Prairie Landing
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
I've been at the beach for many blissful, idle, drunken days! Yes, last week was the annual beach trip to Delaware. We had the greatest house yet - 5 bedrooms, 2 decks, a screened-in porch, and only 1 house away from the beach! We lazed in the sun, played bocce ball, drank, played drinking games, and purchased alcohol. On Thursday when Bee-yatch Chef and Pshaw and I went to the liquor store I overheard a woman say, "I hope that's for the whole weekend!" But her hopes were unfounded, since we were merely purchasing the 4 cases of Yuengling plus hard liquor that represented the majority of our daily sustenance.
Anyway, that's about all I can remember. This picture pretty much says it all.
Next year I'll take notes.
Back at the ranch, I've been discovering the wonders of container gardening. I bought 7 kinds of seeds and about a gross of tomato plants. (I didn't realize there were 16 per container. Oops.) Many people have told me this is idiotic, because it's July and at this point in the season I shouldn't be fucking around with seeds. They may be right, but carrying home a few packets of seeds seemed like a hell of a lot more fun than carrying a bunch of full-grown plants home from Home Depot in addition to the zillions of tomato seedlings. Also cheaper.
I planted 7 kinds of seeds but only 3 kinds of plants came up. It's possible that others came up but I mistook them for laggards and threw them out. (This is what happens when you plant your seeds -- and thin your seedlings -- in the dark.) Most mysteriously, one entire window box was full of hundreds of seedlings that did not resemble anything I planted there. I figured they couldn't be weeds, and just needed some time to get their act together. But they sure as hell are acting like weeds. They're ugly and grow out instead of up. If you let the seedlings take root even a little they get hard to pull out. Also a couple of them found their way into the adjacent window box. But how the hell could one single window box get completely filled with them, unless I planted them? So I just kept on watering them and hoping they would grow up to be something.
Here are some pictures of my mystery seedlings:
Not to be confused with these orderly, predictable marigolds and zinnias:
As you can see, all care of these plants, including photography, takes place in the dark.
So today I'm at the farmer's market and what do I see but a bunch of big, green-and-pink, leggy plants for sale that look an awful lot like my mystery seedlings. The guy told me it was some kind of plant with a long name beginning with P that could be used in a salad or stir-fry. He said it's just about the only vegetable that is high in omega-3 fatty acids. I tried a bite and it was kinda lemony, kinda bland and kinda snotty, in the way that okra is snotty. I said, "I have a bunch of seedlings that look like this," and he said, "Oh yeah, they're probably p------. It's a weed, it grows everywhere." So when I got home, I tasted Mystery Seedling and sure enough, it had the same lemony-bland-snotty taste. The only thing I can figure is that maybe one of my seed packets was tainted.
I might use a little of it in a salad - I think it would be tasty in small amounts. But there's something weird about eating a mysterious alien plant that just shows up in your window box.
Anyway, that's about all I can remember. This picture pretty much says it all.
Next year I'll take notes.
Back at the ranch, I've been discovering the wonders of container gardening. I bought 7 kinds of seeds and about a gross of tomato plants. (I didn't realize there were 16 per container. Oops.) Many people have told me this is idiotic, because it's July and at this point in the season I shouldn't be fucking around with seeds. They may be right, but carrying home a few packets of seeds seemed like a hell of a lot more fun than carrying a bunch of full-grown plants home from Home Depot in addition to the zillions of tomato seedlings. Also cheaper.
I planted 7 kinds of seeds but only 3 kinds of plants came up. It's possible that others came up but I mistook them for laggards and threw them out. (This is what happens when you plant your seeds -- and thin your seedlings -- in the dark.) Most mysteriously, one entire window box was full of hundreds of seedlings that did not resemble anything I planted there. I figured they couldn't be weeds, and just needed some time to get their act together. But they sure as hell are acting like weeds. They're ugly and grow out instead of up. If you let the seedlings take root even a little they get hard to pull out. Also a couple of them found their way into the adjacent window box. But how the hell could one single window box get completely filled with them, unless I planted them? So I just kept on watering them and hoping they would grow up to be something.
Here are some pictures of my mystery seedlings:
Not to be confused with these orderly, predictable marigolds and zinnias:
As you can see, all care of these plants, including photography, takes place in the dark.
So today I'm at the farmer's market and what do I see but a bunch of big, green-and-pink, leggy plants for sale that look an awful lot like my mystery seedlings. The guy told me it was some kind of plant with a long name beginning with P that could be used in a salad or stir-fry. He said it's just about the only vegetable that is high in omega-3 fatty acids. I tried a bite and it was kinda lemony, kinda bland and kinda snotty, in the way that okra is snotty. I said, "I have a bunch of seedlings that look like this," and he said, "Oh yeah, they're probably p------. It's a weed, it grows everywhere." So when I got home, I tasted Mystery Seedling and sure enough, it had the same lemony-bland-snotty taste. The only thing I can figure is that maybe one of my seed packets was tainted.
I might use a little of it in a salad - I think it would be tasty in small amounts. But there's something weird about eating a mysterious alien plant that just shows up in your window box.
