Hell, with you, Grandmother

Old woman walks by the other day and sees my plants and asks what kind they are. Mostly vegetables. The look on her face was pure disgust. No flowers? she was thinking. No pretty, useless flowers? Well, you won't have to go to the supermarket so much, she left with.

"Some of them flower" I said.

Or a lot of them. I hear the Yukons have a rather pretty purple flower. The strawberries, have this:

which is pretty nice and getting nicer. Plus, y'know, fucking strawberries. Fuck you.

I guarantee if I put a camera out in front of my house I see that bitch stealing my cukes.

You Need a Team to Root For

The Julie Baker Memorial Forget Me Nots are starting to come in.

I was worried they wouldn't.

Hunter Gatherers Moving Towards a More Agrarian Society

"There's a big ... machine in the sky, ... some kind of electric snake ... coming straight at us." "Shoot it," said my attorney. "Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits.” -Hunter S Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"Now Chimp," you might say, "You've done a lot of research to move your people from mere hunter gatherers to a more agrarian and civilized people. What have you learned?"

The thesis is all wrong and so your whole concept is bunk. Also I don't have a people, I have a fan base. Feel free to throw "growing" or "shrinking" in front of fan base. Which is why the title card on this page is relevant. I know very little about growing shit. There was that one episode of Little House on the Prarie where the minister had a crisis of faith and decided to become a farmer instead and really sucked at it. So he figured out his crisis and went back to being a minister. I'm trying to avoid that.

I expect to be a minister warrior poet agricola kind of fellow. That's right, I got some Latin, too. Super Intelligent Chimps erat sum or some such nonsense. Here's the deal. Usually people talk about how you should do things or what works for them. I don't know any of that. I wasn't even there. She swore she was 18. So I'm gonna tell you what I am doing, how it's working out, and what damn mistakes I may have made already. To whit:

exhibit 1

How many broccoli plants should you put in a planter? 'One' says the internet.

exhibit 2

Same for peppers. Oh well. And I should thin them, I guess. But They seem happy together. I might move some over to the community garden, but I'm not going crazy.

I fertilized today. First time and will probably do it every two weeks. Miracle Gro tomato formula, but should be good for most of it. The one crazy outlier in the Greek Oregano, Milos. He doesn't get watered every day. I water him when he wilts and he likes it. I mean I just heard you should do it that way, so I'm doing it that way. Gave him some fertilizer today, too.

ll As far as soil, it's lot of Miracle Gro going on. Michelle used it and was a fan and it's all over the place. So yeah, mostly I'm using Miracle Gro potting soil. I got a big bag of Miracle Gro Garden soil and used that for a couple of things and it has...weeds?

Check this out.

The peas I planted are in yellow. The mystery plants have the red arrows pointing at them. "Well, Chimp," you say, "couldn't it just be something wind blown?" I thought that, but it's only the garden soil planters. Those with pure potting soil have none of this. "So weed 'em. More compost." Eh. Who knows? I might rid the bean plant invaders, but I think I'm gonna let the ones in the peas go and see what happens.

This is really my first year of being a more agrarian person. I can fake it some, I guess, but I'm mostly seeing what happens. Not subscribing to a school. Not worrying whether my seeds are non hybrid, non gmo. ("Fitty cents? Hell yeah!") not worrying if the Miracle Gro people (Scotts) are in bed with Monsanto.

I'm thinking about composting, y'know? I'm thinking about how I would go about composting in my situation. Now that the community garden is open to me, I could drop a full on high volume compost bin out there. But I was thinking about small footprint, no access to direct soil composting. I'm, like, thinking about running tests on how to compost in space on my front stoop because that's an Super Intelligent Chimp thing to do.

Point is, I'm not talking best practices on this blog at all. Totally winging it. We'll see how it works. Make suggestions. Maybe I'll take them, maybe I won't. I'll say this, though. There is a satisfaction, a calm that you get from growing that garden. I've heard a few other people express this. My friend Gab's husband Barrett started growing herbs on his balcony and talked to me about how it made things make sense. I didn't get it at the time. Now I do.

I'm going for a lot less fuss. I just want a tomato. Couple of potatoes. A cuke. I'm not looking to do this high yield. I just want to grow something and eat it and move beyond a hunter/gatherer.

