Done for the year

Actually, the garden has been done for over a month now. All in all, I think we were very successful. Everything we planted grew and, aside from the smallish corn, was bountiful. Right now, the garden is back to being a patch if dirt and mud that is home to lots of G.I. Joe, Star Wars and other assorted action figures. A couple weeks ago, we got the hose out and Alex, Isaac and I had a muddy good time.

I don't know if this blog will return next year. The garden will for sure, but between work and work and writing and life... I think this journal may have reached its life expectancy. Thanks for reading and sharing our summer of growing.

Peace.

The Fruits of Labor

Wow, been awhile, but this is called the INCONSISTENT Gardner after all. In the preceding month+ our little patch has sprung forth many delicious goodies. Green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, zucchini (my God, the zucchini), green peppers, and parsley have all been and continue to be harvested and enjoyed.

We've finally begun to reach a tipping point in terms of volume and Isaac took advantage by setting up his veggie stand. Within an hour, he made a sale - 3 zukes and a cuke for $1. Can't hardly beat that deal with a stick. (And no, he's not really cross-eyed, he's just a smart ass like his pops.) He was told to price everything $0.25 each, but took it upon himself to call our fare "organic" and charge $.50 each. Then he realized that our customer actually paid only $0.25 per veggie. He began to speak up, but I waved him off and said we were happy to have a customer at all. Then, this gentleman found a dollar bill lying on the sidewalk as he was leaving, and gave it to Isaac. There's probably some kind of karma thing at work there, if you believe in all that jazz.

The corn is coming. Soon, soon. We also have dozens of green tomatoes slowly changing color and the carrot experiment to check on. With such rocky soil, we weren't sure if they would grow with all the obstructions they're likely encountering on their way down.

I also added another fish - a death from our indoor penitentiary, also known as an aquarium. Don't worry, there was very little sadness. He deserved it.

Thieves and a Harvest

Good news and bad news to report today. First the good:

We have harvested the first offering from the garden. Lovely, aromatic, crisp romaine lettuce. I've never smelled lettuce before that had such a distinct scent, a bit sweet and oh so fresh. I can't wait to eat it.

Also, all five tomato plants are blooming and we have about a half dozen little green tomatoes coming along. We have our first bud on a pepper plant, the zucchini plants are huge and beginning to bud, the green beans are tall and budding and the corn is robust. We're not sure about the carrots, though. While their sprouts are big and green, Michele wondered if our horrbly rocky soil would block their southward growth. This week's rain and humid weather will likely have a huge effect on everything next week, though a couple corn stalks took the worst of the torrential rain yesterday morning.

Perhaps I'll use the fresh lettuce as a bed for a meal of fish, which brings us to the bad news...

We have suffered a security breach. Alex's scarecrow, Senior El Gato (as named by my sister, Sara) has come up missing. Blame has been cast toward neighborhood miscreants, out at night looking for something to fill their idle hours (idle hands and the Devil and such). I suspect something more sinister, though - revenge.

I shall double my vigilance to keep these creatures at bay lest they return for something more precious the next time. (Note to self: caution Michele against wearing white bathing suits.) Perhaps I'll exact a bit of revenge of my own. Anyone have a nearby lagoon I can pee in?

Something Wicked This Way Flops

I received this weekend, as a well-intentioned gift for our garden, a bucket of dead fish, courtesy of my sister, Sara, and her burgeoning brood, Nathanael and Cassidy. The fish were intended to be planted. No, dear reader, not to grow more fish as I initially mistook, but to be buried as fertilizer to assist in the abundant growth of our vegetation, a tradition, my elder sister assured me, dating back to the American Indians. As a history major (and apparent good student, though details remain sketchy), I took her at her word.

