Green peace...

Even as it is showing wear and age from blisteringly hot days, even as its yields are growing considerably lighter each week, even though we've had some failures, I maintain a rapt affection for our little backyard garden. Really, it is quite the green, peaceful place.

We began our garden adventure as a pointed effort to step away from the bustle of things, embracing a slower, more deliberate approach to our days. We wanted something that would make us focus each day on THAT day and what it would bring us. Slowing down to observe the day to day growth of a tomato plant--from a spunky little seedling, to a blooming stalk, then to a wild and fruity beast--is a pretty humbling and centering thing.

I know that many people create gardens to feed themselves, and that for many a garden is a utilitarian and necessary measure to sustain their family. Yes, it is true that our garden has given us food--yellow squash, zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes tomatoes TOMATOES. But it has fed us in very intangible ways, too, and I'd be remiss to let that go unacknowledged.

This evening, after a yummy dinner of sushi at Kenzo, we went for a long walk with the pups along the canal. (By the way we totally saw a buck munching on a dinner of tasty green foliage on our walk! He just nibbled and stared at us, nibbled and stared at us. Probably the closest I've stood to a deer in the "wild.") When we made our way back home, we headed out to the backyard and took stock of the garden. We picked about six or seven tomatoes.

We pulled out the eggplant plants. It was a little sad. They were a total failure for us. I felt creepy as I ripped them from the dirt, like I was giving up on them. In a way I guess I was, but I was also giving up on feeling bad about the failure. As a perfectionist-type, I tend to handle failure--and the threat of failure--rather poorly. Even though the eggplants were, indeed, a big ol' botch, the garden adventure as a whole was a blooming, gorging success. We're proud of it. We're thrilled by it.

We pulled out the ambrosia musk melon vines too. They'd been brown and twiggy for about a week, the last cantaloupe melon plucked from them a while back. As I untangled the vines from the basil plants, that unmistakable fresh scent of basil wafted all around in a perfect way and hung in the humid, foggy air for the rest of the night. Instant aromatherapy.

Nick pulled our last big watermelon from its vine, and BARF there was a big funky rot spot on it. He tossed it on the ground, and it split right in half revealing bright pink flesh inside. Jordan did what dogs are naturally wont to do: he sniffed it, he licked it, he ate it. And that's when it really occurred to me--he's had just has much fun with the garden as we have. He inspects it daily with us, smelling around, rooting in the leaves, waiting to be handed a small plum tomato that he'll eat slowly while stretched out on his belly in the sunshine.

After a while, I sat down and watched Nick, who was doing a little extra weeding. Jordan was at my feet, the sky turning dusky blue around us. As the birds chirped their goodnights to one another, I could still smell the rustled basil.

I thought quietly to myself, "From here on out, wherever we go, whatever we do, we will always have a garden." After this summer, I simply can't imagine not having one.

Good Charlotte

Oh where, oh where did our little groundhog go? Oh where, oh where can she be?

Groundhog update: No Charlotte. And no Charlotte is a good Charlotte.

Did she pack her tomato-grubbing hind parts and move to find kinder, less cat-poopy pastures? Did our neighbor's beagle finally scare the furry pants off of her? Did she get abducted by aliens? Wherever she may be, we hope she's well and happy...but just not in our backyard.

More Farmers' Markets Finds

Our garden is limping through these crazy, arid last days of summer. The zucchini and yellow squash plants are lifeless and beginning to brown, nary a squashy growth to be seen. The basil has bolted, and the marjoram looks reedy. The tomato plants are hanging there, but their yield is considerably less. Though our bell pepper plants are awash in fresh white blooms and despite that we've managed to pluck a few melons this week, we are noticeably down to the last dregs of our fresh veggies.

To supplement our dwindling stores from the backyard patch, we hit our usual farmers' market on Saturday morning. The skies were a gloomy grey and the weather balmy, but our great finds kept us upbeat:

• Two orange-fleshed seedless watermelons (a steal at 2 for $6!)
• Three heads of organic elephant garlic
• A pint of mixed hot peppers (cubanelle, poblano, and banana)
• A quart of organic lima beans
• A quart of organic heirloom hill country red okra
• 2 jars of wildflower honey (+5 honey sticks)
• Dozen free range organic eggs
• 1 bunch of cilantro
• 3 lbs organic heirloom tomatoes
  

A photo of our score:

(From left to right: yellow heirloom tomato, cherry honey stick in Nick's mouth, lima beans in the pod, jar of wildflower honey and the super gorgeous hill country red okra)

And a throwback for Grandma Betty: (we thought you'd get a kick out of the shirt!)

You might remember us talking about Blenheim Organic Gardens, a regular vendor at the farmer's market (and one of our favorites). Well, their organic farm happened to make the front page of the business section of our local paper on Saturday! You can read the story here. A photo from the story:

Coming up next...our adventures in preserving some of our seasonal fare for the fall and winter.