Self Watering Containers are Bullshit, but Still Cool

The title says it all. I have to top them off daily. Sometimes a lot. I mean, sometimes they seem EMPTY. Two weeks of water, my ass. But it's all good, because you water the plants the same amount every time. They take what they need. And you don't flood out your plants from above. I've gotten used to watering around my plants, but sometimes you score a direct hit and almost kill the little fucker. (I have a mix of about half 'self watering' and half conventional) So you prop 'em up and hope for the best and usually it all works out ok, but still. Much less stress with the quote-unquote self watering containers. So it's still a buy and all, but this idea that you can water your plants once and leave 'em for two weeks is complete horseshit.

Here in the COT it doesn't rain much or for long, so far. There's enough damn water around. Doesn't even snow as much as you would think, this close to Buffalo. The story is, it's supposed to rain buckets today in WNY. Maybe in Amherst. There's a weather change coming, but I expect it to be a pretty fine day til the sun goes down.

So I have to water my container garden, and I do. Daily. It's like a ritual. Focuses my chi. I got a lot going on now, so it's a lot more watering, but it's all good. I usually do it when I come home from work. Water the plants, pour a cocktail, drop the pow wow chair on the stoop, have a cigarette and oversee my domain.

Your chi needs to be focused, man. Don't buy into any of this self watering bullshit where you put your chi in a box and it focuses itself.

You develop the right inner calm and you aren't an asshole driver. You may drive slow, like you have nowhere to go and all day to get there, but you do it in the right hand lane, and people can pass at will. I'm not even saying you have to focus your chi. Be an asshole driver. Complain about the world's little indignities. Get upset. I don't care. Possibly I could do all this with a healthy dose of marijuana. But I can't grow it on my stoop yet and ... well, look I never even tried it. I'm more a bourbon/whiskey/vodka guy. I don't care. I don't see it as a gateway anything or think it's worse than tobacco. Just, that's not what's focusing the chi.

They're a lot of horseshit, these self watering containers, you still have to water your plants daily. But you fill up the slot and don't create a floodplain and move around the soil. They are not correct in name, but they are good in function. Once you make that distinction, all is right in the world.

The beans are currently out of control Apparently a 'bush bean' No Latin name on the package. American Seeds, on sale at Walmart. Fitty Cents. I thought nothing was gonna happen. If you look at (slightly) older pictures, nothing. Now:

Bam! Bean plants. I'm gonna try to grow them up and around the handrail. I'm not comfortable with thinning plants that look so damn happy.

The cukes have to move on up, though. They like the outside:

I already have a planter for them.

Michelle is in out of town, work thing. Normally no big deal. Work is work. But the car died today. Would start but wouldn't turn over. Oh damn. Looked like a fuel pump issue. But wait. There's a relay. Could it just be a bad relay? Swapped out the defogger relay with the fuel pump relay and I was able to drive to Advanced Auto Parts and replace the relay. 15 bucks.

Pricier than vodka? Sure, if you drink the swill I drink. But cheaper than a fuel pump.

I'll transplant the cukes tomorrow. Hey. I know you're supposed to 'mound" potatoes, but do you bury the leaves? Yukon Cornelius's main stem is blowing up, but he had a little side leaf that is gonna be buried if I mound properly. So I put it under? George and 'ouisie are nearing the same state.

Naming Conventions

I don't know the Latin names of all of my plants. Hell, sometimes I'm not even sure what I planted. I put this stuff in a pot and it's growing like gangbusters, but I'm not really sure what it is. Oh well.

But I do name my plants. And the local squirrels. And anything I deal with on a regular basis that doesn't already have a name. It's just how I deal with the world. Jen last night was unsure how I could name and keep track of all the plants I have going on, but see, that's the key. You don't really name them all. You name them, for the most part, by container.

Yuri is a "black prince" tomato plant. Which the little tag claims is an Siberian hybrid. I got him at walmart. I named him after a Russian I admire: Yuri Gagarin. Lieutenant Barkley is another space man. A star fleet officer. Apparently he became a commander or something in Voyager, but I'm going with an earlier time, where the other people in engineering called Lieutenant Barkley "Lieutenant Broccoli." He was played by Matt Frewer. Good name for a Broccoli plant.

He's actually much bigger today. And properly, a them. But Lt. Broccoli sort of expanded out of control in that one episode. That played a part. My onions are named Booker T and the MG's. Booker has the curl.

It's not very scientific, but that's the point. There's nothing serious about this container garden. If I really want onions I can be at Tops in under 5 minutes by bicycle. Well, ten, it takes me a little while to get the bike out now with all the containers on the stoop. My friend, Cormac, taught school for a year at the Lakota Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Cormac is an odd name for anyone not Irish, so the kids first called him Cornsack and then Wagmiza (corn). I'm naming my corn plants that. When they sprout I will say, "Eeeez, Wagmiz" and that will be that.

