I DID.

As it clearly has been quite a few months since I last updated this blog, I thought I'd better make a note that I DID, in fact, create a fantastic vegetable garden.  I do have pictures and other posts that I created and never posted.  Somehow the season just flew by and now I have more food than I know what to do with.  Also, I will never use the term "bumper crop", since it is the stupidest phrase I have encountered in my garden research.  However, I do have a plethora of cucumbers, an endless supply of beets and carrots, a wheelbarrow full of zucchini and squash, a great deal of beans, a nice looking onion patch, a decent potato crop, and a bunch of other things.  The worst producers in el jardin have been the tomatoes and peppers - perhaps caused by bad soil and a week of torrential rains early on.  Also, one lonely ripe musk melon as of yet.  Surprisingly, we will have a small corn crop. 
We also have an annoying group of garden pests - rabbits, deer and chickens.  My roosters think that I grew tomatoes for them.  They will be laughing all the way to the damn freezer, those greedy bastards.  So will the hens if they don't start laying eggs soon.  I do and do and do for you, and this is the thanks I get?!

At this point, I wish that I had a garden buddy, or pal, if you will.  Someone to enjoy the harvest and processing with.  Boiling and preserving pound after pound of beets and beans, shredding zucchini and making bread, attempting to make pickles - these are things that I have found annoying, rather than fun, since I kind of want to share the load with someone.  Its like that story from way back when, "who will help me grow the wheat, who will help me harvest the wheat, who will help me make the bread, who will help me eat the bread...."  Everyone eats but no one helps along the way.  Or, in my household, who will help me waste the bread? Ooh ooh me! me!  Hands flying up all over the place!  I prepare this delicious culinary feast and then throw it away because someone left it out on the kitchen counter until it was moldy/spoiled/rotten.

Hey, thanks for your "help"! The raccoons nosing through the trash will die for that homemade parmesan onion bread and hand shaved coleslaw!  Awesome use of my energy and time! 

I guess the enjoyment is in the process, not the result.  Unless you consider the other result of this summer's garden - an enviable tan and much improved muscle tone, which is very much enjoyed by yours truly!  I think this is the first time in my 30 years that I've ever had the slightest hint of a muscle.  Look out female gladiators!! -------- I still don't want to get in your way, actually.  Also, your muscles are creepy and kind of gross.

In all seriousness, gardening is sort of like accounting (my other passion).....some people love it, and everyone else in the world thinks you are certifiably insane. These things are more similar than you would think.  Accounting also produces great rewards that no one else appreciates.   Accounting also is a task that you can painstakingly labor over for hours, and it appears that nothing got accomplished.  You can create a beautiful harvest (budget/cash flow analysis), and it will get left out on the counter to rot (budget completely ignored and blown/stupid spending/billing decisions).  I still really like both of these things.  Accounting will pay my bills.  Gardening is great mental therapy.  Gardening produces way better tan. 

"I CAN." (The Bee Philosophy)

  I hope I get stung by only one bee this summer. If this happens, that means that I stuck to the bee philosophy, courtesy of Jack Handy. He's a genius friends, and a champion of doing. He says:

"Whenever anyone says “I can’t,” it makes me wish he’d get stung to death by about ten thousand bees. When he says “I’ll try,” five thousand bees. (“I can,” one bee.)"

  Hence, I only expect one bee sting for the rest of my life...unless I get stung once each time I say "I can!" In that case, at least its not all at once. Anyway, I started out a few weeks ago saying, "I'll try." Here was the result:

Two days (yes, I'm a weakling) of shoveling and raking fresh ground to arrive at this sad little patch of dirt. It has pea seeds in it, but they probably said "I can't." Or more likely, "Oh, hell no!" I don't expect much of them. So I moved onwards and upwards to this:

Boom. Done. I'm going to try. Damn. What I meant to say was, I can. This also has pea seeds started, and radishes too. I hope they have a better attitude about growing here.

"I wants ta do it again!!"

Once upon a time, Janet Reno had a dance party and she liked it so much, she wanted to do it again! Okay, so that was Will Ferrell on SNL, but the reference works for me. I'm feeling the same spirit with my new garden spot. I've got a new attitude, a new plot, a renewed desire to have a dance party - and by dance party, I'm talking about "getting down" IN THE DIRT, ya'all. But I (probably) won't be wearing that fabulous blue suit with the shoulder pads. I haven't been able to garden for three years, since I had moved to a small apartment with absolutely no sunlight in the back yard...but now...I've got a new place with a great spread of sunny space to fill. I've got the fresh plot tilled and now face the enormous task of raking it and sowing these seeds. A whole day spent and only a tiny little piece is accomplished thanks to my complete lack of physical activity all winter long. My raking muscles need improvement. Come to think of it, so do my dancing skills. Where the hell is Janet Reno when you need her?! Furthermore, I've had a lot of nay-sayers surrounding the size of my ambition here (my plot is about 45' x 90') and I want it to get even bigger. Everyone is saying things like, "How will you handle that?" "Don't you know how much work that is?!" "I'll believe it when I see it" etc. And to that, I will reprise some of Janet's thoughts to you: "What's that, fist? He talks too much? Then I think it's time for operation shutty uppy." **If you haven't seen Janet Reno's Dance Party, you should, fool.**