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NICK:  Nick, the upper garden was laid out nicely (by me) with bush cucumbers in the distance, Hatch Medium Chiles to the right, Hatch Mild Chiles center and Oaxacan Chiles to the left. NORA:  Mr. Bitterman was responsible for planting Nora, the lower garden and did a fine job with cucumbers in the distance, garlic next in line, followed by acorn squash and tomato plants. He planted six, even though the plan was only for five. They're looking a bit scraggly at the moment, but we both agreed it was due to transplant shock. ASTA:  Asta was planted by Furious George and I had to wonder if he had been drinking before he planted. Asta was only supposed to hold 3 pumpkin plants, but George discovered he still had three plants left when he was done with the pumpkins, so he put those in as well. "What were those," I asked. I have no fucking idea," said my small and hairy assistant. So, like the great Zucchini debacle of a few years back, I guess we'll wait and see what we get. This should be interesting. (Transplant shock again, even though they look like George drove over them with a Kubota Tractor.) FURIOUS GEORGE FAKING A LOOK OF SHAME:  FURIOUS GEORGE REACTING WHEN I TELL HIM HE SHOULD BE ASHAMED:   Mr. Bitterman begins his summer long journey of worry -- as he ponders temperatures, water, hail patterns, insects and the goddamned bunny who was sleeping in Asta this afternoon with the freshly planted pumpkins and mystery veg. The rabbit hardly seemed bothered by the Liquid Fence. (Which, oddly enough, Furious George uses as cologne.)  This summer's gardening hat -- and main gardening accessory.
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 First planting, 2019 -- Basil on the Back Porch. The big one is a plant I bought at Home Deport, surrounding it are four scrawny seedlings given to Becky by some one at school. They were just going to throw them out, but I want to bring them back to life. I'm just like that. One of them is so scrawny you can barely see him in the barrel. She'll get all my attention this season, as I'm determined to see her flourish. On to the big gardens tomorrow! Huzzah!  The frost warnings have finally gone for the week (Until, of course, all the little weather gurus suddenly discover one late this week that they missed. That missage won't prevent them from saying "As I predicted … Little bastards.) So, Monday, I begin to plant. Everything this year will be grown from seed (including little purple potatoes), except the Sweet 100 tomatoes and Sweet Potatoes -- if we can find them at Wally World. This year, it will be tomatoes and acorn squash, cucumbers and cucumber bushes, Oaxacan chiles and Hatch Chiles, Christmas Lima beans, sunflowers and garlic, basil, lavender and a ton of wildflowers in the butterfly garden. Bunny protection will be provided by Liquid Fence (a noxious smelling concoction available at Home Depot -- don't get it on you, you'll be a social pariah for days) and a homebrew of water, dish soap and castor oil (don't taste it -- you'll be in the bathroom for days.) I've also got some fencing that will go up and around the sunflowers until they've matured. Bunnies seem to love the shoots. As for the notion that I'm turning into Mr. Natural, one of my longtime heroes, truth be told, I am beginning to resemble the fellow -- him and Wimpy, Popeye's hamburger loving friend. I see one or the other in the mirror each morning, it all depends on how I slept.  And, more and more I think he's right ... TO THE GARDEN!!! From where I sat at the kitchen table, staring over trays of rapidly growing seedlings, it appeared that I had already done some planting in Nick and Nora, the two upper gardens. Upon closer inspection, however, it seemed that the rains of the weekend and sunshine following had only induced the weeds to grow.  While I do hate weeding … wait, hate is too strong a word here, they're just trying to survive like anything else in life … let's use despise … as much as I despise weeding, it does serve a purpose: I not only get the rabble out of the way, but a lot of roots and root systems and general detritus left over from last season's crop. I also dig up some of the soil and tamp down other areas while moving my fat ass across the garden.  (I also bought some fancy Dan trellis' to give the beans something to climb this year ... once again, it appears I am in search of the $400 tomato. You'd think I've actually got a job.) I will say that I am forever impressed by the power of weeds. Not only do they continue to pop up, no matter what chemicals (and future lawsuits) I may apply, but they handle the cold remarkably well. 37? No problem. 26? I'll be here tomorrow. 19? Get me a coat and I'm good to go. Nothing seems to get in the way of the little bastards.  The trays of seedlings have been taking over the kitchen table for the last few weeks ... months ... and so it came time to move everything outside to hardy them up. I'm sick of eating off paper plates on the floor. (And whose fault is that Little Mister?)   Everything has put on considerable heft since you last saw it and the two big trays, with tomatoes, sunflowers, pumpkins, cucumbers, bush cucumbers and acorn squash have been doing very well. Now, I hope they can hardy up in the greenhouse.  