A De-luxe Apartment in the Sky

Before Jen, Chuck and Stephanie came over yesterday, I got a chance to do some gardening. I moved Yukon Cornelius out of his tiny pot with his neighbors and into a bigger self watering container. He was the potato plant doing the best. So he was movin' on up. I was a little worried that the transplant would harm him. No, sir. I woke up this morning at about 5 am (I'm a farmer now) and that little asshole was now a bigger asshole.

I moved Cornelius's former neighbors away from the wall of the container a bit and added some more soil. Apparently, George and 'ouisie (as I call them now) noticed that Yukon C got new digs and have to get a piece of the pie, because they blew up over night, too.

Just as an aside, you can see the giant planter I got for Wagmiza, my Midwestern corn. Hopefully more on that later, but it was just planted yesterday.

B.P.O.E.

We had an initiation at the Elk's Lodge last Tuesday. I can't tell you much more. But that's me in a tux sitting on the stoop with my garden. Long night. But some good new members.

I joined the Elks, as I sometimes say, because I wanted to lay down some roots in my new community. But now that I'm literally laying down roots in my new community, I can come clean.

My brother Dan tried to join the Elks because he wanted to watch Monday Night Football. And he would have fit right in and probably made a better Elk than me. But in the interview, they asked him, "Do you believe in God?" And he just, off the top of his head said, "Eh, No." They pretty much told him to get the hell out after that. He just wanted to watch football.

And when my sister heard that I was going to be and Elk, she said, "But you have to tell them you believe in God." Or god, take your pick. I said, "No problem, sis, I'm a minister." (Or monk, or priest, but not any kind of scientologist). I don't generally discuss my religious beliefs. I think some might assume I'm an atheist or at least agnostic. I've gone to Church a couple of times lately. Not really because I wanted to, but because other people wanted me to or it was the right thing to do and all that. I still identify as Catholic.

But if you really want to know, my religious beliefs can be summed up with, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claust. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished."

I ran down to 7-11 yesterday because I ran out of tomato sauce. Michelle was about to go looking for me, because I took longer than usual. I ran into a couple of Elks and also another Elk's son, whom I had met earlier in the day when I ran into that Elk right before the parade.

I walk around town and know people now.

Sometimes People Forget I'm a Minister

Julie Baker always had something to do. That's the gist of the story I told Buck X as we stood at her grave. Ziegs and Belly and I would be sitting around the apartment, hung over. Belly would be drinking a "Polish Martini", which was basically Budweiser with olives floating in it. Ziegs and I would not be drinking that. But something. "Hey Julie, wanna go to breakfast?" we'd say when she was running around the place. "Nah, I'd love to but I have to..." whatever she was doing. She was always polite enough to pretend she wanted to. Or maybe wanted to for real. But Julie Baker always had something to do.

She drove a truck for Fed Ex. She came out in college and stuck with it. She became a nurse. And you know how nurses get frustrated with doctors? No? Well, sometimes they do. So she became a doctor. She got married and had kids. Then, around 40 years old she caught pneumonia and died.

And if I got any of that wrong, I apologize and will correct it. Because I never knew Julie well, but when I was with her she was a good friend. She was good people, is how we say it, I guess.

When Julie died, I knew the world had lost a good person, and I knew that Buck X had lost a close friend. Buck's wife had just had twins and he couldn't get away. He told me yesterday he felt bad about that. I knew Julie well enough to know that if she Jacob Marley'd Buck, she'd laugh at him and tell him (out of the side of her mouth) not to be an idiot, of course he had to be with his wife and sons. She had a tendency to get it.

Maybe I knew Julie pretty well, but not as well as other people, I guess is what I'm saying. And admired her a lot.

I still tell the story about the time Buck and I drove cross country and visited Ziegs and Julie was there with her then girlfriend. We went to Napa, had a nice picnic. We're driving back, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. One of my cross country mix tapes is playing. Buck and I are up front in the car. Song comes on. Julie says, "Is this Social Distortion playing a cover of Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire'". The easy answer was 'yes'. I answered with, "Are you from Buffalo?" I love that story.

But I was being an idiot in Binghamton when Julie died. Probably too drunk to get to the funeral on time and all. Buck had just become a dad. I told him that we'd get to Buffalo together and go visit her grave. And it took a while, but we did. Turns out Julie is pretty close to where I live now. So Buck and I walked around my neighborhood for about and hour and talked. Then we went to the cemetery. He only had vague directions. I think he was afraid we would not find her grave easily.

