crop can be planted around September in the northern half of Texas, and in October in the southern half of Texas.

But...I wanted to know how the heck you're supposed to sow seeds in the scorching dry heat of September and have them germinate?  Do you start things indoors?  Lettuce, for one, won't germinate if the temperature is above 80. What things can you overwinter or grow in a cold frame?

Not enough information.

Liked but did I loved?

Marathon Woman
Running the Race to Revolutionize Women's Sports
by Kathrine Switzer

This is one tough woman!  And a good memoir writer, too.  She wasn't afraid to talk of "women things" like periods or tears, either.  Describing the 1971 Boston Marathon:

The women at Wellesley at last were all I had hoped for, and more. In 1967 they were nonexistent, and in 1970, also a cold and miserable rain, they were scarce. Today they were out in force and went absolutely crazy when they saw me. For the first time, I felt the noise of their screaming bounce off my chest; the only time I'd felt that before was when I was a kid at a parade and felt the concussion of the big drums in the marching band. I was always proud of being a woman and I was proud enough of my running to need little outside affirmation, but the cheers of the Wellesley women made up for a lot of dark training nights. I felt my eyes sting with tears; I knew the cheers would sustain me for months.

Kathrine Switzer is, of course, famous as the woman who gate-crashed the 1967 all-male Boston Marathon, causing one of the race directors to attempt to forcibly eject her. She finished the race, too.  But I found out there were other women there and there had been others in previous races, and some of them also finished.  The difference is, they didn't wear a number.

She went on to win the 1974 New York City marathon with 3:07:59 and to chase the 3-minute mark with all her might.  She caught it--doing a 2:51:37 at Boston in 1975.  But soon her life filled up with organization and promotion; her hard training days were over but it seems her life had just begun.

So in addition to being a memoir, this is Ms. Switzer's tribute to all the women runners who paved the way.  She helped them immensely--she helped organize and promote so many marathons, mini-marathons that I fail to remember them all other than to mention a few--The New York marathon, the Crazylegs mini-marathon, the Avon races, what else?

As you've no doubt guessed, I enjoyed this a lot.  If you aren't interested in running, it might bore you--a little.  Only a little. Give it a shot and let me know.

State of the Garden Report, mid-May

This should be remembered as the month when it rained all over North Texas--and the garden stayed dry.  Like a cartoon umbrella considerately sheltered the one spot.  Gardens to the north got rain; gardens to the west got rain; and then it skipped neatly over mine and drenched the gardens to the south.  Not that far south, either--on Saturday I went jogging and saw puddles in driveways less than two miles away.

Aside from what didn't happen this week, what did happen?  Well for one, the onion tops fell over.  The book says I'm supposed to 'withhold water' to let the onions cure.  Which would be easy, except I put them in the middle of the garden and I really need to water the rest of the stuff.  I think I'll harvest half of them just in case they start to rot. 

A lot of the potatoes are dying and I wonder if it's my highly alkaline soil that's the culprit.  Usually potatoes go to seed before they die back, but this is a new variety for me and maybe they're simply ready to go underground.  Just for an experiment, I'll try digging one up and see.  But not this weekend--I'm too tired.

Tired from what? you say accusingly.  Doesn't sound like you did much of anything.  Except complain about the rain.  Answer: I didn't.  I spend the whole weekend picking beans and searching for missing personal documents for a certain son who is overseas.  But the beans will need picking every single day for a while.


I harvested squash!













Incidentally, I recorded this observation: there is war among the vegetable kingdom.











The Delicata squash is trying to climb on the bean vines. Who should be the winner? 

(Actually that's a no-brainer for me--I absolutely love Delicatta squash.  So it can climb all it wants to.  Why should it want to, I dunno.

Running for beginners...or not

No Need for Speed
A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running

by John "The Penguin" Bingham

What a charming little book!  Best of all are the little quotes from runners old and young, new and experienced, fast and slow.  They're like little voices from running companions, spurring you on.

In the same way that Colin Fletcher explored the "feel how" of walking, he explores the feel how of running.  And of walking and cross-training, which in his opinion, are all part of running.  In fact, about the only thing that's not part of running is sitting...which is what I did while reading his book.  Sad, isn't it?  I should have found an audio version.

