Gardening Journal: about plants (mostly just for my future reference)

 What I planted in my silly garden this year:
Six rows Green Beans; purple and bush
Four Cucumber plants; one pickling, one sweet, and two armenians
Three beds Turnips
Five rows Beets
One row Cauliflower
One bed Dill
Three rows Bok CHoi
Two rows Bloomsdale Spinach 
Four rows Broccoli
One row Cilantro

Three rows Swiss chard

Two rows Mixed Lettuce, plus one at the end of the garden path
Nine Tomato plants, assorted
Row of Arugula and Collard Greens

What did I learn about each vegetable and the way I planted it:
Green beans need way more water than I was able to use this year, they don't do well at all if they are under-watered. They need to be planted closer together than the six inches I aimed for this year, so next time I will err to the side of four.

Cucumber hills with surrounding trench

I've decided that hills and trenches are the best way to plant Cukes, and next time I'll try to plant more plants further apart. My Sweet Cucumber produced the first, and has produced fairly steadily over the Summer, with my Pickling Cucumber in close second. I got but one Armenian Cucumber from one plant, whilst the other plant, the one at the very end of the grouping, has been growing tiny leaves and vines and flowers like crazy to no avail.
I don't like planting Turnips in beds, they're too hard to weed and thin that way. However, my friend said that if you plant them in soft, loose soil, they'll move over on their own and you can just thin as much as you want to eat at a time.
Beets, my friend, do not enjoy shade, though they enjoyed it a bit more than my poor turnips did. Also, you can never plant too many. That was what I was trying to do, plant too many as we have chickens who would happily eat any my family couldn't.
My Cauliflowers were pretty weird this year, only three came up and they're still no more than six inches high, nowhere near the size they need to be in order to come to a head. I've decided they too do not enjoy shade, and they need more water. I think next time I'll plant them in either trenches or holes.
Dill is a weed. This isn't something I learned from my own garden, however, but something I've learned from the family garden in the back yard. I don't think it's really worth planting, it's more of a weedy-annual, something to let loose in your garden to provide more harvest with less work.
Bok Choi has to be planted really early, as it will shoot up and go to seed really really fast. It was pretty good anyway, though, and I'm not opposed to planting it again.
I planted Bloomsdale Spinach way too late in the season, bad idea. It shot up even faster than the Bok Choi did, so I ended up just pulling it all up before it blew seed all over my borrowed garden plot.
Broccoli is annoying as heck to thin because you can't just yank those poor little plants out of the ground and throw them away, because, you know, you could transplant them. And it'd be a shame to disregard and waste that lovely little talent, and anyway, you could share them with your mom! Except you never do... They fared better than the Cauliflower growth-rate wise, though.
My Cilantro also went to seed amazingly fast. It's definitely something you have to keep an eye on, not really suitable for long-distance gardening. Mum says it's better planted in a pot anyway.
Swiss Chard was one of the things I really wanted to plant, specifically, the rainbow variety. However, I wasn't ever able to get ahold of seed, so I settled for a variety I found at the hardware store. It's done really well, albeit a little parched and wilted over the hottest months, so the rows a a bit stunted in places, but all in all, I really loved how well it did and I'm enjoying harvesting it.
I adore Lettuce, especially the awesome mix my mom gave me. The two rows I planted in the shade did and are doing really well, but in contrast, the lettuce I planted at the very end of my garden matured after an inexorable amount of time, looking absolutely beautiful one day, then shot up the next day I went down to my garden. So today I pulled what was left up, because I was able to harvest most of it. Also, lettuce requires a nice amount of water, but that's a given, leafy greens and all that...
I actually was going to have my sister plant my Tomatoes for me, and she did most of the holes, but she wasn't impressed with the soil, so I ended digging the rest of the wholes and planting the tomatoes. It's been interesting growing them, as I've never really had that responsibility before. I can't say I've done the best job, most of the poor things are flopped over on the ground because I didn't get around to building more cages, and I lost like three of the plants for reasons unbeknownst to me. I knocked one more over with a hose too, but it hadn't broken off completely, so I propped it up and built a mount of dirt around it for support and in the hope that it might grow more roots above the break. It was doing great for the longest time, but a month ago it started dying, drooping over and shriveling up, which it too bad because I was really excited that I might have saved it.