In preparation for this new gardening task, as I was not familiar with the proper way to prepare and bury dead fish in the ground, I placed the offering, bucket and all, into our chest freezer for a later date. With Tuesday's rain washing out the sporting contest I was scheduled to cover, I seized the opportunity to plant my fish, but first, like any good journalist, or gardener, or responsible home, pet, car, and child owner should always do, I turned to the InterNet for research. My findings were shocking.

Like a latter-day soothsayer bewaring me the Ides of March, the InterNet showed me a sinister world where fish are not our friends, or mere morsels of delicacy or even fertilizer, but rather a race poised to attack us at our weakest moment, when we least expect it. Long have we known of gilled creatures that prey on human flesh, but until now, these attacks have occured mainly in maritime settings.

However, led by fiends the likes of which many of us can hardly imagine, the day is coming when fish will take to the land and reap their revenge upon us. In this hour, it will be every man and his family for themselves. All the more reason to plant your garden now and prepare for the coming apocalypse. Therefore, I took this as an opportunity to prepare.

I retired to the yard with my bucket of frozen captives, an axe, my children armed with the camera, and the morbidly obese beagle to prepare the carcasses for internment in our yard. I will save the more faint of heart in the crowd the specifics, other than to note that within 10 minutes, my bucket was filled again with an assortment of thawing fish hunks. Holes were dug around a foot deep in three separate areas of the garden. Fish parts were tumbled in and covered over with soft, packed Earth. Each spot was marked with a pile of rocks. While I toiled, the obese beagle scoured the grass for any overlooked remnants of the axe-wielding carnage that I wrought. I would like to say that I took no pleasure in this gruesome task, but that would not be truthful.

You see, these desiccated interlopers from the sea have more than one purpose. As fertilizer for our garden, yes, but also to serve as a warning for the future invading hordes: Abandon hope, all ye (fish monsters) who enter.

Now I must go bathe said morbidly obese, and smelling awfully of fish, beagle.

Scarecrows reporting for duty

Meet Bob Lowbob the Scarecrow, one of two scarecrows we put up Saturday morning. Bob is Isaac's creation. We don't have any actual issues with crows yet, but we figured, what's a garden without a scarecrow or two? Bob looks pretty simple, but he was real enough to fool Daisy, the obese beagle in the background of this picture. Now that was funny.


The garden is a great conversation starter. We put a couple things to sell this morning, and the first thing potential customers mention is the garden and how cool it is to see it out front. One guy asked when the corn would be ready, then he asked me if I would be willing to sell my truck. I gave him a half-joking price of $2,000 cash in hand and he said he had to think about and would be back. I totally didn't expect that to happen.



With the amount of rain we've gotten and are currently getting as I write this, the corn is almost knee-high already and we're still 3 weeks from the 4th of July. Maybe I'll quit my job and turn the whole yard into a farm. Or maybe not.

Here's Alex's scarecrow. He is without a name and has since donned a sombrero. Feel free to suggest a moniker. We can even make it a contest, with the winner receiving an assorted bag of vegetable goodies, once they're ready. Leave your entry in the comments.

Critters & Rubberneckers

About a week ago, Michele and I went outside around 9 PM, and there he was. Puffy, white tail, perky ears, twitching nose. Nibbling away at the back row of corn. We knew we had to fence in the garden eventually, but now it was imperative.

We ran about 3 feet short of chicken wire. We made due with an empty flooring box. It's workng for now.

This morning, we discovered about half a dozen little holes in the dirt. I'm assuming moles. We have always had grubs in the yard, and we've seen either moles or shrews before. Not sure what to do about that yet. I suppose it's time to Google 'moles in the garden'.

Three new tomato plants were added. They're already budding and we've got a pepper plant beginning to bud as well. And look at those beans and corn.

Now that things are green and growing larger, we're getting comments and questions and odd looks from folks walking and driving by. One lady even hit her brakes, stopping in the middle of the street, and exclaimed, "Oh My Gosh! Look at that garden in the front yard! That's so cute!" She drove off laughing. I think it made her day.

Look at what last week's rain did to our garden. Boom goes the dynamite.