His tips and techniques are often quite perfect for the 'adult-onset' athlete, and best of all, he doesn't insist that the best treatment for any injury is to run (or hobble) to the doctor.  Rest, icing, elevation are often the best treatment--and then figure out what's causing the problem and you change your ways.  I've often found that running on the right side of the road makes my legs hurt in a peculiar way but the minute I switch to the left, they're happy campers. He mentions this issue--so it's not just me.  He also describes a time when he endured a bad, almost crippling, sciatic pain.  It ended up being caused by a poorly-designed office chair--which he only discovered by accident after trying all sorts of other treatments. 

So here's the point I took away:  if you're going to be a runner, or support a runner, don't assume all problems are caused by running. Don't, Oh, Honey, you need to cut down on your mileage, instead say: Oh, Honey, I'll help with the brush hauling this weekend.  I've been jogging for years, and I happen to know that the only time I have knee problems is after I've been digging with a shovel.

The section Finding the Joy was my favorite.  Here's a sample--while standing at the finish line and watching the runners cross, he observed many emotions. Some people seemed stunned--some crying--others even seemed angry.

But the emotion I saw on the faces of the vast majority of first-time marathoners as they cross the finish line was joy--real, hones, earned joy.  It was joy that they could see, feel, and believe in, that they could cling to. It was theirs alone. It can never be taken away from them.

Yeah.

Cooking adventure sort of

Still working on the "real" post for this weekend.  Meanwhile, back on the ranch,

Korean-style Cucumbers and Edamame






I made this salad last week and happily ate the leftovers for luch every day.  But the recipe had an issue that's I've regretted all week--it called for cayenne pepper.  I'm not a gourmet cook.  I'm not Korean, nor a purist, nor even a foodie.  But even I know that cayenne pepper was not the right spice for this dish.  Next time it'll be gochugaru or maybe a ground up, dried red chile pepper or one of the Thai hot peppers.

If only I get some cucumbers soon.

More gardening books, I know, I know. I'm stuck in a rut.

Gardening with Nature in Texas
by Karen M. Breneman

Chock full of useful stuff and a really good section on water gardens.  Some of the tidbits I absorbed seemed new to me, or if I already knew them, I'd forgotten.  Such as:

Alkaline tap water results in salt build-up in potted plants. Try to water with collected rainwater to avoid problems.

Now, I know how come the soil got so salty after we had a water line break that went undetected for several weeks.  I'd assumed the hard pan clay held the water in the low spots and that dissolved the salt in the soil and let it float to the surface.  Maybe so, but another factor could have been the salts in the tap water.

I'm going to collect all the buckets I can find and set up a rain water collection site.  Sadly I can't tap into my nearly non-existent gutters without a lot of work.  But someday, I will.

Among many other things, I learned that "Mosquito Dunks" are a useful biological control, targeting mosquito larvae and pretty much nothing else.  That we know of.

Other than an introduction to companion planting, there's not a lot on vegetable gardening. But you can tell she knows her stuff--it's little help for people to say that good companion plants for tomatoes are chives, onion, parsley, and carrots, when anyone knows that tomatoes are warm season crops and those are cool-season crops.  She gives useful alternatives, such as using non-commercial relatives of these plants.

Overall it's a great reading book or reference book, whichever you prefer.  If you love Texas or happen to be stuck there, get a copy.

Beanie babies!

More like beanie teenagers!  A harvest hard to put a $$ amount on, because I can't buy fresh yellow wax beans anywhere.  I'll be eating them in a minute and "fingers-crossed" for the best.

Rainbow Rowell please write more!

I was in two minds about reading this. In Fangirl, the Simon and Bas story was an amusing side plot and wasn't meant to be a story in its own merits.  To me it was just a way of experiencing the main character's imaginary world...of getting into her head...living with her most intimate thoughts....

Which, of course, she put on computer and posted to the world.  Fan fiction is great, don't you think?  But I never bother to read fan fic--so much to read, so little time, you know.

So, I wasn't going to read this imaginary fan fic.  But after I finished Eleanor and Park I felt hungry like a junkie.  I needed a Rainbow Rowell fix and the library had this on CD.  So I got it. And--tentatively--tried it. And I was hooked.  Again.