The Arugula and Collard Greens experiment failed, end of story. Maybe I'll tell you more later...



















That's it for everything I managed to plant, hopefully all of this will help me to figure out how to do things better next year. For one thing, I'd really like to integrate more permaculture into my gardening in the future, that was supposed to be part of the point for this Summer's whole experiment.
Things work out the way they do, though, and everything always turns out just right.

LIghtning Storm From Last Week

A Narrative and Subtle Geeking Out About My First Three Tomatoes, Followed By My Second Four

Riding a bike uphill in a smattering of rain, three tomatoes cupped in your left hand.
You brought nothing with you save an iPod, through which you didn't even play any music while you watered your garden. You wish you had heeded that prompting to get your pocket knife as you were going out the side gate earlier, perhaps then you would have remembered to grab some grocery bags, those at least would have been useful. It's kinda hard to steer with one hand. Luckily, you only have a couple blocks to go out of the three and a half between your home and your garden. (Not far, but far enough that the poor thing hardly ever gets weeded.) 
Rhythmically peddling, thinking and observing the road before you, your attention is a smooth stream and in no time at all your house comes into view, and you decide to travel on the bike a few feet farther to enter the yard through the front rather than the side gate.
You turn the corner, and you see the Western sky, an amazing display of piercing light and dark grey clouds, your breath catches, and you decide that everything is worth it, preferable even; the light rain, the slow, uphill bike ride, even the fact that you forgot to bring any bags to carry produce in. It all fits perfectly. 
Funny how that works sometimes. Even the uncomfortable or difficult moments of life blaze with beauty in memory, or even in the present. They stitch life together, defining and brightening every moment of it in one way or another. 
(9/26/13)

Monday's 

 From Today

One way to write down my philosophies and beliefs

There is life to be lived; I am so cautious, though, and I'm looking and searching and hoping and praying and waiting and writing, because there is an answer in my bones, the air, my heart, the music I listen to, the books I read, and you.

This god I am learning, this god is everywhere, this creator is everything and creation itself. This god is me and you and our parents and siblings, this god is Zooey, her friend, and the people in my Ekklesia, this god is relationship and loneliness, the universe, my love, and every atom, as well as the space between atoms, and the spaces between spaces, and the spaces between those spaces.
I am looking within and without and all around for answers, every step I take. All is good and all is strange and all is impossible to put into words, but that is the only thing I can do, put all into words. That is the way for me to learn and communicate and shape. But all is feeling; so staggeringly abstract. So this is my struggle, to give form to the formless, and decide if it is worth it in this world of material goods and science and skepticism, this world in which man's purpose is to make money and he suffers, and he who does not follow this purpose, or he who tries to use the purpose to bring about the things of his heart also suffers.
The weaving, winding voice of contradiction in all things, my love, this is what fuels the ludicrous act of struggle in a web that doesn't actually exist, but we created it, so here it is.

All I can do is search blind and fingerless for myself and hold it out to you, inviting you to take of your own free will, and share whatever you desire with me, but nothing, my child, is required.

Nothing is required. 

Ooniverse

Hello love,
I'm in a weird space today, a weird mood. School all day; too much math, a little reading, a bit of writing, the rain pouring on and off all morning and most of the afternoon. Storms give me such a different, new way of being; introspective and reflective, an eye turned inwards with eyebrow raised.
I love it, I love storms, the rain and darkness and lightning and thunder. I woke early this morning to lightning flashing outside of my window as everyone else slept and murmured in their dreams.

Life is so strange, do you have any idea how strange it is? Living minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, and suddenly whole years have passed by. This strange human invention called "time", that has almost nothing to do with how the world truly works, and yet it fits together perfectly.
I don't think I believe in duality, but I think in contradictions, nothing fits together perfectly, or rather, it all connects in a great big knotty mess.
This world, this society, I've said it too many times: but I don't understand it. It's destroying us, our humanity and souls and relationships with ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth. I gave her my whole heart, but I don't think it helps, it doesn't seem to be helping. I don't know what to do. How to change the world when it feels bent on twisting you, when it's twisting the people around you? How to live when it seems so hard to survive... I don't want the future that is presenting itself to mankind, or rather, the future mankind seems bent on pursuing. They think it is progress. Ha. We took a wrong turn on a wrong path, and yet we're still so smug about our superiority.

