Month: June 2009

For shame

The old blog-o-thinger has been down for a week while I unhaX0red it. The picture gallery is still not functional (curse you stupid gallery software) but the wordpress is all updated now so I figured it would be ok to put it all back online. Not too much to say other than that. The garden has been suffering in the post-hail, apocalyptic heat weather. One of the hills of acorn squashes is dead. The infected edamame are giving up, the corn isn’t growing. A pretty discouraging year all around but there is a silver lining. Lunch today was pasta and yellow squash with the marinara being made with tomato and basil from the garden and the one yellow squash coming from there as well. It was pretty good too.

Anyway, I’ll get the gallery fixed but the upkeep concerns me. I don’t really need administration as a hobby. I have enough hobbies already.

2009-06-27
Disappointed

Yeah, thanks for the hail. That’s super. What’s that? Vegetable garden? No, don’t worry about that, go on ahead and just put that ice anywhere kthxbai.

2009-06-11
The enemy

This little guy thought he was pretty smart. When the fingers get close he moves around to the far side of the vine he’s sitting on. What he doesn’t handle well is getting flicked against the stem he’s on and having various bits of his insides become his outsides. It reduces mobility, having the insides on the outside. Mobility is important if you want to avoid arrest, photography and being wadded up in the means of your capture and thrown into the garbage. I don’t know if this is a squash bug variant or just some random critter who was in the wrong place at the wrong time but it has paid the price for its lack of vision. The garden is doing as well as can be expected. More cherry tomatoes today including three that were a bit too close to the netting and were savaged by something that should instead be eating the bugs off my cucumbers. Still, the nets seem to be doing their job for now so the computerized sentry guns can wait.

2009-06-09
Mosaic

The reason my soybean plants look so sad is that they have the bean mosaic virus. Many of my soybean plants are losing or have lost their leaves. There’s not much you can do about the virus unfortunately so I may not end up getting to eat any of the soybeans on those plants as they may die before the pods are ready. It looks like the green beans also have the mosaic virus but are more resistant to it so are still growing. In fact several of them started blooming this week. The wrinkly leaves and mottled coloration are the indicator. Gardening hard. I’ve had some tomatoes off the cherry tomato plant and they were good (for tomatoes (not my favorite)). When I got home on Thursday evening the five farthest along had each developed a split down the side so I picked them off, cut out the split part and ate the rest. I had another one yesterday and it looks like four or five more will be ready tomorrow or Tuesday. The squashes are coming along. I have some yellow squash now which is nice. One of those might be ready to eat late next week. The cucumbers have already reached the top of the fence I put up last week. I expect they will try to take over the world some time next month. I also have the silk from two ears of corn on the farthest along corn plants.

edit: On an unrelated note, while 0 is a valid list index it also tends to evaluate to False. :|

2009-06-07