We're So There

We were stoked to hear about the Heritage Harvest Festival happening on September 12 at Monticello in Charlottesville, Va. I was checking out the seed catalog at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange when I saw a note about the festival on their website. Aside from the $5 parking fee, the majority of the festival's workshops are free. And with workshops on creating butterfly gardens, home scale no-till gardening, cider making, intro to seed saving, and cultivating gourmet mushrooms, it should make for a pretty fun day. And all at Monticello to boot. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that I've never been.

We're so there.

Mmm...Bathroom Fortune Cookie

I found a self-esteem boost in early July in a Whole Foods grocery store. In a Whole Foods bathroom stall, to be precise. There I sat, doing my bid'ness, when I noticed a post-it note stuck to the back of the wooden stall door. Pale yellow and in the kindest of handwriting, it read:

Yes.
You look absolutely gorgeous today.

www.operationbeautiful.com

I felt an instant uplift, and it had nothing to do with a voided bladder. I was quietly touched by this little posty, completely melted by the selfless gesture made by its anonymous author. I took a long time washing my hands waiting for the rest of the bathroom patrons to leave, and then I peeked into the remaining stalls to see if there were other notes hidden in there, too. Nope. Just mine. It's like it was meant for me. I took a picture of it with my cell phone so that I could show Nick (he seemed less enthralled by it than me, classic dude), but I left it there with the hopes that it would brighten the day of some new stranger as well.

When I got home, I checked out the website, which is actually a blog run by Caitlin Boyle in Orlando, FL. Her blog says she's "ending fat talk one post-it note at a time" and she posts pictures of post-its placed by other girls all over the world who're also sick of fat talk and poor body image. This, of course, made my inner feminist jump up and rejoice, like in those old Toyota oh-what-a-feeling commericials. I felt like I had just been inducted into a secret sisterhood or something.

I have very recognizable handwriting, so I immediately knew that I couldn't pull this off in the bathrooms at work. I feel like the anonymous nature of the notes is really important. It's not about who is WRITING them...it's about who is READING them. I first set about leaving my post-it notes in the gym bathroom--in the bathroom stall, on the giant mirror above the bank of sinks, and on the big scale. For the scale posty, I took inspiration from another post-it that I saw on the Operation Beautiful blog: "This is just a number. It doesn't tell you how strong, beautiful, or brilliant you are."

Now I carry a pack of post-its in my purse, and I happily slap a note on the back of every public bathroom stall door whenever I can. This weekend, I put one up in a movie theater bathroom before the movie, and when I went back to the same stall after the movie (what can I say? I drink a lot of water), my note was gone. I was so excited that I ran back to tell Nick, and naturally, he was clearly less ga-ga over this than me. In classic dude response, he muttered "They probably threw it away." I don't think so, though. I think it was a tiny gift, unexpectedly, but tenderly received by someone whose day was a bit sunnier afterwards. Sort of like a Bathroom Fortune Cookie. Mmm...

I share this here on the garden blog because I think it's entirely related to my brave new garden experience. My garden has helped me to change the way I see food. I have a whole new relationship with food--as a nurturer, a cultivator, a proud mama, a partner with the dirt and rain and sun. Too many people--and lots of girls I know--have a terrible relationship with food. They hate it. They see it as this evil thing preventing them from mirroring the images of lame fashion magazines. It's heartbreaking. To change your relationship with food is to also change your relationship with your body. It's a beautiful operation worth undertaking.

Introducing Our Nemesis: Charlotte

Groundhog. Gopher. Woodchuck. Whistlepig.

Whatever you want to call it, we're no longer calling it cute. The novelty of this little groundhog experience has decidedly waned. Charlotte, our backyard garden nemesis, has committed an unforgivable crime.

Exhibit A:


You might recall that we tried a non-violent approach suggested by the Humane Society, one in which we ring Charlotte's doorbell and leave a flaming bag of crap on her doorstep. Well, to be exact, we simply dumped a sack full of scooped cat poo right down her burrow hole. We laughed hysterically at this little trick and crossed our fingers that it would work. Nick's coworkers pronounced this approach as an old wives' tale and instructed that it wouldn't work.

They were right:

I was getting ready for work on Wednesday morning when Nick called to me from the kitchen. We stood at the back door and watched in astonishment as she stood at her entrance in defiance and curiously sniffed the air. Nick said she was checking out our butterfly garden when he busted her, though I'm not sure what would be of interest in that garden to her. We do have a volunteer tomato plant in there (happy compost blunder), but those tomatoes are still very green. Hmmm. Something spooked her (probably me acting like the groundhog paparazzi) and she darted back into her hole. A few minutes later, though, she was back. She's bold, no?
After work, we decided that we needed to take other measures. In our tiny backyard, which is something around 50ft X 40 ft, there really isn't room for this kind of wildlife. In all honesty, I can deal with losing tomatoes. We're picking more than we can eat some days, and I'm all for a peaceful coexistence. Our glaring, primary concern is our dogs and what an encounter between the pups and the whistlepig might bring. After dumping another pile of cat poo down the hole and feeling confident that she has an entrance elsewhere, we filled in the hole.

