Garden pictures

People asked for pictures, so here are a few pictures. I thought I turned them all right side up, but evidently I missed some... mainly those that the Mugwump decided we should post.
This isn't a great picture. The peach tree is on the right and then you can see a couple of tomato plants left of the peach tree. I put the tomatoes in tomato cages, but the tomatoes won that battle and have now tipped over with the cages around them.
There you can see a couple of little flower bushes that are really nice. Then we have our corn which has provided us with at least 8 ears so far. Behind the corn (I don't know if you can see it) are the sunflowers. I am really good at growing sunflowers. I don't put any effort into it and they grow really big and look great. If you know anyone who likes sunflower seeds, let me know. They don't do much for me.
Another sideways picture... The plants with the big round leaves are Brussels sprouts. You can see the tomato plants behind them and then the weeds/watermelon vines that cover the ground. You can even see one of my prized watermelons on the left (top) of the picture. Oh, you can also see in the background a lettuce plant that has gone to seed. I figure that way we'll be sure to have plenty of lettuce next year.
I like this picture (sideways again) because this is the best weeded section of the garden. You can see the cabbage and basil mingled in amongst the weeds. It may be the 'best weeded', but there are still weeds throughout.
This is looking back into the back yard. We've got some beans (I don't have any idea what kind) growing up that net thing that we built. You can see the squash patch off to the left. It is overtaking parts of the garden, but I'm thinking that if I plan things correctly, I'll be able to plant the squash next to the lettuce or beets so that as the lettuce is finishing for the season, it will be simultaneously overtaken by the squash. There are also some beets, carrots and watermelon in that picture if you can find them. They are really hard to pick out from among the weeds.

I've got another post upcoming that I think will be good, if it turns out. Although the posts that I think seem the best in my head, generally turn out the worst. Oh well.

Oh and this is a picture/PSA from bikesnob that I thought was great. We should all obey!!

As a cyclist who can see easily in car windows, I'm amazed at the number of people I see texting while driving. I see at least 2-3 people per day texting while driving. Not all of those people almost kill me, but I have more close calls with texting or cell phone talking people than I do people who are actually paying attention. Please don't kill me, hang up and drive.

Garden

By popular demand I am going to post about my garden. (Translation: the one person who reads this has requested to know about my garden). My garden is progressing quite well... as are the weeds.

I have some theories about weeds. I want to state from the beginning that I am fairly certain that these theories are wrong, but I use my theories to justify my laziness in not weeding the garden. Please don't destroy my theories because then I'd feel obligated to weed instead of doing whatever else it is that I do.

I don't want to start by writing about my weeds, I'll start with what is going well in the garden. When I grow up and own a farm I am going to grow sunflowers, beets and zucchini. I can grow those foods without problem. They grow great here and if that was all I planted I could have sunflower seeds, beets and zucchini for dinner every day for the entire year. I do not intend to do so.

This year we also have corn that we've been able to eat this year. Actually we have a bunch more that we should go eat. There, I figured out dinner for tonight. We grew a little bit of lettuce, but it was planted too close together and ended up bug infested before it went to seed really quickly and then tasted bad. We didn't get a lot of lettuce out of it. Our spinach didn't grow at all, even though I planted it three times. It may have been bad seeds, I'm not sure. We grew a bunch of basil. What do you do with basil? I know it's a spice and all, but evidently our cooking style isn't fancy enough to use spices regularly. We also had some carrots, except the ground was sort of hard and they didn't pull out real nicely. It took a shovel and chisel and we ended up with matchstick carrots mixed with dirt by the time we were done. We've got a bunch more carrots and I'm looking for dynamite in order to harvest them.

I still have hope for many things. The Brussel sprouts look pretty good, but I don't know how to harvest them. The cabbage looks good, well actually one of the five cabbages look good. We should have about four tons of tomatoes, but we've only had one that was ripe so far; it was stolen by a ranging child. Our potatoes look good, but the tough thing with potatoes is that they're underground so you never see them. Last year the plants looked good, but we didn't get many potatoes. This year the plants look good and we piled dirt up around the greens which is supposed to make more potatoes. We'll see. We've got peppers that look really good, but I'm not positive how to know when they are done. I also don't know what kind of peppers they are. Oh, and we have squash. We don't know what kind, they are mostly volunteers, but they are growing well.