Sometimes people forget I'm a minister. I found her grave by dead reackoning, or maybe god or something. We talked about Julie and people we know and life.

I think what bothered me most about Julie's death is that she always had something to do. Like a lot of stuff. Not enough time to do it. And I guess she was right, in the end, to get as much done as she could do, but I really feel like she needed more time. Anyway, you should have known her.

This had to do with the garden for the following reason:

I had these Forget Me Not seeds sitting around. I was unsure what to do with them. I realized at the graveyard that the thing to do was to get a pot, start them on the stoop and bring them out to Julie when they start to bloom. There's a place called "Attic to Basement" down the street that, well, around here thrift stores and antique stores blend into a kind of recycling that I appreciate. So I found the pot there. And planted the seeds today.

Yeah, we all had nicknames back them. I wasn't the super intelligent chimp and I think Julie gave Ziegs her nickname. Julie was the only one without a nickname. I nicked her Julie "Widowmaker" Baker, which was cool at the time, but sucks in retrospect.

Crying on the Inside

I sometimes want to sit outside at night just chanting "Daaaaaaa-rryyyyyllll...Daaaaaaaa-rryyylll" at my Strawberry plant, but I know that even though he puts on a brave face, he would be crying on the inside

"Nuthin'"

I'm gonna have to replant one of the potato plants this weekend. It decided to go out of control and really grow today. I will also have to give it a name. Oh, Yukon gold potatoes. So Yukon Conelius. Done. Once he has his own home, I'll post pictures and begin looking for silver and gold (all the world is made of...).

Now get that song out of your head.

Also, Darryl has two strawberries coming in. They're kinda undercover. Which is good. Don't need no strah'bury poachers poaching my strah'buries. Pictures to come on that, too.

We live next door to Stamps...the bar. They have a community garden that seems to be run by the Methodists or somesuch. There is a charge to get a plot, but the owner and the bartender dating the owner's daughter (like a son in law but without all the legal mumbo jumbo) are gonna let Michelle and I use part of their plot.

There's also some land behind the community garden that is not in use. That they said we can use. So we might look for a pic-i-nic table and I might plant rows of corn. Then I can wish people away to the cornfield and they can knock on my door a minute later and I'll wish them away again...probably by the third time they won't find it funny, but I'm doing it at least 5 times.

Also, there are pictures of me in a tux hanging with my garden. Post and explaination to follow. I have to clean the pictures up and I didn't have the Gimp on my computer!? Lolwut, indeed. (Gnu Image Manipulation Program--check it out). Freakin' Ubuntu. No Emacs. No Gimp. Easy fix, though. Yeah, computer stuff might slip in, here and there.

Accessorize

Michelle and I put up these lights in Amherst, when she lived there. We really liked them. They're solar, so they're almost alive. They don't stay on all night. They stay on as long as they charge. Cloudy day. Short day. Less light. I figured part of the stoop garden would be these lights. From a distance, the whole thing looks silly, but right there in it. It's pretty cool.

Gotta name my Strawberry plant Darryl

I questioned what I would name my strawberry plant, then realized a true stoop gardener can only name him Darryl. Past the Straw man, you can see Angie, my pepper (anderson) plant. Or plants. Turns out you can plant those seeds in a red or yellow or orange pepper and they will grow something fierce. I don't know if they're some sort of GMO Franken Food, but I'm gonna sit back and study their ways.

The only book I read on all this was "The Vegetable Gardener's Container Bible" by Edward C. Smith. All the rest of my knowledge is hearsay and conjecture. There's a lot of hearsay. People told me they don't start planting here in the Buffalo region til after Memorial Day. I have said the hell with that. I don't have any good reason for that, but the hell with it.

This Ed Smith fellow is big on self watering planters. I got a couple. They were like 2 bucks at the dollar store. Which makes no damn sense, but there you go. I also have some hanging planters, cos I'm going for this levels thing. Ed suggests you use hanging containers to keep the plants above the level where animals can get at them. Now I live on main street, so the deer aren't really a problem. Not enough greenery and too many unsavory types for the deer. But I saw a rabbit heading over to the Methodist Church last night.

I don't want to upset the Methodists. No need to start one of those European Style Catholic vs. Protestant things. But they better keep their rabbit to themselves. I'm gonna chalk it up to he was getting to church early on Sunday. Even if it was one of those heathen churches, I suppose it's a good thing, or at least neighborly. There's also a smallish squirrel around here that I've named Maurice. I hear he likes to go into the bar next door. I like to think of him as my pet squirrel, though Michelle is opposed to this. I think she is also opposed to the gangster of love, but cool with space cowboy. Anyway, I'm concerned about Maurice messing with my garden. I think we'll be good though. I'm gonna have to start feeding him.