Nick serving Charlotte a snarling eviction notice:We knew that this wouldn't be a permanent. I mean, she's a professional digger. We knew she'd merely dig her door out yet again, but we wanted to at least make it annoying for her. We decided to do some of our own digging around to see if we could tell where her hole goes. The hole is right in the back corner of our yard and its angle looks like it would take the groundhog right under the retaining wall that borders our backyard. Nick peeked over the wall into our neighbor's backyard and sure enough, there was a matching exit about 5 five feet from ours: So, it's NOT a burrow after all, merely a little underground metro system between backyards. What I find interesting is that this neighbor has a beagle who I know would have a great time chasing Charlotte ragged. She's a ballsy gal.

We felt even more justified in closing the door to our backyard, especially since we learned that it wasn't a door to her little home. We checked the hole on Thursday and it was still filled in. Alas, by Saturday morning, she'd dug it out again. Like a ping pong game with dirt instead of a ball, we filled the hole back in.

And it remains closed. For now.

Hole Lotta Lovin'... (hating soon to follow)

Week before last--two days before we left for Lake Tahoe, to be precise--I was scoping out the backyard patch and refilling our birdfeeders when I made a bizarre and head-scratching discovery. Right below one of our feeders was a hole. A big hole. About 6ish inches in diameter, and rather professional looking. It was immediately clear to me that whatever dug this hole was setting up shop and meant business.

I think what threw me off at first was its close proximity to the birdfeeder. I puzzled to Nick, "Could it be a snake? Maybe it wants to eat the birds?" Then the instantaneous proceeding thought tore about of my mouth with audible fear: "Do you think whatever it is will eat our dogs?" I imagined some viciously swift and cunning animal erupting out of that hole with rows of sharp fangs and an unquenchable desire to constrict itself around a small and unsuspecting surly chihuahua while he was taking a sleepy morning-time leak on one of my sunflowers. It is possible, oh yes, that I watched way too much Wild Kingdom as a child.

What did we do next? We promptly ignored it because, Hey! We were leaving on a jet plane in less than 48 hours, and we still had a lot of procrastinating to do before we started packing.

Fast forward. We're back home from vacation, and I'm out in the back patch quietly cursing at my top heavy sunflowers who selfishly decided to bloom during our departure and deprive us of their lovely unfurling. I quickly remembered our odd little mystery hole, and upon checking it out I discovered that while it still is odd and mysterious, it is no longer little: I gasped and showed this to Nick, who, driven by the typical male-ish impulse to "fix' things, rapidly quipped, "I'm filling it in." In the time it took him to crack out the shovel and start scooping up dirt, I was completely overcome by guilt.

Rhianna: "I think this is a bad idea. We don't even know what it is."

Nick: "That's why we need to fill it in. It could hurt the dogs, Rhianna."

R: "I don't know. What if it suffocates down there? What if it has babies?"

N: "It doesn't matter." [continues shoveling in dirt]

R: It could be a rabbit! Could you do that to a bunny rabbit?" [quickly recalls seeing the movie Cujo as a child in which a dog chases a rabid rabbit into a hole, gets bit, contracts rabies, kills people in bloody ways, and forces me to promise myself I'll never own a Saint Bernard. Quickly scratches the the don't-kill-a-poor-bunny approach.]

Enter L., our neighbor. Wearing his favorite tie-dye shirt. Still lives at home with his elderly mother, more likely as her caregiver, but since we've not seen her in a while, we're assuming something more of a Norman Bates scenario. We've seen L. do Tai Chi in his backyard wearing nothing but a speedo. He's a nice guy, but terribly aloof, and to Nick's overwhelming frustration, is a careless lawn mower who shoots his grass clippings onto our car.

L: "Did you meet your new friend yet?"

R&N: "Wha?"

L: "Your groundhog. I've been seeing him every day. One day I saw him come right out of your garden."

R&N: Blink.

Blink blink.

Congratulations, Brave New Gardeners. IT'S A GROUNDHOG.

Once L. disappeared, I scolded Nick: "You just filled in a groundhog's hole! You're going to kill it! Dig that dirt back out now!"

And, like a good husband, he begrudgingly did so.