Now for the grand finale. The part that I am the most excited about is watermelon. I have at least 6 big watermelon that are looking great. I'm not positive how to tell if they are ripe, but they look good. We've also got cantaloupe that looks pretty good. I'm excited for all of the melon growing in the garden, but I'm a little concerned. What do you do when you suddenly have 6 ripe watermelon and 8 ripe cantaloupe? How long do they last without refrigeration (I'll look on the internet, I don't expect answers to these questions).

Now for the weeds. we have weeds everywhere. The weeds have totally taken over the strawberries that we had. They are found throughout the corn, melon, Brussel sprouts, carrots, tomatoes, squash and peppers. I'm overwhelmed by them, so I wait for them to look like they are going to 'win' and then I devastate them and give the other plants a chance. My theory is that a little competition is good for the plants. It should make them grow faster and be stronger; adversity makes things stronger. Then when I pull the weeds, I leave them in place (but pull the roots... or break the stem really close to the ground). I feel that the weeds must contain a lot of really healthy stuff for my other plants. I'm sure it's helping everything grow. So as long as I cut down the weeds 'frequently enough', everything should go well. We'll see.

On a completely different note, I found this on youtube the other day and thought it was cool. If I had a couple hundred thousand dollars to spare I would love to do something like this. Actually I wouldn't. I don't think I would give people an SUV under any circumstance. Anyway, I thought it looked like fun and I liked the principle of giving things to unsuspecting people. Maybe I could do the same thing, but instead of giving them a car from my sponsor I could give them a used bike, or a weight loss program to help them lose weight. Somehow I don't think that would go over as well.

Garden

I think I made some mistakes last year in my garden. My wife warned me that if I let all of the squash volunteers go, I would have a mess. But I couldn't pull something that was growing in my garden. Sure that's not where I planted it, but it was growing in my garden. The picture at the right is the result. Does anyone want some squash? We still have some. We need to cook and freeze it pretty soon or it's going to go bad.

This year is going to be better. Instead of boards that you have to walk across to stay out of the garden, I actually dug some trenches and filled them with wood chips to make more permanent walk areas. We also have grass in the front yard instead of black plastic which will make it more attractive.

Monday I planted peas, beans and beets. I don't think the beans are going to survive, but that's OK, we have lots more seeds and not a lot of room to plant them (besides, I don't think my wife likes them). Tuesday I planted carrots, lettuce and spinach (I'm not sure that the spinach will survive). Last night I finished building a couple of experimental cold frames and planted broccoli, peppers, brussel sprouts and egg plant under the cold frames. I love experimenting in the garden.

A lot of people will comment about my garden saying that I need to rototil, or fertilize or use pesticides. They say that I planted things too early or too late. They have never seen a cold frame, but are sure that it wouldn't work. I recognize that there are a lot of people who have far more gardening experience than I do, but I don' think they really know. I really enjoy experimenting. How would we learn new things if we didn't go outside of the box and try them? So I will continue to run the unconventional garden on the street that everyone makes fun of. I am OK with that.

Another huge thing I'm doing this year is planting things in like groups. I'm not big on rows, but I at least bunched my carrots together and my lettuce together, etc. Last year was a free for all, I had a bucket of seeds all mixed together and I sprinkled them wherever. You may be able to tell that from the photo. On the other hand, last year it was kind of fun to find random beets that you didn't realize where there.

Lawn mowers

I mowed the lawn on Friday afternoon. The weather was nice and I could see the lawn, so I gave it a shot. The lawn certainly wasn't long, but there was some logic in mowing my already short lawn. Sure, making the neighbors questions what the goofy family on the corner was doing partly drove my decision, but there was much more to it.

Last year we tried to plant a lawn in the front yard. The old lawn was 90% weeds and it was really ugly. We have some desire to resell the house, so we decided to redo the lawn to make it look better. I know that lawns aren't the most environmentally friendly use of land, but with the desire to resell our home, we did it anyway. But we decided to do it without chemicals. Did I mention that the previous lawn was almost entirely weeds?