One of Michele's co-workers also drove by and later asked Michele, "Uh, is that corn? Growing in your front yard?" Why, yes. Yes it is. The bi-color is going nuts, but the yellow corn stalks must have been a favorite of our bunny buddies because they look a little decimated. Hopefully, they'll come back.

You can clearly see which corn stalks Peter Cottontail was snacking on. Silly wabbit.

**********

One final note on the flooring install. Should you ever decide to tackle this DIY project, let me pass along a couple tips.

1. Don't buy knee pads. They save your knee caps, but the straps dig into the soft, fleshy area behind your knees. My solution: I folded up an empty cardboard flooring box then wrapped it with the foam padding placed between the rows of boards in said box. Cost: a few pieces of tape.

2. When possible, the hell with Big Box stores. If you have a local store near you, and they are increasingly rare, please frequent that establishment. I found everything I needed, including some advice, at Hill's True Value Hardware on 933 North. They didn't have things like underlayment, but I'm guessing everything else I got at Menards, I would have found at Hill's. What I did get from Hill's was a new, fine-tooth blade for my miter saw, an invaluable hand-held T-square and several smaller items. The best part about Hill's - they're 2 minutes away and as soon as you walk in the door, someone asks what you're looking for, then (gasp!) knows exactly where you can find it in the store and will take you right to it. Try getting that kind of service from Johnny the snot-nosed teen at Menards.

3. If, like me, you have never used a pneumatic hardwood nailer, sacrifice a board or two and practice a few times with it. Make sure the shoe is adjusted properly and if you do make a miss-fire and shoot a nail into the top of the board instead of the tongue (and you will, believe me), get used to pulling that board out and fixing the mistake. By the second day of using the nailer, I got it down to where I had no problems, but you definitely have to get a feel for it.

At long last, completion

Well, not in the sense that it's "all done" but for all intents and purposes (as well as intensive purposes), the floor, she is down. A few choice shots:

There is still work to be done. The last few boards in the dining room by the back door have to go in, one more row in the hallway that will have to be ripped on the table saw, the rest of the trim work around the stairs, and the quarter round trim (which I haven't even purchased yet) around the entire perimeter.

In all, it was both a rewarding and exhausting experience. Would I do it again? Maybe in a smaller room that is square. The intensive lay down lasted four days, mainly due to the measuring and cutting and adjusting I did around the stairs. But I took my time and I think it shows.

The most amazing part of this job was, despite my wavering walls and my typical inability to get things just right, my boards were perfectly straight all the way across. I varied between 1/4" and 1/8" all the way down the far wall, which I could clearly see was not straight. The house ain't plumb, but my floor sure is, and that is truly amazing to me. Our only problem now is a battle between dark flooring and little white dog hairs. I plan on purchasing stock in the company that makes Swiffer.

This concludes the flooring interlude. Now back to regular programming. I'll get a shot of the garden soon, now encased within chicken wire walls and thriving.

Progress, one board at a time

Day 3 of the flooring install was fairly productive, but ultimately, shorter than I had hoped. Here's what we've got so far:

The angles around the stairs are proving to be the buggers I expected. I made the incorrect assumption that the stairs were even and the trim I'm using to cover my angled cuts would hide all my mistakes. However, I wasted almost an hour of cutting, measuring, fitting, remeasuring, recutting, and refitting the second trim piece along the front of the bannister to realize that I'll need to adjust my plan. Like our walls, the bannister is not quite even.

All in all, though, I am making progress, thanks in no small part to the tremendous help I have gotten from Jeremy, my sister's boyfriend (or is it fiancee, or life partner, or lover, or ?). Once we got our bearings working with the pneumatic flooring nail gun, we got going at a pretty good clip, though I still make an occasional miss fire. (#%$&#*^!)

To celebrate this progress, I went to the liquor store and found, for the first time I have seen in Northern Indiana, Fat Tire Ale from New Belgium. In a word, yum. Thanks for reading. Salud!