In fact, I was so hooked that when it got near the end and I realized my copy on the Ipod had somehow missed a chapter or two, I couldn't simply stop listening, go get the original CDs again, and replace the missing pieces.   Nope--I let her sweep me on to the end. 

When I realized I'd missed something, I thought for a minute that maybe she'd just skipped on.  But no, I realized--that's not her style.  She doesn't skip the good stuff and leave you guessing.   So I went and got the paper copy, and here it is, sitting here on my table, sure to deliver the missing piece of the perfect puzzle.

Enough about me and my Ipod+Itunes incompetence--what about the book?  It's simply this--an imaginary fan fic about an imaginary wizarding world in its final hours before the ultimate battle of good versus evil.  Sure, it's derivative of Harry Potter--except that it isn't.  Not in any of the ways that matter.  There's a wizarding school; there's a boy wizard of great but uncontrollable power with a girl sidekick; there's a powerful headmaster of enigmatic motives; there's an enemy of ultimate evil...but also there's a roommate who's a vampire, a love triangle that isn't quite, a magic-sucking menace, and a spirit from the past with a need for justice.

In short, it's smashing!  You don't have to have read Fangirl first to enjoy it, but if you did then you do--it's that simple.

State of the Garden Report

First, let me explain.  As I transplanted the tomatoes, I carefully laid the little stake that tells the variety of each plant on the ground beside its owner.  When I was finished, I carefully gathered them up, in order, into a little stack, and laid it on the porch.  Later I went through and transcribed the names into my notepad, in order, so I'd have a record of which plants were where.

Then I deleted it all.  I'd miscounted the number of plants in each row and so realized that I hadn't a clue where each plant really was.  And the ordered stack of names had been dumped into a bag.

So now I know what I have, but I haven't a clue where it is.  Which is why I have no answer for this picture:







What the heck variety is so amazingly prolific?  I can rule out San Marzano, Roma, Grape, Super Sweet 100, and Yellow Cherry.  So it is a Carnival, Black Krim, Celebrity, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, or Champion?  Will they taste good?




In other exciting news, I found this:

and this:

  and this:

  where okra was supposed to be.  The red thing is a sprinkler hose, the gray stuff is a hole. A hole lot of  dirt.
Armadillo, maybe?  I will be replanting--hope it's not too late.

But I'm sure it wasn't this amusing creature who came in on my lettuce/kale harvest.  Isn't he adorable?  I'm sure he'd never, never eat my crops.

Like I needed another book on the shelves

Ingredienti:

Marcella's Guide to the Market 

by Marcella Hazan, Victor Hazan

 

All the good ingredients of cooking described and revealed by the master of Italian home cooking.  Well, not all--she covers vegetables, pasta, olive oil, spices and a few meats used for seasoning, but not cuts of meat or fish.  Her husband says in the introduction that she omitted meats and fish because you really shouldn't buy them on your own--you needed the expert assistance of a butcher or fishmonger.  Which makes sense, even though I don't have that luxury and would have appreciated her advice.  But I'll take her advice on almost everything else.

Her suggestion for cooking carrots, for example, sounds like a definite to-try. 

Slice into thin rounds and braise them very slowly in butter, in a skillet, adding just enough water to keep them cooking without stirring.  Quit when they become wrinkled and colored a deep brown.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  I'll probably go back to oven-roasting with a little salt and olive oil, but I'll try hers first.

Don't be misled to thinking this is a cookbook--it isn't. It's all about the ingredients:  choosing, storing, preparing, and appreciating them.  It seems a tiny book, but it's packed with information.  There are about four pages devoted to Pamegiana-Romano and that's one of the longer sections.

I read the book through from beginning to end, but it would make a wonderful gift to a young person just moving out on their own.  If they went to the market and bought a beautiful, red bell pepper, they could then consult Marcella--

Remove the skin by charring it over a charcoal flame....  When it is charred on all sides, close it up in a plastic bag.  Let it steam awhile inside the bag, and when it is cool enough to hold, take it out and pull off the skin.  It will come away easily in shreds. Split open the pepper, remove the white pith and seeds, and cut it lengthwise into broad fillet.  Lay these flat on a plate, sprinkle with salt, and cover with olive oil. It is the simplest and most delectable thing you can do with a vegetable.

That's her advice--I like it.  Simplicity, and flavor.  It's how to cook and it's how to eat. Maybe even how to live.