So we rototilled the lawn and turned it all over into a big pile of dirt. In that pile of dirt you could see morning glory roots throughout, so I knew that if I planted my lawn in early spring, I would be giving the morning glory and the grass an equal start and the morning glory was sure to devastate the grass seed. So I wanted to figure out a way to kill the morning glory. I decided that morning glory needs light and water to survive and it will die when exposed to excessive heat. So I put a layer of black plastic over the front yard (yes, it looked as bad as it sounds). I figured I would just do this for a couple of weeks, but when it came time to take the plastic off, we were deep into summer on a lawn with a Southern exposure that would not be conducive to starting grass seed. I decided that fall would be better because morning glory is at the end of its growth cycle and I could give the grass a bit of a head start.

Last summer our home was known for the black plastic in the front yard and the sunflowers on the side. I thought for sure nothing could live through the drought and heat under the plastic, but the morning glory was ready to grow as soon as I removed the plastic. I planted seed, but it was quickly evident that it was going to lose out to the morning glory. So we went to the local park that was being torn out and we took some of the free sod from there. It was a late night, but I got a lot of the lawn done in the pitch black and my pregnant wife finished the next morning. As I look at it now, it is obvious that I laid the sod in the dark. By the end of last fall, there was morning glory starting to spring up through the sod.

That is why I mowed the lawn Friday. Morning glory season is still a ways off, but the grass is ready to grow. I have heard that mowing will stimulate growth, so I want to get that grass growing early in the season so that hopefully it will block out the morning glory (I doubt that it will, but I'm trying).

Another reason that I mowed on Friday is because I like my lawn mower. Last year we got a reel mower, and I love using it. Sure it takes longer and you often have to go over the lawn in a couple different directions, but I really enjoy using the new lawn mower. As an additional bonus, I can tell how the new lawn mower works and I can fix most any problem that will arise (except for laziness and lack of time). With our gas powered mower I hated the hassle of getting it started and following the smelly beast around the yard. I therefore mow more often with the new mower and enjoy it far more.

QUIZ: Tomorrow there will be the answer to a special quiz. The question is: What are the 10 biggest businesses in the world? I know that you know how to Google it and find the answers, but how well can you do without Google? (No, Google is not one of the top 10). Check and see tomorrow.

Bigger Faster Stronger

We harvested our squash last week. Keep in mind that we didn't plant squash in our garden, we composted it last year and it decided that it wanted to be part of our garden. We didn't resist the unexpected plants, but next year we will take them out like weeds. Maybe that isn't how I should say it, since we didn't have very good luck with weeds this year either. We will take them out like chestnut trees, we were able to keep out chestnut forest under control.

So the point is, all of my seeds came from one banana squash, a couple pumpkins, a spaghetti squash and a couple of others that we picked up somewhere. The banana squash that we bought last year was huge. I'm sure it was grown with all of the modern pesticides and fertilizers and that is why it was huge. Sure, we got a couple of squash that were pretty big (genetics), but most were moderately sized. At first I was a little disappointed that my squash were smaller (and somehow inferior?) to those available at the farmer's market. I got to thinking about this and it is completely backwards. My squash are smaller because they were grown in competition with weeds that I couldn't keep up with and without fertilizers aiding their growth. My squash grew on compost and water. I know what is in my squash, and it's not artificial chemicals (except for those that the neighbors use and drift our way). I will take my smaller squash over the chemical mammoths at the farmer's market any day.

This is a hard thing for people to deal with. Look at people's choices in houses, cars, fruit, etc. Bigger is considered better. I don't think this is true. Lets take kids for a moment. If you see a plump child (I'm talking preschool and up, not infant) people tend to comment that the child looks, "healthy". Not necessarily.

Even science does it... Average height has been increasing from year to year for quite some time now. Modern medicine is quite proud of itself because surely this is due to improved nutrition. No it's not. Sure, malnutrition is the cause of some extremely small statures, but the extremely tall statures that we are now seeing does not mean that our nutrition is extremely good. What we see is the result of excess insulin (and therefore growth hormone) in the blood as a result of eating lots of sweets, colas and otherwise simple, processed foods. With chronically elevated insulin and growth hormone levels, children are getting taller, going through puberty earlier and simply developing more quickly. While this isn't necessarily bad, I don't think that it's good. For example, taller women (those who have been exposed to higher blood insulin and growth hormone levels) have a much higher risk of getting breast cancer. There are many other examples of this. Taller is not better, just as bigger produce isn't better.