And so, it begins

Flooring install, Day 1:

After nearly two hours at Menards on Saturday, hunting, fiddling, playing with tools, and generally looking like I knew exactly what I was there to get, this was all I needed to get started. Knee pads, slap hammer, staples for slap hammer, 2" finish nails, some brads for a borrowed nail gun and a nail set pack. I pretty much already have or have borrowed the other tools I need. But I did buy the wrong staples for the slap hammer, so I made one trip back to Menards to get the right ones. All in all, that's not too bad. You always expect one extra trip back to the store for something. Thank God this isn't plumbing, or I would have put 200 miles on my truck going back and forth. That, and I absolutely loathe all things plumbing and pipe-related (lookin' at you gas lines). Does that make me a homophobe? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I went to Lowe's to buy my underlayment - 30# roofing felt. I would have gotten it at Menards, but they keep all their felt outside and the last thing I wanted was to unroll my underlayment and discover it was soaking wet from sitting out in the rain. Not a good thing for underneath a wood floor. I'm starting in the corner of the window well area there, and right off the bat, I will be cutting a hole for the register as well as the angled end cuts around the stairs (see below). My hope is, by the time I get past this section, the rest of the room(s) will seem easy.

Here's the opposite end of that wall where it dies into a 60-degree angle where the stairs jut into the main level. How, you may ask yourself, did I know it was a 60-degree angle? Why, with that little, blue, $1 grade school protractor I dug out of Isaac's bookbag. I measured the angle on the underlayment and made a perfect cut on my first try. It can only go downhill from here. Today, after I snap my chalk lines to mark the floor joists, I will face-nail the first row of boards in the window well area, then I'll dummy (read: set, but not nail down) as much of the floor as I can and make as many of my cuts as possible. On Monday, I'm renting a pneumatic hardwood flooring nailer and, hopefully by the time I get it home, I can start slamming boards down right away.

Tomorrow: The best laid (floor) plans of mice and men...

Green stuff, outdoors and in

Picture time - first the garden, then a before shot of the floor.


On the left, there's bi-color sweet corn in the

foreground and green beans in the middle, both of which are growing very well. Behind those are the two transplanted tomato plants (left) that went into shock but seem to be coming back and two transplanted pepper plants (right) that are a litte iffy as well.

The pic on the right shows regular yellow corn in the foreground that is not really taking off, especialy compared to the bi-color next to it, zucchini in the middle that is exploding and cucumbers in the back that seem to be coming along nicely.


Here's a shot from the other side. The bare patch up front (left of the pepper plants) is carrots. They're just beginning to sprout, but only one row so far.


Behind that is a smaller patch of lettuce, but only one little sprout has popped up so far, and that may end up being nothing more than a weed. We'll have to wait and see. One of my projects for this upcoming week of vacation is putting up a chicken wire fence to keep our hoppity neighbors at bay.



And here we have the before of our indoor green project - installing pre-finished bamboo hardwood flooring. Bamboo is one of the most sustainable building products you can use. Since it's a grass, it takes very little time to grow lots and lots of it and, in my opinion, looks really cool. Now, I'm not some kooky enviro-nut, but I think it's a good idea to use renewable resources. Plus, I got a pretty good deal on the wood from Lumber Liquidators and, as I said before, the stuff looks totally bitchin'.


I'm starting in that far left coner by the window and I've got a tricky area around the stairs there that will take a lot of measuring and cutting (and cussing, and whining, and crying, and cussing). I'll post some shots of the in-process work, which will begin today with a bunch of prep work. The pic of the wood there is a little off - it's actually not quite that red, more of a brown. Now, off to Menards to buy underlayment and other fun stuff. More to come later...

Another day, another inch

(No, this is not a commercial for Extenze capsules.) The difference from one day to the next is rather amazing. Sprouts that were barely above the surface just yesterday are now vibrant, green and clearly visible all over our humble little patch of Earth.