I remember reading in some of my gardening/farming narrative books about pesky, persistent and super destructive groundhogs. I remember chuckling quietly and with relief to myself that I wouldn't have to deal with such problems because I live in a city, have a small city suburban lot, and have never seen any wildlife in our yard outside of our neighborhood birds, one elderly confused possum, and the occasional lizard. What an idiot.

It was a Field of Dreams Moment. We built it, and the groundhog came. And set up permanent digs. Her hole (for some reason, I'm convinced it's a she) is such an expertly round hole. I imagined her earthy home to be a cross between Rabbit's (from Winnie the Pooh) and Bilbo Baggins'. For a moment I like her and feel a little honored that she thinks our garden is good enough to recklessly plunder. I name her Lonely Woodchuck Charlotte Charles, a.k.a. Chuck, shaking my fist at whoever thought it was a good idea to cancel Pushing Daisies.

Oh. But the dogs. What if she breaks all Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on my dogs? What if my Westie, who is afflicted with Little Dog Syndrome, doesn't realize he's no match for this lady woodchuck? We've already made our veterinarian plenty rich.

In other books I'd previously read, like The $64 Tomato and This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, the authors candidly account the measures they took to rid their gardens of varmints. Joan Dye Gussow (in This Organic Life) even resorted once to drowning an animal, which freaked me out into a sleepless night when I read that chapter. She's a pretty amazing woman, and I am not made of the stuff that is required for that level of extermination. I'm so chickenshit about this that I'm tempted to just leave little tomatoes outside of Chuck's hole so that she never has to come out. Maybe she'll eat herself into such largess that she can only join the outside world if someone removes a wall from her house.

I checked out the internet to see what other gardening sites had to say about groundhog infestation.The Humane Society discussed humanely trapping the animal and relocating her, noting that the downside to this is that this leaves her burrow ripe for the taking, probably by some gutter punk squatter groundhogs that I'll unyieldingly loathe. Also, she could get stuck in the trap in the hottest heat of the day while we're at work and could die from heat exposure (which is what happened in Bill Alexander's $64 Tomato adventure). Rhianna's version of groundhog relocation looks more like this: I also checked to see what Mother Earth News had to say on the matter, and it was here that I found such advice as "Don't waste the meat!" and encouragement to employ my 2nd amendment right to put a cap in Chuck's ass. I don't own a gun, and I could only resort to violence towards this animal if she came out of her burrow looking like this:
I did discover a few non-violent, non-trap suggestions. (Another downside for the trap-and-relocate option is that she could have babies down in the burrow, and relocating her without them would mean their certain demise. Like I said, I'm just not composed of the steely-ness required to commit to that tactic.) One noted that old clumped kitty litter dumped in the entrance to her hole would freak her out and cause her to see shelter elsewhere, or at least abandon that entrance to her burrow (she could have 4 or more entrances). We have 4 indoor feline pooping machines, so this seems like a rather sustainable win-win-win tactic.

I also read on another blog somewhere about a guy who repeatedly urinated directly into the groundhog hole, and this supposedly sent the chuck scampering away never to return. I turned to Nick with total seriousness, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pee in that groundhog hole." We're going for the cat crap approach right now.

Nick dropping a bag of kitty dung bombs on Charlotte's doorstep:As soon as he started pouring that stinkpile into the burrow entrance, I swear I heard little confused chirpings coming from the hole. I took off running. Nick shot me an dismissive expression, asked me what the hell I was doing, and told me it was probably just a bird. I doubt it.

A few days have passed since we left poop on the groundhog's front porch. The poop looks more settled, like someone has been trampling over it with her undeterred fat furry ass. Nick says he just pushed the little clumps further into the burrow with the shovel. I doubt it.

Yesterday I found a bell pepper outside of the burrow entrance. I have no idea what that means, but I'm pretty sure she's mocking us. Girl better cut the taunting and watch out. We've got some #1 and we're not afraid to use it.

We're baaaaaack!

We just returned from our summer vacation in Lake Tahoe. It was a delightful trip filled with much-missed family, beautiful sights, and relaxation. We'd been looking forward to this trip for many months, and now it is suddenly and sadly over. Total bummer, dude.

The effects of our week-long departure from our garden were clearly visible when we returned. We had lots of rotten tomatoes, several over-ripe (fragrant, but not so tasty) melons, and elephant-sized squash...all of which found their inedible demise in our compost bin. The songbird garden was droopy and dry, and the last sunflower blooms of the season were spent. I would like to think that this sad and wilty state of affairs was due to the loss of nurturing in our absence, but I think it's also largely attributable to the ushering in of August's stifling dog days of summer.

I did pick a few tomatoes this evening for homemade salsa, and we do have a couple of ripening cantaloupe remaining. Still, the garden seems to have lost a little of its magic and luster. Weird.

On Incline Beach (Nick's wearing a long sleeve tshirt due to his lobstery sunburn; oh, the fate of the fair skinned):