And what do we do for entertainment? We gather around a television and watch physiologic freaks (either through genetic, nutritional or chemical means) compete at professional sports. Bigger, faster and stronger are what we strive after, that is what the "cool" guys are. Except they often times aren't healthy.

My favorite example of this is still from the scriptures. The Jewish people of the old testament were awaiting a Messiah, a King that would save them from the oppression of the Greeks. They were awaiting a mighty military ruler who could overthrow the Greeks and allow their people to return to their promised land. They sort of assumed that this would be accomplished through force and military might. Instead, what they got was the carpenter's son; a man who was meek and humble, hardly a military ruler. Not only was he not a large man or a military leader, but he taught to be peaceful and humble.

Despite the Jew's expectations, they got a man more powerful than their expectations. Not a military leader, but a religious leader who brought with him the forgiveness of sins. A more powerful man, there will never be.

Bigger, stronger and faster is not always better. I'm proud of my smaller fruit because it is natural from the earth. It was produced how God prepared for it to be produced, through normal natural processes. In a lineup of banana squash it may not be very impressive, but its strength lies in its creation, not its outward appearance.

It was the best of times...

I have some sweet potatoes in the garden that really weren't looking very good. They were a light yellow and looked a step away from death for a long time. There was another sweet potato plant nearby that was thriving. I added compost from my bin to the ill looking plant and it livened right up. It's incredible to me how most people throw away some of the best fertilizers available in their organic waste. It makes me feel good when I make little discoveries like that.

Today I also witnessed the neighbor's cat catching a mouse out of my garden. Should I be happy that the mouse was caught, or apprehensive because I know that we have mice nearby? I should also apologize to our neighbor whose cat brought home a mouse to show off...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

My mom says that if I want people to read my blog I would have to write something. I knew that, but I've been really busy. This is the first time in weeks I have been busy putting off the stuff that I really should be doing. The reason is that it is currently the "worst of times". My family has been away for about 4 weeks now and I've kept really busy to avoid spontaneous combustion. This morning was a good sign of how bad things are. I was riding into work and a fellow cyclist caught me talking out loud to myself. He didn't sneak up behind me, no, he was coming toward me, but I was so enthralled in the only audible communication I had participated in recently that I didn't realize he was coming. So anyway, I really miss my family. That also explains why I left that family post up for so long, I would visit my own blog to see the only pictures of my wife and kids I have seen in the last 4 weeks.

Anyway, I originally thought of this post as I was standing in line at Home Depot. I made lots of trips there recently. Most of them in my car because of time constraints. Most of them unnecessary because I forgot something or bought the wrong thing and I needed the part in order to have running water or electricity back in the house before the next day. All of them involved poor customer service and waiting in lines to make a purchase that I didn't really want to make. I would have preferred to use a local guy, but the two local shops in my home town have terrible hours to accommodate what I needed to get done. That was it, the worst of times, driving to a store within riding distance because I was in a hurry. Getting treated poorly to participate in a commerce that I didn't want to participate in. It leaves an empty feeling in my gut every time I shop in a big box store. I don't like it.

After getting home from one of my frustrating trips to a box store, I was looking out the kitchen window, just beyond the cabinets that I just finished installing, and I saw some birds outside. I started thinking of the work I've put into the garden. It's nothing spectacular, it grows primarily weeds and squash. Anyone can grow squash and the weeds didn't take too much work to get going, but I've recently noticed it attracting a large variety of birds. I have recently seen a humming bird hanging around... I don't know what attracts him, but he's there now, when he didn't used to be. I have also noticed a little bare spot of dirt where birds come to take dirt baths. There are constantly little dimples in the dirt where the birds have been bathing. I've also seen some new variety of birds that didn't used to visit my house, some of which are really pretty. This was the best of times. Seeing that my work attracts some of God's other creations. I don't put out food or anything for the birds, but my garden is organic and the worms plentiful (because I don't kill them with chemicals). The new birds were like a fruit of my labor. Well, I still miss my family, only two more weeks before they come back, but I have a lot left to do to stay busy so that I don't get bored. I may post some pictures of what I did when they get back with the camera.