The Hatch and Oaxacan chiles are on the lower shelf, closest to the heat source (a 40-watt Halogen incandescent) as they are the smallest seedlings. Everything else has grown to the point where they are threatening to eat passing insects.  Shaky Photo for Mr.Bitterman's Garden by: Furious George I'm really interested in how the greenhouse will work out, especially given the drop to the mid 30s next week. I know the weeds will make it, but will the vegetables?  The boys are on their final break before the season really kicks into gear. Here they are at the Sons of the Desert convention in Anaheim on Tuesday. They're staying with Mr. Bitterman's mother, the delightful Amanda Bitterman, in her apartment across the street from the convention center. Bitterman says it's cheap and convenient: he can crawl home from the nightly meetings as long as he misses the end-of-the-night traffic from Disneyland on W. Katella Avenue. If he doesn't time it right, he could be filling a pothole on Katella by the end of the week. (BTW -- after two drinks, they resemble Laurel and Hardy. After six, they resemble all four of the Marx Brothers.)  Meanwhile, the AeroGarden has decided that, it being spring, it would suddenly and quickly grow to enormous proportions. Now, while the other seedlings could be threatening insects, this thing is proving to be a danger to both general aviation and unwary children. I could have sworn we had another dog a while ago. We're still a solid month away from being able to plant, but that hasn't stopped the seedlings from making themselves known on the kitchen table. Much more growth from the pumpkins and I'll be eating dinner on the floor with the dogs. Much more growth from the bush cucumbers and Becky will be joining me … scratch that … I was just informed that the bush cucumbers will be joining me on the floor.  All the Hatch chiles, both mild and medium have made an appearance from seed. The Oaxacan peppers, grown from seeds that went through a dehydrator have yet to make an appearance, though they only went in last week and chiles can take up to 21 days to show themselves.  Seeing as how I don't know how long we'll be able to stay on the kitchen table without causing an international incident, sort of our own version of the Theresa May/Brexit snafu, I've built a green house on the back porch.  The problem facing it is that while the days are going up into the sixties and seventies (great time for music, dude), some nights we've been hitting the low 20's, and I'm pretty such the tender sprouts couldn't take it.  With that in mind, I hung a worklight in the lowest section of the greenhouse and put a 25-watt incandescent into it. We've been able to keep the temps anywhere from 5-15 degrees warmer than the outside air for the last few nights. I might go to a 40-watt bulb because the sprouts might not be able to take the high 30's. A 40-watt halogen should keep them nice and toasty. It's inefficient as all hell, but I'm sorry, I'm just not going to eat on the floor with the doggies. I left that phase behind me in Junior High. (When did Junior High become Middle School? It's like my grandfather said about prohibition: "They put it over on the American people while our boys were 'Over There.'" I certainly didn't get the memo. )  To keep track of the temp inside the greenhouse, I've put a remote temperature sensor on the top shelf. I can read both the outside temperature and in-the-greenhouse temperature from the kitchen table. Sounds like a song ... "Inside the greenhouse ... where they're growin tall ... inside the greenhouse ... we'll be havin a ball ... Inside the greenhouse. Greenhouse!" Never mind.  Meanwhile, inside my head ... 
 Meanwhile, we're still looking for a new garden hat. This one won't make the cut because my ears are still exposed.  I do like this one. I just hope the dog comes with the hat.  I'm also in the hunt for new water features. I'm still wondering whether to go with the basic ...  Or something a bit more upscale. It's always a difficult decision come planting season.  By the way, Benedict says "hey." He dropped by to make a pitch for rutabagas this season. Wouldn't you know it, he's crazy for the little devils. Angels. Devils. Angels. Back to the greenhouse ... "You Should Not Drink Und Plant" -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Raw Deal" (1986) When we last left the Gardens of Moody, this was the situation: Nick, the upper garden, needed work on both ends as the dirt was pushing the railroad ties outward; Nora, the lower garden, was fine; and, Asta, the new small garden, had been basically framed and needed to be finished and filled.  Initially, I had put in just enough bags to hold the weed fabric down while we went through THE MOTHER OF ALL WINTER STORMS, A BOMBOGENESIS, FOR GOD'S SAKE! HUG YOUR CHILDREN AND TELL THEM GOODBYE! It was cold and snowy and windy and nasty for a few hours on Wednesday (March 13), but was already starting to melt by the afternoon of the 14th.  So, with MOST of the snow finally gone, I trooped out and hauled 15 2-cubic foot bags of garden soil into the frame, then, finished the framing with L-braces and screws. (To be honest with you, every three or four bags I moved, I stopped, took a break and had a tot of rum with George and Mr. Bitterman. By the time the last bag was inside the frame, we really didn't care where they fell or how they looked. Whatever thoughtful plan we had devised early on fell by the wayside as the merriment increased.)  