The picture to the right is from Saturday, but already these corn shoots look twice this size and there are more of them as well. All four cucumbers are coming up, three of the four zucchinis, four rows of corn (!) four or five green bean plants and the first evidence of carrot and lettuce plants emerging. The tomato and pepper plants that we planted, however, are having a tough time of it and we may need to replant those. Everything that we started from seed seems to be coming along rather nicely.


Next up is the fencing to keep out our little cottontail neighbors who scamper across the lawn every late night when I come home from the Tribune. And, my Cor-A-Vent co-worker and provider of nature's finest fertilizer, Cindy, has a roll of chicken wire she's going to give us. Nice. All ten of my thumbs now have the slightest green hue.


As I mentioned earlier, we're also putting down hardwood flooring in the main/upper level of our house. I'm taking a week off of work to install it myself (!) and I am begging, borrowing, and possibly stealing all the tools I'll need for the job. We're putting down pre-finished bamboo and I'll throw on some pics of that process as well. It's gonna be kick-ass, if I don't ruin it first.

Sprouts and whatnot

Woefully long time between posts, however the garden has been planted and little green fellas are beginning to emerge from the ground, including two rows of corn out of four total. Either we planted the first two rows too deep or the crows were busy removing the seeds for us - not sure.

Pictures will be forthcoming. We've planted two kinds of corn, zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, two kinds of peppers, and a couple herbs - basil and something else.

I've also begun to prep the floor in the house for my major DIY project for this year, prefinished bamboo flooring. It's gonna look beautiful, that is if I don't jack it up. I'll post some pics of that little project as well when I get it going in two weeks.

Raw Human Emotion

We went to the Good Friday service at Clay United Methodist Church. We're not full members but have attended regularly for nearly a year now. The service was a powerful one.

They did five readings, progressing through the story of Jesus's crucifixion. After the final reading, the choir stood and we all sang Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? My 11-year old son, Alex, had been following along intently and joined in singing. Between verses, this passage from John (19:31-35) was read:

"It was Preparation Day, and to prevent the bodies remaining on the cross during the Sabbath, the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken away. Consequently the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with him and then the other. When they came to Jesus, they found he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water.

Then we sang again. "Were you there when they pierced him in the side?" That was where Alex lost it. I heard him begin to cry, big tears and heaving sobs. And he continued to sing as well. Through his tears, I heard him sing, "Tremble, tremble, tremble..." The folks in the pew behind us, along with Michele and I, began to cry as well. I have never been so overcome by such pure, raw emotion as at that moment, singing those words on that day, hearing Alex crying his heart out as the significance of it all struck him like a thunderbolt.

Happy Easter to all.

P.S. - While we were all singing and crying, my nine-year old, Isaac, was stone cold passed out at my side, his head against Michele's shoulder. We feared that at any moment he would start snoring as the congregation was filing out in complete silence.

Fast forward to this morning at 12:30 AM, when we were awakened by Alex coming to report that Isaac threw up in his bed. For the next hour, we were cleaning (well, mostly Michele while I battled a powerful gag reflex) a most horrendus smelling substance from sheets and stuffed animals and hair, etc. About every hour on the hour, Isaac has had to charge to the bathroom and is one sick little boy.

He lamented amidst one such trip to the bathroom, "Why me? Why does this have to happen to me?" Being the wonderful, caring parents that we are, Michele and I told him that he was likely being punished by God and Jesus for falling asleep in church. He was not amused.

Relatives Growing Obscene Things

Since we can't plant anything until round abouts Mother's Day, there's not much new about the garden. It's still a patch of poop-covered soil in the yard. There is other news to share, though, and it's nearly as disturbing as my apparent fixation with excrement.

The picture at left is of John Barillo, husband to my cousin Tref. What he is holding may look disturbing, but Tref assures me they are called Cucuzzi, or Italian zucchini, however I still harbor a suspicion that they're actually alien breeding pods.

