Some of the carrot harvest

November Second

Gathering thoughts, but 

Unlike swiss chard harvest, no 

Frozen memories. 

Freezing Swiss chard from my garden

Garden fare

A lovely bowl of royal burgundy beans harvested from my garden a couple days ago

Mini Memoir

What experiences am I proud of, Facebook?
What a strange question...

I am proud of the Summer I made friends with two fantastic people, and that same Summer I found six four leaf clovers, two of them in one of the fantastic people's back yard.
I am proud of the small patchwork quilt I made in 2009 by myself, and the baby quilt I made for my youngest sister. I raced to hand-finish the edging the night she was born; now she is six, my brown-eyed shadow.
I am proud of the garden I grew four blocks down the street from my house last summer, and I am proud of the garden I am tending in my backyard this year.
I am proud of my experience participating in a scholar class when I was fourteen; I didn't earn any gold stars for their chart, but I worked hard in everything I did and gained a lot of insight into World War II and the life of my heartfelt book-friend, Anne Frank.
I am proud that I built my own longboard with the help of my good friend, and I am proud that I learned how to ride it in spite of my awkwardness and timidity.
I am proud that I went to the DLD alone to get my Learners Permit, and that I studied so hard with tools I found on the internet in order to barely pass the test; but pass the test I did.
I am proud of my experience growing up the eldest of two, then four, then nine children.

I've never won any medals or awards, I've never accomplished anything stunningly grand, I've never had a grueling job in a competitive workplace, I haven't attended an high-ranking private high school or traveled to another country; but what I'm saying is; I have my little experiences that mean a lot to me, and I don't intend to play them down next to what I imagine to be societies values and milestones.
I am quite content to live a small life, and I am equally content to pursue the things I consider big and worthwhile to me.
Thanks for the question, Facebook, and though at first I started out critical of your inquiry, I enjoyed thoughtfully writing out what I am proud of. 

Garden the 28th of July

A bowl of harvested butter crunch lettuce.

My garden beds to the South, including Swiss Chard, Collard Greens and Green beans, Endive, and my lettuce row and horseshoe bed with mixed lettuce, a couple 

Royal Burgundy Bush Beans

Bachelor's button in my horseshoe bed

Edamame plants. Maybe this year we'll actually get to harvest something off these! (Last year the stupid pet rabbits got out and pretty much chewed them all to the ground.)

Close-up of the Buttercrunch lettuce that sprang up in my carrot beds.

My two smaller carrot beds.

My big carrot bed.

A close-up of the Edamame plants, they're so tender and green looking, I almost understand why the rabbits love them so much.

My mom pulled up all of the arugula, as it was blossoming and preparing to go to seed. There were some cabbage plants scattered along the rows, and left the odd collard green plant here and there. I later planted green beans in the bare spots. 

Garden

All of these were actually from a few weeks ago, unfortunately. 

Peppers and cucumbers.

Burgundy bush beans rows.

Beets

I think this picture is of my Swiss chard, not sure though. 

My lovely little horseshoe lettuce patch.

Close up of my lettuce when it was all cute and not too crowded like it is now.

Who needs Wwoof when you can just work for the people in your community?

I've totally accidentally done my own version of WWOOF this year, except I'm the one getting paid :]
What with my dumb garden, all of the work I did over the Summer, and the work I'm doing this fall, I'm getting a couple seasons of the equivalent of signing up for WWOOF, I think.
Today I learned how to track and catch gophers, and I'm learning a lot about yard and garden winterization.

I'm still thinking I could just apprentice to people in my town instead of going to college, but that doesn't really solve my problem of not knowing anyone my age :/ Oy... 

The garden right before a cold snap (or the onset of Winter, we really can't be sure just yet)

Broccoli and lettuce. I'm not entirely sure it's a great idea to grow lettuce into late summer and early fall, it's just not really something you feel like eating at this time of year. 

My one actual tomato cage. It slowly fell over through the summer as the ground was too hard so the sticks weren't lodged in the ground well enough. 

Some green beans. Last time I checked, when I took this photo, they looked great, no frost bite or anything. However, that was yesterday, and it's been much, much colder since then. 

A couple tomatoes, my swisschard rows, some more green beans, and at the end, the cucumber plants. The Armenian at the end is dead, but the other one's hanging on. They were all a bit frost bitten yesterday, so I'm not optimistic. 

So there you go, a fall garden update. 

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.

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

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

Cucumber time :}

A sweet and an Armenian, which, actually, is a melon. 

An Adventure In Pickling, step one ( or something of the sort)

My third cucumber :) And I took photos finally! 

It's a pickling cucumber, my first from any plant other than the sweet one. 

It's big, just slightly overgrown, because I haven't noticed it until just this evening. 

All sliced up in a jar.

I'm using water kiefer, which will make a little sweet, like bread and butter pickles.

So yeah, I'm excited, can you tell? 

Silly thing to post about, probably, but it has to do with my garden experiment.