After a number of tots of a 1952 rum, we got out a knife and started slicing open the bags to spread the goodness. It went well until George determined he needed a "squirrel skin hat" just like his hero, Davy Crewcut. That caused about a half hour delay as we had to keep George from making a hat out of the neighbor's King Charles Spaniel.  One of the hopes this year was being able to retrieve viable seeds from these dried Oaxacan peppers. If everything germinates we should have a great batch of both Hatch and Oaxacan peppers. The problem with the Oaxacan seeds is that the peppers themselves were run through a commercial dehydrator and no one is quite sure if those seeds survived.  Convinced that "Life Will Find a Way," I dug out seeds from both Oaxacan types, misted a sheet of paper towel and put them in plastic bags. This may jump start a few of the seeds if any survived the dehydrator. As a back up plan, I have four packs of seeds coming from one of my numerous seed suppliers.  I just have to wonder if I've simply found another way to waste VAST amounts of time in my life.  The seedlings are starting to grow and we've got no place to eat dinner. Indoors, we have all sorts of seedlings taking over the kitchen table: nearest the camera are the tomatoes. One Hatch chile has popped (a Medium -- there's also a row of Mild planted), while we also have sunflowers, cucumbers and pumpkins coming along very well. (One of the Hatch Mild chile seeds had germinated and worked its way to the top of the seedling chute. I re-dug the hole and dropped it back in to work its full magic.)  Oddly enough, given my oddly enough life, this has never happened before: after moving all the dirt and setting the railroad ties and slicing open the dirt and spreading it through the new garden, I realized that I had put my gloves on wrong, pushing my middle finger into the same socket as my index. I didn't notice it for about two hours, which shows you the amazing focus YOU TOO can have if you drink A LOT in your 20s-30s and bang your head innumerable times on solid objects (concrete beams, hatchways, 2x4s, cupboard doors, asphalt highways, ad infinitum, ad nauseum) as you travel around the sun.
 Becky and Roscoe want nothing to do with us if we continue in our practice of "Drunken Gardening."  By the way, got new overalls this week …  Truth be told, they look better on Buddy Lee.
As is normal for Colorado, we had a few days of beautiful weather this week that led into SnowMaGeddon, the Bombogenesis, Bomb Cyclone, whatever you want to call it. Snow fell. Wind blew. Reporters got great live shots. Airport closed along with schools. Suffice to say, it got dangerous out there. And then … it all went away. Colorado. 33 years and I still don't get it. BUT -- BEFORE THAT: Monday --  Got the 1/2 railroad ties delivered along with 20 bags of 2 cubic foot Garden Soil. Anchored those together in a way I think will hold better than my original design. At least, I hope so. Laid the fabric and tossed in some bags of soil to hold everything down in the storm.  The new garden also has a birdhouse embedded in a dead stump I was too lazy to dig out. We're going to add 2-3 more birdhouses around the yard/house just to add some color to our lives. Don't necessarily want to put them too close to the gardens because in the past the little birdie bastards have gorged themselves on the tomatoes.  Said bird house. It's built into the stump that Fred and Ethel built their nest in last year before being driven off by dogs and squirrels, so we do have some birdie history there.  This was Thursday AM, 24 hours after the Bombogenesis began. Now, it's about 35 degrees and sunny. The ice is melting, the roads are drying and people are poking their heads outdoors like the Munchkins seeing Dorothy for the first time and taking tentative steps into their yards. As soon as the snow is gone from the scene, Mr. Bitterman and I will spread the new soil around, determine how much more we need and start plotting where the seedlings will wind up. Furious George will join us as soon as he returns from The Never Ending Cocktail Hour with the Bat Shit Crazy Neighbors.  The new garden will be named Asta, after the dog in The Thin Man movies. It goes along nicely with Nick and Nora, even though Nora, in this case, is named after my friend and longtime Cribbage Nemesis Nora Horan, who was also quite the gardener. (Truth be told, I can easily see Nora Horan talking back to Bill Powell and slugging down a martini as the two chase down criminals.) Asta, whose real name was Skippy, also played George, stealer of the Inter Costal Clavicle in Bringing Up Baby. He also had a number of other roles in movies. After a while, the dog's name was simply changed to Asta. Asta retired in 1941. I'm not sure what happened after that, or where he's buried, but his owners, actress Gale Henry and MGM prop man Henry East kept raising and training dogs for a number of years afterwards. Happily, Asta didn't suffer the fate of Toto (Terry) the Cairn Terrier of The Wizard of Oz, trained by Carl Spitz, who had a long and successful career, passed to the great beyond, was buried on Spitz's property in Studio City, then had a stretch of the Ventura Freeway built over her grave. Ah, progress.