Darwin

I'm a Christian, and I believe in the creation. I also believe that Darwin hit some things right on. Evolution happens, things change over time as they adapt to the environment. That doesn't mean that humans evolved from green slime, but we certainly do adapt. Look at the obesity epidemic. Our physical forms are adapting to an abundance of food and lack of self restraint. OK, I don't think that is a good example of evolution, but the fact that kids are more likely to be overweight if there parents are overweight suggests this may be an evolutionary thing.

I didn't want to blog about weight today. I want to blog about my garden. I would take a picture, but my wife took the camera to Washington, so there will be no pictures on this blog until the end of July. Which is good, there should be no evidence of how trashed the house is. Hopefully I can have it cleaned up before she gets home.

So I've been thinking of Darwin while gardening. If I had more land and didn't mind losing my garden, I would do an experiment. I would allow my morning glory and squash to grow together without intervention. I think that Squash can beat morning glory in a fight. As pervasive as morning glory are, whenever they start to thrive, I see that the vines of the Squash plants will grab a hold of the weed. I don't know if the squash can kill the morning glory, or pull it off, but it grabs it, none the less. How long has squash been evolving to develop the ability to weed for itself? OK, I feel that I have to help the squash, so I do (I don't want to lose my crop), but I wish I had an open field where I could let the squash and morning glory duke it out.

I've taken a new approach to weeding. Early in the season I sent garbage cans full of weeds to the landfills, to get it off of my property. I hope that the morning glory are helping things biodegrade and improving the landfills. Now I just pull the weeds and leave them in the garden. Sure, I know that a small piece of root can grow a new morning glory plant, but really, I have made little progress in controlling the weed anyway, so maybe leaving their dead friends around will help discourage young morning glory from sticking their heads up through the ground. I don't think that I can scare weeds, but just think of all of the nutrients and energy contained in those weeds, why should I send that away? So I leave it. I gather it around the plants that look like they need help The weeds bake in the sun and I hope that some of the energy and nutrients contained in the weeds will return to the soil. That is how the earth has always worked. I hope that it will work that way in my garden. I like the saying, "if you can't beat them, join them". I am becoming one with the morning glory and I think they are going to provide fertilizer for the garden.

Last night I had a dinner from the garden. Fried zucchini and onion with garlic and spices and a tossed salad with a variety of lettuce, spinach and peas. It was excellent.

Family

It's been a good weekend. Friday night I took the boys to a father-son camp out. While we didn't make it up with poles for our tent, we were able to stay in a tent with a friend and two of his kids. Thanks Jacob! That also meant 6 people in a tent. While the tent was sufficiently big, that didn't mean that I got any sleep. It's difficult to sleep on uneven hard ground while two kids squirm and try and steal your pillow from either side. At the camp out it was reaffirmed to me that i don't fit in. The fathers sit around talking about their trucks and hunting. I was the vegetarian in the group who doesn't own a car. Cool would not be the word that others used to describe me.

Yesterday I was able to get to the store and buy stuff to build a shed. I have almost everything that I need, except a roof. I'm excited to get a secure place to store our outdoor toys. Once we have a place to store outdoor toys we will be able to free up our current shed that isn't sufficiently large. Then, with a cleared out old shed and a full new shed we will convert the old shed back into a chicken coop, the purpose for which it was initially intended (~50 years ago). I'm looking forward to having chickens. My wife isn't looking forward to having chickens as much as I am.

Today we got a few pictures of the garden. The boys got in the way of most of the pictures, but I'm going to post them anyway. (most people will probably prefer pictures of the boys to pictures of our weed infested garden.)

No, the Mugwump is not peeing on the flowers, he's standing in front of the watering can. In the background you can see the sea of black plastic that we have called our front yard for the last couple of weeks. This is our attempt to kill the Morning Glory. We're thinking that if you get it good and hot, with no water or sun for several weeks it will be dead, and hesitant to start growing immediately on receiving light. Then, the day we remove the plastic, we rake in some peat moss, cover it with grass seed and keep it watered so that the grass will block out the morning glory. We may be dreaming, but we'll give it a shot.

Again, this is the Mugwump watering. In the foreground on the left you can see our potatoes that are doing quite well. Luckily you can't see the one on the right (that we didn't plant, but showed up anyway) that is dying. In the background you see the forest of squash that is overtaking our paths. If we have nothing else we will have potatoes and squash.