These long dongs are described as "a vining annual, with large pubescent leaves..." I knew there was something rotten in Denmark.

John and Tref also grow stuff in their basement. If their subterranean farming efforts are as impressive as these, I fully expect some delicious "brownies" coming my way soon. (To any potential readers employed in the arena of law enforcement or service with the DEA, the above comment was JUST A JOKE.)

Here's another joke somewhat related to farming that I heard this morning:

Why do they call it PMS?

A: Because Mad Cow disease was already taken.

/ducking/

Operation Poo

Today, we made our much-anticipated trip to the North Liberty, Ind. horse farm for a load of the fresh stuff. My nine-year old son, Isaac manned the camera and did a bang-up job capturing the tapestry of oderiferous action.




Without further ado, there it is - horse shit. Dropped last year from the hindquarters of a somewhat chubby quarter horse named Cinnabar, collected by caring owners Cindy and Darren and piled up to compost into nature's finest fertilizer. And, as they both expressed to us, it did indeed smell good.


Real-life man of the land Darren, right, patiently explains the proper way to shovel crap to moron, wanna-be Front Yard Farmer, Yours Truly, left.



A frisky "paint" named Maria gets all up in Isaac's stuff. Michele encourages Maria. "Bite him! Bite him!"

These are fish - crappie and bluegill near as could be guessed - tacked to the wall of an outbuilding dating back to the 1890s. Darren estimated that the fish had to be at least 50 years old and were inexplicably nailed to the wall of the building by the prior owner of the homestead, who also happened to leave strategic caches of vintage porn magazines in the farm's other buildings, including an old outhouse. Then Darren asked if we wanted an old outhouse. We politely declined.

And finally, the poo makes it home and is spread onto the ground. In all, the loading, unloading and spreading/mixing into the soil couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes. The other 2 hours at the farm were spent shooting the you-know-what, drinking Darren's beer, jumping on a trampoline with Alex and Isaac, and petting horses, dogs, barn cats and the discovery of a dried out crawfish that had made its way from a pond across the street. In other words, about as fun a day as one could possibly expect to have shoveling shit, thanks to our awesome hosts, Cindy and Darren.

Point of Order Haiku

Is it a Front Yard

or is it not a Front Yard,

Here, you make the Call:

Clarification

I (Michele) would like to clarify that the future garden is not in the front yard. We are on the corner of a cul-de-sac. We have a front, side and back yard. The garden is on the side yard. While I am not disputing the "hillbilly" reference, I am in disagreement with my hubby of the locale.

Obamas Following Our Lead

President and Mrs. Obama totally stole this idea from us, those copycats. Good to see this fledgling little journal is already making the rounds. Kudos to Jason Kelly for the NYT link.


A tip of the cap to entertainment columnist Jackie Harvey for the unique style of the rest of this post.


ITEM! Tomorrow, we'll be making a trip to a horse farm for a free load 'o the stinky stuff to turn into the dirt. Coming soon, pictures of poop!


... I should probably learn what growing zone we're in. Michele and the boys couldn't hold their

water about a month ago and not only bought some seed packages, they planted them as well.


So far, we have sprouting beans, lettuce, cucumber, I think carrot and, in the white planter, that there is corn. No, we don't expect them to survive the transfer into the ground, but at least we know the seeds work. We got them at Wal-Mart so ya never know.

Next we'll be heading to Rural King for stuff, which may be a dangerous thing. They're selling baby chicks for $1.50. The advertisement says they'll grow into fleshy, meaty monsters. Mmmmm... chicken.

A Rock and a Hard Place

WARNING: moderate leap of logic forthcoming: This post has something to with gardening, but indulge me a little.