I'm thinking that Asta, which is only half the size of the other gardens, will be given over to both Oaxacan and Hatch chiles, all grown from seed. The Oaxacan seeds have been a pain to get, but they are now on their way, passing imaginary money from my bank account on its way to the sellers. Mr. Bitterman loves the idea, while Furious George thinks we should plant Vienna Sausages and Martini Olives.  Furious Dovetonsils When Furious comes home from drinking with the neighbors, he's no damned good for the rest of the day. I had just sent off $400 that I didn't have to cover a Home Depot bill from last month. In honor of that momentous occasion, I returned to my local HD and spent $500 on stuff for this season's garden efforts.  This is the inexpensive part of it all. I also ordered, for delivery, 8 4x6x8 redwood railroad ties with which I'll build the new garden (Another new one? Merciful heavens, why? You'll never be able to sell that place!) Plus -- 20 bags of 2cf Miracle Gro Garden soil for the base of the new one. I'll fill it out with top soil from Santa Fe Sand and Gravel and bags of Cow and Compost from O'Tooles. This sort of thing does tend to get expensive.  The new garden will be half the size of Nick and Nora. They're 16x7.5x1. Asta -- the new garden's name -- will be 8x7.5x1. All the numbers are approximate because while I was supposed to be learning basic math, I was reading back issues of "The Haunted Tank." I figured because I was going to wind up as a "tub man" at Michigan Brand Small Curd Creamed Cottage Cheese (the only job my mother was convinced I'd ever be able to pull off), I'd never really need to know how to measure the circumference of my backyard or the volume of dirt necessary to fill a new garden. (The current administration points to me as an example of the "kind of people" who have populated The Mainstream Media for the past 40 years.) "He coulda been a 'tub man.' Sad." The lower corner of Asta will go around that stump -- which will later hold a high post for a bird house or garden gee-gaw of some sort.  (Above) Man, I wish I still had that issue! (Below) You know, Michigan Dairy woulda been a righteous and rollicking career! (But, then, I never woulda met Kathy Walsh at CBS4 -- unless, of course, I wound up in the hospital with some odd disease, like Creamery Nose, and she came over all the way from Colorado to do a story.)  That's the layout of the gardens below, drawn by Furious George, along with the path of the hoses for the water features. Because the small one is Asta, and Asta is a dog, I thought I might add a toy fire hydrant into it, though the effort to keep Roscoe and Sadie, as well as Furious George and Mr. Bitterman from using it on a regular basis, might be outrageously time consuming. At the moment, Asta will be given over to beans and peppers, from Hatch Chiles and Anaheims to Poblanos and whatever Oaxacan varieties that we can find. Nick will have the pumpkins, squash and cucumbers, while Nora will have tomatoes and Lord knows what else. (Mr. Bitterman says he has some ideas, but they usually run along the lines of banana trees and rutabagas.)  Also purchased today, a self watering incubator from Burpee that should start everybody off on the right foot. All 72 of the little devils. What kind of little devils, I'm not sure as Becky put the seed packets in one of her famous and patented "safe places."  As for the boys, they've spent the winter in the basement, catching up on all their favorites, from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" to "Game of Thrones," "Killing Eve" and Bitterman's Favorite, "Sister Toluca Explains Hormones." (Furious George's favorite show appears to be something he calls "The Yelling Guys" on Fox. It's fine as long as he doesn't start to throw his poo at the screen.)