This is a zucchini. You may not be able to see it, but it's in there. In fact there are several in there. Actually, we didn't plant any of the squash plants that you saw in the previous pictures. All of these grew from the compost that we used to cover the garden. We have lots of squash that are coming up, and we have no idea what kind it is. The leaves are quite different and some are vining, while the zucchini is just bushy. I'm excited to see what grows.

There's another picture of the boys watering. This is actually a great picture of the garden because the lighting doesn't allow you to see that 90% of the garden is being taken over by morning glory.

This is Six-pence eating cantaloupe. This was dessert after watering the garden. I love how this kid eats cantaloupe. The first bite is always from the very center. That makes it so he literally has cantaloupe juice from ear to ear. This kid ate 8 pieces of cantaloupe this evening before he decided to call it quits. I'm glad that I don't have to change his diapers tomorrow. (Don't tell my wife I wrote that!)

Introduction to Gardening

If anyone came to this site to learn how to garden, you are in the wrong spot. I am of the opinion that most innovations are a result of mistakes. While farming, gardening and agricultural practices have a long history with substantial success, we've decided to take a new approach. If it isn't broken, why are we trying to fix it? I am not completely sure, but I'm jumping in with both feet.

The first step to my approach to gardening involved pulling the morning glory out of the garden plot. Now I don't want to be misunderstood, I certainly didn't get rid of the morning glory, I pulled out a long root with about 50% of the weeds that I pulled, the rest I just ripped the tops off and promised myself that I would return and pull the rest when it came up again. So far that has worked, they are coming back up. Unfortunately I understand some basic calculus. If I get the roots of half of the plants every time I pull them, I will never get rid of the morning glory problem. You should also notice that I said that I pulled a long root out about half the time, that does not mean that I got all of the root.

After I pulled all of the weeds and prepared them for their second attempt to overtake my garden, I decided it was time to plant seeds. Usually my wife does this and she does a fine job of it. I wanted to give it a try because I like to work in the yard and I want to better know how to do it. She told me that I would have better luck if I soaked the seeds, it would help them germinate. I thought it was a wonderful idea so I did. Unfortunately she was only talking about the corn, bean and sunflower seeds and I thought she was talking about all of the seeds. Anyway, I took my container of soaking lettuce, Brussels sprout, pepper, watermelon, cantaloupe, beet, spinach, kale, and other seeds out to the garden to evenly distribute them according to the diagram my wife had made. (My wife did a wonderful job of diagramming our garden so that it would look nice.... We'll see).

Have you ever seen a lettuce seed? If you have, you know about how big they are. If you haven't, that is because they aren't very big. So I stood there in our garden with a container full of hundreds of seeds and meticulously fished them out one at a time, tried to remember what kind of seed it was, how deep and how far apart they should be planted and deliberately placed them into the soil. After about 10 minutes I had planted 3 or 4 seeds. I also noticed that when I put the seed into the soil and then I put my finger back into the container of water, it made the water murky. After about the fourth seed, I could no longer tell the difference between seeds and floaters from the dirt on my fingers. (I was still able to identify cantaloupe, watermelon and pea seeds, just so you don't think I'm completely incompetent).

At this point I decided on a new method, I would reach into the dirty water and take out a pinch of seeds and dirt. I would then rub my fingers together and let the mixture fall into a portion of the garden. With the seeds on the soil, I would move the soil around with my hand, attempting to put the seeds (or dirt) under a thin layer of soil as dictated by the package (for some of the plants). I think that was successful, I got the seeds into the soil. Eventually I felt that I had fished all of the seeds out of the container that I had, so I dumped it in the garden.

Unfortunately I only finished about half of the garden. So I went back into the house and grabbed all of the seeds that were not from 2007. This time, having learned something from my first experience, I used the same procedure, except without the water. This technique works much better without water. I don't have any idea what is going to come from our garden. I take that back, I know that Morning Glory will come from our garden, but I don't know what will come from our garden that is edible. Actually I did a little research and found that morning glory roots are edible, they have been used for medicinal purposes as a laxative. So if you are having any problems, you can come on over for a morning glory salad. I also learned that the flowers produce a chemical similar to LSD that can be used as a hallucinogen. You can't come to my house and get any of that, we pick them before they blossom and I'm not the kind of person who does (or distributes) drugs.