Research for purgatory in Texas

Texas Wild: 

The land, plants, and animals of the Lone Star State 

by Richard Phelan, Jim Bones

Really, really good overview of the diverse ecosystems of Texas, past and present.  It's an overview only--don't expect depth here--but that's all right.  That's the point.  It's a lot better than a coffee table book and it hits all the high points of everywhere important.

I now know, for example, that the Aransas National Wildlife refuge should be visited with the plan of going with a private tour operator if you want to see more than the one token whooping crane.  And I do.  I'd been hoping to go this year, although that got postponed for twelve months, so this is useful information to file away.  And the book has a lot more to enjoy--Palo Duro Canyon, petroglyphs, minks in the swampy forests, an explanation for why the brushlands of the Rio Grande Plain got that way, velvet-horn bucks, and more.

It's definitely worth a browse if you're planning to visit Texas.  (Or are stuck there.)

State of the Garden Report addendum

First 13 minute mile and first tomato--same day!   It was that gold-something hybrid I had to get in place of what I wanted, which was Sungold.  That vine is getting awful yellow at the bottom, and so is one of the others, but most of them look great.  So I won't worry too much.

I touched it to see if it was loose and it fell into my hand.  As I headed back to the house with it, rolling it about between my fingers to rub off the fuzz, suddenly the thought occurred, "I could eat this."  And then it was in my mouth. 

Only later did I realize I hadn't taken a picture.  But never mind--it has a sibling out there.

Instead of a tomato picture, I present this.  My cooking adventure--Nori Pesto Soba With Greens from Veggie Num Num.  It could have been good if I hadn't put some wasabi powder in.  All that did was give it a dry, gritty feel.  Some chopped Thai chili pepper or jalapeno would have been better.

State of the Garden Report

The nights are still really cool, but the days are sunny and near cloudless.   It's 85 now and the day's not over yet. I'm going to need to water three times a week and my water bill will be painful.

I pulled up the snap peas.  They were hanging on and trying to flower, but it was clearly not their time. Still, I felt like a murderer.  So I planted Malabar spinach in their place.  I also threw a handful of six-year-old blackeye peas into the bed where the edamame was absolutely refusing to sprout.

I finally sacrificed a beet to see what was developing underneath. And the answer was...pretty much nothing.  I think I left them under the row cover too long and didn't water enough.  I'll leave the rest and see if beet magic happens.


Look what I discovered, peeping out underneath a tangle of tomato plant.  I'm scared to touch it or even look closer.  If the mama plant found out what was going to happen to her babies, she'd hide them better.  (Not that she was doing a bad job this time.)

Girls of greatness

First Ladies of Running by Amby Burfoot

This is what it says in the subtitle--22 inspiring profiles of the rebels, rule breakers, and visionaries who changed the sport forever.  Ms. Burfoot did a great job of balancing personal details with facts and numbers.  It could have been longer and still held my interest, but it didn't need to be. And it was, indeed, inspiring.

In the 1922 Olympics in Amsterdam, the IOC permitted a women's 800 meter race.  It had dire consequences for the sport of running. Ms. Burfoot writes that one runner collapsed on the track--briefly--and a few others looked so tired and harried that the IOC banned the distance.  As the author mentions, some of the men looked equally exhausted but no one even noticed.

Actually her information was a little off.  No one really "collapsed on the track". One woman was trying to lean forward to edge out her teammate at the finish, and she fell forward.  She got up immediately.  And there were eleven finishers--no dropouts.  See this article for a good description of reality vs. sensationalized news reporting, aka, fiction:  http://www.runnersworld.com/running-times-info/eleven-wretched-women

Nit-picking aside, the spirit of the book is excellent and the stories are both uplifting and painful. It's heartbreaking to read about the many times these runners were sidelined with injury.  The science of the sport has advanced greatly since the 50s-70s, when these record-breakers were training, making and breaking. Many of their injuries might have been prevented with better training, more rest, and less oppressive footgear. But of course, not all of them.  These are athletes and athletes sometimes get hurt. They're aggressive, determined, and uncompromising competitors.  They pushed themselves beyond the limits and didn't give up easily--if at all.

In other words, they were women.