That was a ll a strange change of subject I suppose, but the sun is coming out, and the shadows grow longer.

Because this just came up on a movie we've started, I shall end this prattling post with a quote that seems relevant, hopefully:

"The world is his,
who can see through its pretension...
See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it
its mortal blow."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's haul of cucumbers

Six sweet, six pickle, the biggest harvest I've had so far. (That's the only reason I'm bothering to document these.)  

Pickling 

Sweet

The Summer Sky

Sunrise, Moonset

I woke up early this morning, about 6:30 or so, and after a bit of deliberation, I decided to throw a long sleeve shirt on and go outside to watch the sunrise and the moon set. I went out free from devices; my iPod, camera, ect. I considered taking one or the other to photograph what was taking place, but I decided to be solely an observer in the moment this morning.

The sky was mostly cloudless, just a few wispy, dusty-pink ribbons and veils towards the East, approximately where the sun was going to rise. The pink tint grew brighter and led on the deep orange, then yellow as the morning progressed. Yellow faded to gray for a time, the clouds almost blending in with the surrounding sky.
The moon, at my back, sank and dimmed as the sun's light gathered strength and intensity. I believe the two eventually met face to face, looking across from West to East, East to West, but I never actually saw and took note of that exact moment. The clouds were too low upon the mountains to really tell when the sun had fully emerged.
The grey of the clouds eventually gave way to seeping edges of streaky, roiling, waving white, as all things took on greater definition and stronger shadows. It was then that I left my spot on top of a large, particle-board coal box in the Southeastern field to grab a lawn chair and pick a spot on the North side of our home, where I could see the respective rebirth of the sun and impermanent death of the almost-full moon.
Seeping white became full, luminous white, and yellow waves travelled along the clouds directly above the mountains, framed by the treetops up the street.
The moon grew pale and paler, blending in light-gray with the sky as the clouds had during the transition from yellow to white.
Illuminated further by the rising sun, the clouds made imprints on my vision as I sat and watched, the morning cool comfortable through my clothing.

I ended up going inside before the sun had made it's full debut, but the patterns it left on the doorways and walls of our home were a quietly beautiful sight as well, and I checked on its continuous progress through windows for much of that early morning. 

Learning often takes you by surprise

Since I began school this past week, after a long (though not entirely unproductive) Summer break, I've noticed something: this year, I am able to read whole chapters and sections of my school books at one time, during one sitting. This was unheard of for me last year. I read pages, or small sections of chapters. I didn't have the attention span or motivation to read more than two pages of most books, novels being the exception of course.
I imagine this is partially because I am not holding myself to a timescale, or a certain number of subjects to be completed in that time span. School is all day now,  sometimes even during the weekends. I record all I can, and don't worry about it when I can't. This is also what I did all Summer long, and I think this has established a new, healthier, fuller relationship with my personal education.
The point is, I did not actively try to teach myself better study skills of habits, they've sneaked up on me over Summer break. I have this mindset that learning is difficult, practice is tedious, and the study and subsequent mastery of subjects is nigh until impossible. But this is not the case, learning and the integration of skills and knowledge are a natural and almost unconscious process. 

Musings on the facts of life as I can see them presently

This whole growing up thing is really weird. What to do when next year, life will probably not resemble what has been constant over the past eighteen years?
I have no idea where to begin, though I'm planning on taking a driving course with one or two of my other driving-age siblings next month.
Why not this month? The instructor I called doesn't hold a class in August, as most people are finishing up or going on vacations that month.
I've been told that it's crucial to get my GED, so I guess that's my next big step. Everyone says it's easy, but I still harbor small, whispering doubts... I don't have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I guess that's my biggest challenge in becoming a more or less independent adult, the fact that I'm quite self-doubting, at least in the ways of the world.
I'm thinking I can at least get my GED, get a job and save up for the next year after which maybe I can attend college. I don't know, I hate making plans. I've been planning on going to college "next year" since I was fourteen. Baha. Look at me now...

Clouds