I'll keep you updated on our garden. If anyone knows of a [legal] market for morning glory, let me know and we'll go into business. If it's produce that you're looking for, go to your local farmer's market, that's where you can get the good stuff.

Morning Glory (How to succeed in life)

So I was weeding the garden this weekend and I had time to come up with a little analogy. OK, I came up with a big analogy because I spent the ENTIRE weekend weeding the garden and am still not finished... I'm still not close to being finished.

We want to do our garden without chemicals because we are going to eat the things out of it and don't especially want to poison ourselves. I like the idea of organic and keeping nature going the way it is supposed to go. With all things in balance, things get planted and do their thing all by themselves, why do we need chemicals to "help". People use chemicals so they don't have to spend their entire weekend coming up with an analogy on Morning Glory.

If you don't know about Morning Glory, they are a weed. I have heard that some people plant them as flowers and maybe there are varieties that don't try to take over the world, but every Morning Glory I have ever seen I have tried to eliminate from my garden or lawn. Morning Glories have roots that can be up to 15-20 feet deep. They can be present and dormant up to 50 years before sending out shoots. When they do send out shoots they are persistent and fast growing. I used to think that Blackberries were one of the worst weeds. I had a field of blackberries behind my house in Astoria and the Morning Glory was invading and taking down the blackberries.

The analogy....
If you want to be successful in life you have to be like a Morning Glory. First it takes deep convictions. Deep in the root of your being you have to be dedicated to your idea. Like the root of a Morning Glory, weeding and even rototilling won't touch it. Your convictions have to be so firm that they will withstand varying opinions and even insult.
Then, with a deep root system you have to go after the goal. You have to send up shoots everywhere. You spend all your energy going for the goal. With all of the resolve that you have you go for the goal. Even if it means spending all of the energy you have stored, you go for the goal. In the end you will either succeed or die trying. That is how to succeed in life, that is how Morning Glory succeed.

The Theory...
Here's my thought. The root system is the store of energy that the plant has. With that energy the plant sends up shoots. According to what I know about plant physiology, that plant cannot store energy without photosynthesis which occurs in the green leaves. So if I pluck the leaves before they open, the plant will use energy to get the shoots up there, but it will not be able to store energy because I won't let it photosynthesize. In theory the Morning Glory will eventually run out of energy and I will have won.

A couple of potential problems...
I don't know how long this will take. There could be 100 years of energy stored in the roots in my yard. That would be bad, but it may very well be the case.
I also don't know how far the roots run. What if the plant is storing energy from leaves in the neighbor's yard? I'm not weeding her yard too. That too is possible.
So I may lose the battle with Morning Glory, but in my life I will try to follow the example of Morning Glory. It's a sure route to success.

Sorry, that got a little cheesy at the end... If anyone knows how to get rid of Morning Glory without poison, let me know....PLEASE!!

Family

Really I wish I could post more often, but school is presently getting the best of me. I'll be lucky to get 1/2 of what I need to done by the end of the semester. We'll see how it goes.

Last week I put in a bunch of extra time so that I could spend time with a brother-in-law when he came to visit. Evidently people call him "boy- in-love". He's 15. Friday we had a good time on a bike ride. We found a fun little single track that went up the side of a hill. It was a pretty spring ride through a barren forest, although the leaves will be arriving soon. Somebody found a bunch of big mud puddles on the way home. Somebody has a bike to wash... or maybe two people have bikes to wash.

Yesterday we worked in the garden. We're still waiting to put in grass. We want to find the weeds that come up and pull them all out before we put the grass seed. We may never have grass. We got wood planks for our garden plot so that we can access the middle regions without walking on our well kept soil. We're excited to get the garden going. We have big plans which include a lot of experimenting.

Speaking of experimenting, I've already made one big mistake. I added some compost to the garden area last fall, but there were some nuts in the compost. If we left the garden area unchecked we would grow the world's finest chestnut forest. So we've spent a lot of time pulling small trees and big nuts out of our garden. Next year I won't plant nuts in the garden.

