evil cat in a burqa

Evil Cat's godfather, Pappy, paid one of his extemporaneous visits to Liberty House yesterday, and spent a good bit of time marvelling at the progress we've made in the garden, and identifying many of the random plants growing here and there. Turns out we have some opium poppies that we've been pulling up as weeds. Since my dream since childhood has been to be an Afghan Warlord, we will stop that practice. Now, where did I put that Kalashnikov. . .

Since Pappy is apparently old hat at this gardening business, I take his marvelling as a huge compliment, especially since Evil Cat and myself didn't put any special amount of forethought into any of this (the carrot patch being a prime example), and sort of picked up the tools and started digging. Now we have a garden.

morning glories, carrots, compost, and morning glories

If this blog was a garden in the back of Liberty House, it would be overrun with morning glories. The kale, spinach, lettuce, peas, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, and strawberries would have long ago succumbed to that evil, creeping vine. It really is the zombie of the plant kingdom. Fortunately, the garden gets plenty of attention, and looks quite nice.


I keep thinning the carrots, and they finally look like carrots, but it'll be a few more weeks before they're ready. Next weekend, I'll plant a few orderly rows so we'll have a second wave of carrots sometime in July.

The back bed was kind of an experiment. I didn't even know it was there until January, when I beat back the blackberries and vines with a machete I borrowed from a monk (true story). Must have been a magic machete, because they've stayed back for the most part; leaving the back bed to the carrots, brussels sprouts, broccoli, potatoes, and onions. But mostly carrots. Evil Cat planted them in nice rows back in March, but the whole bed was choked with roots, and I had to till the whole thing up again, scattering the ungerminated seeds all over the bed. I scattered the rest of the packet where the current carrot patch is, and have been wishing they were in Evil Cat's orderly rows ever since. It's a pain in the ass to thin and weed a jungle of carrot tops.

We've been composting since about January (maybe February), and today I dug out the bottom of the compost bin and scattered it around the tomatoes and strawberries in the raised bed, then tossed some grass clippings over the top for mulch. It wasn't much, but it was dark and black, and full of worms. I tossed the worms )and the undigested vegetable matter) back in the bin, of course, and sorted out a ton of morning glory roots that I'd thought wouldn't survive in the bin. Most of them had sprouted vines and leaves. Just another reason I should listen to Evil Cat more often. She knows evil zombie vines when she sees them.

salad

I already picked a few leaves of lettuce and spinach to put on egg salad sandwiches the other day. Not too long now, and there will be enough to make a salad. Evil Cat's second wave of greens is doing well, and will need some thinning soon. Mmmm...tasty baby spinach.

gardening with class