I'll probably be dead in a week

That's my broccoli. Tried to grow it indoors a bit first. Never did anything. So I just planted a bunch of seeds in the outside planter and it was like...fuck yeah. Literally a month of seed indoors in an egg crate with dirt. Nothing. Tossed a bunch of seeds in a planter outside a week ago and boom.

I probably have to separate it and all at some point. Man, this agriculture shit is complex.

I changed an LSU on a 3635 without having to look at the instructions in under 2 hours the other day but I don't know what to do about this broccoli. It's kind of fun.

Stoop-id

So let's get started. Here is my stoop.

The chair is only there when I'm having a smoke or contemplating...just contemplating, nothing specific. The screwdriver is with the chair when I have vodka and orange juice. Sometimes it's a beer. Eventually it will be a white russian. A real one. I tried to get a white russian in the town of tonawanda on Friday, and I got a black russian with whipped cream. It was good and I did not complain, but it was not correct. You should understand that there is the tot, the cot and the not. Town of/City of/North-- Tonawanda. No one here calls them the tot, the cot and the not, but I do. No one says "stoop" up here. They keep calling soda "pop". This should confuse and anger me, but I'm not an unfrozen cave man. I'm a super intelligent chimp. I will study their ways and find out how to fit in. On that note, this is not a "victory garden" I am growing. My closest friend called it that. But that is wrong. Granted, he knows more about plants and such like than I do. His father is the gardener that I aspire to. Yeah, in the end, if I want to know any damn thing about growing crops, I do know the Man. He's got a doctorate in math and doesn't even grow for food. He grows for sport. I'm not gonna ask him questions yet.

Stoops and Stickball are not even parts of our youth. My youth. They are a thing that was before me and then we had porches and baseball and some part of the back yard you could grow tomatoes in. I got a stoop, though. so I'm going with it. Got a tomato plant.

I call him Yuri. There are some Communists I can admire. Yuri is some sort of Siberian Tomato that produces blackish fruit. I assume he's a tomacco plant. It got a little cold the other day and I said the hell with it. He's a Siberian tomato plant. "is not cold, is like what people in amerika think is cold" I'm pretty sure it gets colder in the CoT than in Siberia. But I might be wrong. Coldest place on earth is outside of Utica. Tonight I'll post a picture of the pimping of the stoop. There are lights, but it's too early. And a proper stoop would be much steeper, without the ramp. Americans with disabilities act. I'm all for it. More grow space. Easier on people who can't climb stairs. I'm all about evolving.

Raise Our Food, Like the Man.

Since I'm bringing this blog out of the cold, I should point out that I'm going to curse a lot. Well, maybe not a lot, but effortlessly. I will brook no lip re: my cursing. I've always wanted to say that. I know fuck all about growing shit. I could keep fish alive, sometimes. My cat was a bit of an asshole, but I liked him. Never had plants. My sister, I think mostly, and maybe some brothers had a garden out back the parent's place. I had little to do with it. Might have eaten some cucumber. Michelle's brother flat out said to me that the family saying was, "Give it to Michelle and it will die." At some point, somehow, this changed when Jen and Chuck gave her Police Constable Danny Butterman.

Who is a peace lily. He did very well and so did the rest of her plants. I bought her Police Constable Doris Thatcher, our only policewomanofficer shortly thereafter. She's an Anthurium, which looks like a peace lily with pink flowers.

Also. I tend to give things names. Like some people name cars or boats. I once named a bass "spike" because it followed me along the shore like a dog would follow a person. This is important because all of my garden plants will have names, and I don't want you to be alarmed. But the point is, I stayed hands off with the indoor plants. I gave them names and sometimes spoke to them sternly. But Michelle watered them, took care of them. It was a very 50's style of parenting. The garden is a different thing. I've decided to step up and be hands on. Only the Germans could have a word for "Finally I have decided to be a strong black male father figure, just like Bill Cosby said, just as Bill Cosby is totally discredited and I am neither black nor a father, and they're plants--fercrissake" I don't actually know the word. I learned some German 20 years ago and that was it. (das ist alles). Yup.

You will find me in the garden if you want to, unless it's pouring down with rain.

Also then, I'm going to talk here about tomato plants and how quickly broccoli can grow, when grown right. Also graveyards and Niagara Falls and glowing lights arranged on your stoop. Maybe not everything has to be said, but I'd like to say some of it. I'd like to say a few things.