Separation Anxiety

People kept telling me you have to plant corn "in threes" sometimes they might have said "fours" I heard threes. I caught on that the corn had to pollinate one another, so you needed more than one, but I wasn't sure about 'threes'. Like three plants together or three seeds together? I split the diff. Three holes with three seeds each. Might get a corn plant out of that.

9

Cubed. All nine sprooted and grooted. They were right the hell on top of each other in groups of three. Dammit.

So today I got around to separating them. And they were close, so close. And being new to this, I didn't know how far their roots ran. I sent six to the community garden and kept three for the stoop. I intended to do it with a trowel, but you start with a trowel and then finish by hand. It's not that you have to get your hands dirty, it's just that there's no other way. You don't want to slam dirt on these...delicate flowers.

The lads on the stoop are looking good now, a few hours later. The one I was most worried about...uh...grew bigger. Real F.U. attitude this corn has. One fellow is being a bit droopy, but even he is starting to step up. Imma go walk to the peace garden...

Shit. Some of them grew too.

It was all traumatic separating them out. I though for sure I would kill some, and we're not out of the water yet, but a lot of these guys have just said 'fuck it' and decided to keep growing.

This Shit Just Got Real

OK. So Michelle has this friend from Derby who has a sister who runs Homestead Farms And I can't remember their names because that's how I am. It takes me a while.

Look, I've noticed recently that I will say "right" when I mean "left" but I am very particular that north is up and south is down. But it really is a thing. If I tell you to go left, you should probably go right. If I say 'upriver, it's damn sure north of your location. I'm like that with names. I don't catch them right away, and then once I get them I will never forget your face. I see what I did there.

Point is we got these tomato plants. Like a flat of them. Which is a gardening term. Somewhere around 24? I was just starting to learn metric and now people are throwing flats at me.

5.5 and a phillips. You have those drivers you can work on almost any Xerox machine.

Anyway, a lot of the tomatoes went in the plot in the peace garden. The rest we gave to the other folks who have plots in the peace garden.

"What is the peace garden?" you say. Well. next door is a bar called Stamps. And some woman decided she wanted to turn some of the land next to Stamps into a garden. And the owner of Stamps, Deb, who's name I remember, was like, "cool" and so there was a peace garden next door when we moved in. It's this close:

So it means I have a lot more to water. Some of the tomato plants I put on the stoop to grow in containers and I noticed there was more watering. But with this garden, there is so much more watering.

Oh, yeah, Michelle and I are relatively decent people who like to play a part in our community so we got a plot in the garden and have some stuff there. A lot of stuff. Stuff planted not in straight rows. When James Brown talked about raising crops like the Man, he did not mean exactly like, or in accordance with the wishes of the Man. He was saying the Man raised crops, we should too. He never said we gotta raise them crops the same way some jive turkey would. So my plants are not in rows, they do they thing.

To be clear, I understand that I am a straight white male who belongs to the Elks, lives in America, comes from a family with an history of government service and would use 'an' like that. I know, for all intents and purposes I am the Man. Agus fós bogann sé

The Cat in the Hat

Haven't posted in a while. Meant to. Have some time today. Might post a lot.

Friend of Michelle's gave us some tomato plants. One tomatillo. I want to make salsa verde, because it's fun to say. Say it slow. Tell me that ain't fun. Turns out you really need two plants, because they don't really self pollinate. So I'll get another one. I know, it seems unlikely. Or is it? This is WNY. In NYC you can get whatever you want, as long as you have enough money. In WNY you always get what you don't expect. Meditate on that. I am. Because I think it's unlikely that I will find another tomatillo plant. But. Mine has already flowered, and it was hanging out with it's kin just a short while ago. And in WNY you always get what you don't expect. And no one ever expected things to work out up here. It's funny here. 20 years on from when I was last living here. Everyone was positive, back then, that the place could make a come back, no one knew how, and they pretty much had resigned themselves to living in hell.

The place is making a comeback. It's hopping. Ask anyone who's spent the last 10 years in Binghtoamton.

Ask anyone here and they are cautiously optimistic. I get it. Most of my ancestors are Irish.

Michelle and I met a guy last night who was trying to be a nihilist and we convinced him there was nothing in it.

Anyway, my tomatillo plant looks Seussian, so I'm naming him Ted.