Okay, so I lied. I've been doing it all my life, so you shouldn't be surprised. And you aren't if you know me at all. My mother didn't call them "lies," she called them Greg's stories. The problem for her, was, the stories I told on her and her sisters were true, if embarrassing, while the ones I told about an old pump out in the field that sent messages to a local Native American tribe were created simply to entertain my cousins, who would tend to buy just about anything if you added enough cheese. That said, I gained quite a reputation around the family, if not the neighborhood, township, village, county and state, to the point where I wasn't called for jury duty until I was 53.  I did identify with Pinocchio. I think, still, the best one I told was in the confessional one Sunday morning. Two things got me into this mess: 1) I didn't have any good sins for the week, and, 2) I had seen Perry Mason the night before which featured a very dramatic courtroom confession. Though the details are hazy, My confession had something to do with killing somebody and tossing his body off the train just outside of Shanghai. Lord, you woulda thought I had killed the Pope's dog! The next thing I knew, I was being held by the collar, bouncing up and down like, well, a marionette, listening to an ancient priest scream "blasphemer!" while my mother wailed in the congregation. My sisters shrank away, my brother burst out laughing (getting a slap to the back of the head for what I thought, anyway, was the proper response) and my Dad snuck out the side aisle for a cigarette. Anyway. Back to the subject at hand. I lied to you, my faithful readers. Last week, or some short time ago, I wrote about the last harvest for Mr. Bitterman's Garden, circa 2018, I showed a few tomatoes and peppers and said, that was it. I lied. I wasn't the last, very last, harvest. What I had forgotten about were the Sweet Potatoes. Protected from the freeze, aided by the snow, the little devils just kept chugging along until we plucked them yesterday during a yard clean up. They were meant to be a side dish for dinner, but became the main course when the filet mignon I had bought to grill smelled like a cross between liver and ammonia. Two bites in on the steak and I was done, finishing up with sweet potatoes, salad and grapes. And the sweet potatoes were perfect. From our own little garden and perfect.  They may look like baby mice, but I can assure you they are Sweet Potatoes. Up next is the ritual "Cleaning of the Garden," followed by the "Tilling of the Soil" and the "Placing of Winter Fertilizer" buried under 4-6 bags of Cow and Compost, provided by my year old cow, Eloise.  Eloise.  She even bags it up for me! You can't beat that! Furious George Flings His All Over the Place!
Meanwhile, I'm also in search of a new gardening hat for next season. Both of the above are in the running, but I'm leaning toward the porkpie hat, as it comes with vodka and less chance of being struck by lightning for impersonating Il Papa, Bouncing down the aisle of a church like a marionette was enough for an entire lifetime. I can forgo being blasted to atoms over a hat.  Although a Civil War kepi is always a possibility. I have to admit, this has been one heck of a year for the garden. Solid early growth, late fruit from the tomatoes, a place we discovered where pumpkins will actually grow (taking over 2-3 acres of prime real estate) and a first crop of sunflowers that grew beautifully and then disappeared in a heartbeat. I have to ask, do they do that? Is that how they work, quick to grow, bloom and wilt? The fields of flowers I saw in Europe last summer were amazing -- full, strong and seemingly long lasting -- what's the deal with mine? Well, I do have all winter. Mayhaps I should read up on them and discover all the things I'm doing wrong. I'll see what Katherine White has to say about them … (Oooo. Thinking of her, it's almost time to get on the waiting list for next year's seed catalogs!)  Last Saturday, all the little weather people, in agreement for a moment, predicted a hard, hard freeze on Saturday night, along with a pile of snow, our first of the season. With that in mind, I went out and plucked the last viable tomato and the last peppers, Poblano, Jalapeno and Lunchbox. The Jalapenos have been vicious this year, turning my hair bright red for an afternoon. The Lunchbox variety are delightful.  This is what greeted us on Sunday morning. A sudden blast of winter cold, with a blanket of snow just to help everything along to that great greenhouse in the sky. I swear we got down to 13 on Sunday night, but the little weather folks say it was 17. Their instruments said it was 17, while my instrument said it was 13. I believe mine before I believe theirs.  The sweet potatoes appear to have survived the cold without cover. Though they, along with everything else, could still surprise me by dying off. The one thing that hasn't died off is the mint, in a pot next to the house. It appears that you can't kill mint, no matter how hard you try and no matter how many dogs pee on it during the season. I've had parsley and oregano that fainted dead away if a dog even looked in their direction, but mint, no, mint will survive the coming apocalypse, right along with the cockroaches. At least the roaches will have fresh breath.  Furious George is actually thinking of sticking around during the winter. He seems to appreciate that in subzero weather his poo hardens to the point that he can fling it farther and with greater result than when it's "Fresh From the Florida Sunshine Tree." Besides, he has grown quite comfy in the basement bedroom now that we've taken care of the radon problem. He also loves watching "Game of Thrones" on the basement big screen and heading next door to the Bat Shit Crazy Neighbor's House for martini's and Fox News. Although he does come back screaming, "It's Nancy Pelosi! Run for Your Lives!" How she can be any worse than Paul "My Kid Needs Braces, Lady, Give Me Your Social Security" Ryan and Mitch "Tooter Turtle" McConnell is beyond me.
As for me, it's time to pull the plants, fertilize the soil, clean the garden mess that is our garage and find a new sun hat for next year. I don't know about the one I used this year. It was cool, it was hip, whenever I wore it I enunciated quite clearly and distinctly -- but I was just never sure.  And so, the search goes on …. |
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