The boys sure like stickers. This is Six-Pence with fish stickers all over his face.
The boys got to go to the Children's Museum in SLC this week. They really enjoy that... Thanks G-ma.
The Mugwump on a horse. It wasn't a real horse, but he liked it.
The Mugwump is now able to give Six-Pence a ride on the tricycle. This may be a disaster waiting to happen, but so far they both enjoy it.
The white grid are the planks to the garden and you can sort of see the trellis that will house our climbing plants... we hope. You can also see a corner of what will someday be a lawn. Right now it's brown dirt.

Family and truthfulness

The end of the semester is in sight so if I don't post it's because my teachers think that I rather write 5 page papers that only one person will ever read. I missed my Sunday family post again, so I'll do it now instead.

I want to start with a little story of Dad (me) watching the boys while Mom was out doing something. My task seemed simple, give the kids a bath, put them to bed and then clean up after dinner. I'm a doctoral student, this should be a piece of cake.

The bath went well. I got both of the boys nice and clean and they enjoyed playing in the bath. When bath time was over I took the younger one (Six-pence) out of the bath, wrapped him in his towel and took him to put his pajamas on. I left a towel on the toilet so the Mugwump could dry himself off and join us when I was ready. Really it was a fool-proof plan.

I finished getting Six-pence in his pajamas and I called for the Mugwump to come join us. He didn't. No big deal, I could go dry him myself and Six-pence would just wait for us. When I went into the bathroom I found that the Mugwump was trying to dry himself off, but was unwilling to get out of the bath first. That made for a soaked towel that I needed to deal with and I needed to find a dry one so I could dry the kid. I was able to accomplish all of those tasks without any difficulty.

I got the Mugwump dried off and was taking him out to get his pajamas on when I saw Six-pence in the kitchen. When did he learn to climb? So Six-pence was standing on a chair, digging the serving spoon into the rice from dinner and flinging it around the kitchen. I sent the Mugwump into the living room and grabbed Six-pence and took him into the living room as well. The two boys were laughing hysterically, I think they had planned it. I had no more incidents that evening (because the "incidents" were asleep), but had the opportunity to spend some quality time cleaning the kitchen before my wife got home.

Truthfulness
Over the weekend we finished rototilling the front yard. We've got strawberries and onions planted in a little corner of the yard, but we're waiting to plant most of the garden until the next freeze (which will hopefully be the last for the year). While we were out working in the yard we had a neighbor stop by and loan us a movie ("Summer of the Monkeys") and talk about gardening. He told me that I would have to really stay on top of spraying my fruit trees and that I would need to use "the good stuff". He also asked when I was going to rototil the garden plot.

You see, I rototilled the lawn because it was mostly weeds. I felt that I needed to destroy the weeds in order for the grass seed to have a fighting chance at surviving, so I rototilled it. The garden, on the other hand, I rototilled last fall and then covered with compost, cardboard and another layer of compost. The neighbors seem to think that I need to rototil the garden again, but I think it's ready to go. I have never seen a rototilled forest, yet those are the most fertile grounds around. I think it's fertile because of the layer of leaves that allow composting. I'm following mother nature rather than tradition, but I feel like I may be flogged by the neighbors for not conforming to traditional gardening strategies.

Social pressures are a weird thing. I have a lot of respect for my neighbors and recognize that they have a lot more gardening experience than I do. They have given me a lot of advice on gardening (because I spend a lot of time in the yard preparing a garden). I generally just smile and nod as I have floods of thoughts going through my mind of how differently I'm going to do things. I like to avoid confrontation and I know that the advice is a nice thought, but that is NOT how I want to do things. Should I have said something? Would that have been the truthful thing to do?

The man who lent us the movie goes to church with us. When we showed up at church he asked the Mugwump what he thought if it (it had scared him, he's a pretty sensitive 3 year old). The Mugwump told him, "I didn't like it, it scared me". That was not the socially acceptable way of demonstrating gratitude, but I liked it. He just said it how it was. As a parent I thought about discouraging that kind of comment, but then I thought about it and really I'm proud that he spoke his mind (our neighbor didn't hear him, so it was sort of a non-issue). I often times find myself more interested in the "socially acceptable" than speaking my mind. I'm trying to get over that because if you don't value me for what I really believe, then you really don't value me. That doesn't mean we have to agree on everything, but don't expect me to conform just to make you happy. And if I don't conform to your thoughts it's not because I don't like you it's because living with integrity is more important to me that pleasing everyone with whom I cross paths.