I appear to be undecided about this book

 

From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes: 

The Autobiography of Robert Clary

by Robert Clary

I can't explain why I didn't love this book.  Mr. Clary has a great memory for details and he relates them well.  He doesn't hold back on the feelings and he doesn't try to turn himself into a hero.  He simply makes it clear, up front, that he's not one to dwell on the past at the expense of living in the present. In fact, I almost think he would have rather not have to tell about his life in the concentration camps.  It was more of a "this needs to be told; people have to know and I'm famous enough that they'll listen to my story," than it was a cathartic "rip this beating heart out of my chest."  (That turn of phrase comes from Cheryl Strayed, writing about the time when she had a book stuck in her and it had to come out.)

This autobiography was easy to pick up, hard to put down, and charitable to all--except the Nazis, of course.  And if there were a certain lack of soul-searching or a personal need to make sense of it all, I'm the only one who'd miss it.

Good, solid memoir.
 

Lamentations and grievances--Mother Nature is a sweet old broad, but Father Weather is a jerk

Again, I got cheated out of my rain!  It rained to the north and it rained to the south, it rained to the east and it rained to the west.  What's a gardener to do?

Irrigate.  I wish I had a cistern!  If this keeps up I'm going to have to had the cost for the extra water to my profit/loss worksheet for home gardening.

Beets are pretty but they sure need a lot of water.

State of the garden report

Bad.  I mean, it looks great, but I don't seem to have any beets yet and the cherry tomatoes are totally failing to set fruit.  Do I need more bugs?  I need more bugs.

The beet issue might be a non-issue--I put them into deeply dug, loose soil.  And it's possible that there really are some beets down there...somewhere.  I refuse to sacrifice one--pull it up--to be sure, but I can tickle away a trench beside one. Saturday.

The snap peas are done for the year.  I didn't get very many, but they tasted so very good that I'd plant them again in a snap.  Maybe next year I'll sneak them into the ground in January.

Enough bellyaching.  Here's what I do have:

a gallery of lettuce

and a sweet little smidgen of kale

Fishy not at all

Cod
by Mark Kurlansky

A little natural history would have rounded this work out, but maybe that wasn't Mr. Kurlansky's intent.  His intent was great and his goals were achieved--he wrote a comprehensive, amusing and very readable history of man's relationship with the lowly--but powerful--codfish in the last thousand years.

I was enlightened and maybe a little bit mind-altered.  The history books told me that New England flourished on the molasses-rum-slave triangle, but they never mentioned a just as important sailing route that included tons of salt cod.  The ships carried their load of fish from Boston to Spain; they sold the best fish and picked up wine, fruit, iron and coal; then they sailed to the West Indies and sold some of the Spanish good and the leftover cod.  Finally they picked up sugar, molasses, tobacco, cotton and salt, and sailed back to Boston.  Money was made at every stop.

When the Massachusetts legislature moved [its courthouse] again in 1895, the [carved wooden] code was ceremoniously lowered by the assistant doorkeeper and wrapped in an American flag, placed on a bier, and carried by three representatives in a procession escorted by the sergeant-at-arms.  As the entered the new chamber, the members rose and gave a vigorous round of applause. 

All of which proves that New Englanders are capable of great silliness.

The last part of the book is so very depressing that I'd almost recommend you skip it.  But if you're not already aware that fishing is not sustainable in the modern world, you should.  It's a cruel, stupid cycle mankind is in, and we need to get out of it! 

Technology improves--population grows--fishing increases--prices go down.  Species become rare due to overfishing. Prices go up--fisherman increase their catch.  Not out of greed, in general, but simply to stay in business.  The catch goes down, down, down. Technology improves to extract the maximum from a dwindling resource.  And eventually, the population dwindles to a point where it is not sustainable.  We don't starve--we can eat plants.  But the sea lions, the seals, the predator fish who can't adapt so easily...they may not make it.  I have an ever-growing list of fish that I cannot buy because the species are being depleted.  Cod was already on there, but just recently I read that sardine populations are way down, too.

Mark Bittman has an article in GQ (http://www.gq.com/story/guide-to-eating-sustainable-fish) that lists the fish his research says are still okay.  With recipes, if you're interested.  After reading it I went out and bought a can of Mackerel.  I've still not convinced myself to open it. Oh, well, if I can't stomach it, the kitties will be happy.