Before we began turning our yard over, I told to a coworker at the Tribune what we were planning to do and she offered to let me borrow her motorized tiller. I was tempted - who wouldn't want free use of a big, bad, earth churning machine to do in a few minutes what it would take us several hours to do with a shovel? But then I thought about our yard, or specifically, the scores and scores of large rocks that exist just under the sod. Using a post hole digger in my yard is one of the most depressing and frustrating jobs I have ever undertaken.

I turned down the offer of the tiller because I was afraid of what lurked beneath. I knew I would hit something and then have to replace blades, or perhaps even worse. As you can see, I made a wise decision. These are the two biggest examples of what lurks within our soil, but there were and still are handfuls of fist- and egg-size rocks just waiting for a blade to strike against them and topple us over (that happened to both Michele and I - right on our asses). Instead of risking damage to someone else's property, we chose the more difficult route - the shovel.

And that brings me to... AIG. Or, more specifically, the fervor and furor over the $160 million-ish in bonuses paid out to AIG execs out of the $170 billion in federal bailout money they've received. There has been great outrage over these bonuses, which apparently weren't unknown or unexpected before this week. The government has known, or should have known, that these payments were coming, since, ya know, they agreed to allow them already. Here is the most salient passage from the linked story:

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.

And more from a Fox News story:

This would seem to exempt the AIG bonuses that lawmakers and President Obama are looking to recover. Incidentally, Dodd is the largest single recipient of 2008 campaign donations from AIG, with $103,100, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

So, what's my point? It's like the rocks under the surface: If you know they are there, why raise a fuss about them after they're exposed and cause damage to other peoples' property? You take of the problem and move on. If you claim you didn't know about them, then you're either unprepared for the job at hand or you are being willfully ignorant of the situation.

Front Yard Farming

The information to the right generalizes what we're doing, but I thought I'd go into it a little more in depth.

I recently wrote a short story in which the protagonist, a loud, slovenly, bombastic sort who is a bit of an homage to Ignatius J. Reilly from 'Confederacy of Dunces', tires of the constant bad news he hears every day from the television media. He complains of fear mongering and a consumer-driven agenda. He finally decides to do something about it by storming the TV studio and sending out his own message to the masses. However, the stream of recent bad news turns out to be coverage of a large-scale zombie outbreak into which he has just stumbled, but his paranoia is so focused that he only hears and sees what he wants to - only what conforms to his narrow point of view - until it's too late.

Part of his message is for the populace to eschew consumerism and "turn up your soil to begin planting for tomorrow!" Despite the comedic, over-the-top nature of the plot (at least I found it funny), I felt the basic idea is still relevant. We are a nation of consumers and I'm tired of going to the grocery store and pissing and moaning about the high cost of, well, everything.

Every so often, when my boys have asked me for the 10th time to do something that I know they can do on their own, I quote Ben Franklin: 'God helps those who help themselves.' And that's what this is about - doing something that, in the not-too-distant past, was extremely common. Plant a garden. Grow your own food. It's what the country was founded on, right? Do for yourself, because you damn well can't expect someone to do it for you. That's what I believe. I fear that there are too many out there who do not.

So a garden, a 12-foot by 12-foot patch in the front yard because we basically have no backyard. Yes, I know planting garden is nothing unique, nor the idea behind it. I'm not claiming some some moral high ground by doing this and I'm not suggesting that I've hit upon some grand, original idea. If anything, I've seen the light. Why depend on others for that which you can do for yourself? Time to practice a little more of what I preach.

We're going to try an assortment of vegetation: tomatoes, peppers, beans, lettuce, cucumbers, even corn. In the coming months, we'll share pictures and stories of what we tried, of what worked, of who helped us, but mostly of what we goofed up and learned from. I promise you, I'm all thumbs, none of which are green. Hopefully it won't begin resemble something out of Motel Hell. There will probably be lots of other crap posts slipped in here or there. It may have something to do with gardening, it may not. I'll apologize ahead of time for any of that.

Thanks for reading,
Steve, Michele, Alex, Isaac and assorted pets