Victory Gardening

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Okay, I see why the packet said not to start pumpkin seeds indoors. Aside from questions of whether they transplant well, it is not reliably warm outside yet, what with the wild oscillations between 80- and 50-degree F weather, and the goddamn squash and pumpkin vines are taking over the kitchen. This is what I get for looking at the seed packet and thinking, "I've got some I won't use. Let's do some SCIENCE!"

Also, the garden has fallen prey to banditry. Not in the form of birds, raccoons, bugs, or even the accursed mollusca, but rather in the form of Vintner Dad, who in the space of a week stole all my dirt and broke my shovel. It was a nice new hobbit-sized shovel Mom had bought just for me, since my trying to work with the giant-ass spades in the workshop would be ludicrous. He did replace both items, but it has made gardening a bit trickier when the stuff I think is there isn't.*

But it looks like the garden will actually grow! The radishes are flourishing, the chard has sprouted, the strawberry has bloomed, and the calendulas have begun their bid for world domination.** I'm hoping the beans are next to sprout.

This has been your latest dispatch from the Victory Garden. Tune in next time to find out how the squashes do!


*Although it was almost worth it just to find the dirt wasn't the same stuff I'm using, because how often do you get to yell "This ain't no chickenshit! What the hell is this bullshit?" and mean it literally?

**I made the mistake of planting a few calendulas last year, and didn't get to them all before they FUCKING EXPLODED. Darn things are rivaling the dandelions for sheer proliferation.

Comments

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

In my experience, squash, pumpkin, melons, cucumbers and most especially zucchini are all-or-nothing types of plants. Either they fail to sprout at all, or they go berserk. There is no happy medium. And once they've sprouted, you can almost literally watch them grow. They'll survive late frosts and droughts and marauding critters and all kinds of things, and still produce way more than you could ever possibly use. They seriously belong in some sort of fantastical bestiary, despite the fact that they're plants!

[xaandria.livejournal.com]

My mom had a Victory Garden. She planted zucchini.

I think that by the time we moved, the backyard was 100% zucchiniland. We had zucchini the size of infants. Not small infants. We had one zucchini that outweighed my brother when he was three.

Needless to say, we got so fucking sick of zucchini bread.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

God, I hate zucchini. I have a strict delineation: I hate summer squash and love winter squash. I haven't heard quite as much about winter squash running rampant, eating gardens, replacing Donald Sutherland with pod clones, etc., but I could be wrong.

If it tries, it, though, it'll have to compete with the exploding calendulas. It'll be a regular battlefield.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to find this one quote about how organisms are comprised of bunches of cells trying to conquer and kill each other off, and life is just a side effect of a heap of warring cancers that keep each other in check... anyway, I'm now picturing your backyard basically like that.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

One year, when I was in middle school, we made the mistake of planting three zucchini plants. It was insane, a Day Of The Triffids scale plant invasion. We'd pick everything, and the next day find zucchini the size of baseball bats, way too big to miss. We had sauteed zucchini, zucchini bread, zucchini chocolate chip cupcakes (sounds weird, but tastes really good! The zucchini keeps the cake moist), zucchini relish...so much zucchini relish. We just used up the last jar of it a couple of years ago. I'm in my 30s now.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

My parents have a no zucchini in their garden policy. Because at least one neighbor always plants zucchini and will inevitably be giving away zucchini, so any desire for zucchini my mom has for bread or whatnot is always filled by whoever planted zucchini that year. Because no matter how few zucchini you plant, there's always too much!

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Around here, there's a joke that the only time you need to lock your Car Doors is Zucchini season ;)

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Yeah - we had a similar invasion one year that resulted in zucchini hanging from the trees. Which was more than a bit bizarre.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Okay, now that's an accomplishment.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

They do seem to be visibly growing. I'm rather worried they're going to strangle one of us before I can get them into the garden.

[van.livejournal.com]

I WANT PICS.

I am moving soon and will have a backyard finally. I am actually thinking about maybe doing a little vineyard . . . Is your dad following a book or websites or just general knowledge? What sort of grapes is he using?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

You'll probably have an easier time of it, what with not living a mile above sea level or dealing with flying snows and all. We have to work with very specific grapes to our zone, though I'll have to ask him just what they are. (Poor Dad. I don't care at all about wine, so all the wine terms go directly into my brain's Junk Filter.) But I'll check with him, see what he has to say on it! (I also have a vintner cousin near Sacramento who might be able to give you some tips. I'll check with him, too.)

He's generally going by books and magazines. SO MANY BOOKS AND MAGAZINES.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

You can set the pumpkins out, they'll be Just Fine.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Good to hear it! NOW THAT I HAVE DIRT AGAIN (the other mitigating factor), I will do just that!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

The Consort's next-door neighbors (who are apparently moving, given the existence of a newish SOLD sign on their house) have planted pumpkins in their front yard every year for the past few years. At least once they got snowed on, plants didn't even blink.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

That's how the pumpkins were last year, too. I've never transplanted them, though--they're used to the indoors right now. That's the real problem--inexperience.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Calendulas do drop tons of seed, but they are easy to pull up, even when larger. And they transplant so easily you can just pull them up and replant them and they rarely notice.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Apropos of nothing, more Seven Stars Comics!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

You know, if I ever did a comic of the "off road takes" my siblings and I came up with for the scenes and conversations in that game, it would take HOURS of explaining. And the explanations would probably only raise further questions. I still can't play through the Axem Ranger scene without thinking "The pizza's LATE!"

In other news, damn you: that other comic you linked to made me actually have to go play through the entire game again. It's rather embarrassing to admit just how much of my sense of fantasy was shaped by a game where you have to kick the ass of a wedding cake.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I still haven't actually played it. Right now I'm playing Bowser's Inside Story, which is a lot of fun. Fawful cracks me up. I HAVE THE CHORTLES!

Need to complete Super Star Saga too...never got around to finishing it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Fawful ... worries me.

They really souped up the SMRPG timed attacks and defenses for the Mario & Luigi series. There's a lot more animation and you have to do a lot more strategizing based on any given monster's size and shape. I get a huge kick out of playing as Bowser, though my favorite from that series is Partners In Time. Something about Luigi's pseudoItalian gibberish in that one cracks me up. (I always make it a point to build Luigi into an unstoppable tank. I dunno, it's just funnier that way.)

I still highly recommend SMRPG. Square did marvelously weird things to the Marioverse, their sense of humor is spot-on, and it's also simply gorgeous. And the attention to detail was great--there are endless bizarre little Easter eggs for you to find, like exiting the wrong way out of Marrymore, or suddenly turning into 8-Bit Mario, or the whole business with the Lamb's Lure. The attacks are wildly fun. (The "hurling Mario at the bad guys" Bowser employs in one of the comics is an actual weapon you can buy.) And Toad is just so cute in that one.

Plus, Fawful's got a spiritual cousin in Booster. Booster is just weird.