Sick Tomatoes

Quite by accident, I discovered that some of my tomato plants are sick. I was taking a break from cleaning the house today and I don't even remember why but I went onto Flickr and searched for Arizona garden vegetables. I guess I was curious to see how other gardeners are doing.

Read more about what I found on my Flickr account here: Sick Tomatoes 1.

I'll have to take some time tomorrow afternoon and pull the sick ones out. :-(

Until next time.

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Will The Real Baby Carrots Please Stand Up?

I know you've probably heard the story already about how today's baby carrots aren't really baby carrots, but grown up carrots whittled down into baby carrots. No? Just click on the link and read the story if you're interested.

I was curious about what the "Bunny-Luv" bunny looked like, that Grimmway's wife drew. There she is:


There they are. All those "baby" carrots, all exactly the same length and shape.

I decided last Saturday to harvest all the carrots in the one bed, and a few from the corn bed.

I just love picking carrots. You have to be kind of careful because if the soil isn't moist you'll rip the tops right off. So you have to hold on and steadily and slowly pull. I rarely have to hand dig a carrot due to pulling off the tops. As you pull steadily, the earth starts to give and the carrot slides out. The fun part is when the carrot is out of the ground and you get to see the size of it. Below is a picture of the carrots I harvested.

In this second picture, I bring your attention to a larger carrot, with a very slender top. When you grasp onto such a thin little scraggly top, you imagine a skinny little carrot is on the way out. But not always. It's a total surprise. I love being surprised and it's hard to surprise me. I figured out a couple of years ago why I'm so appalled at the thought of finding out the sex of a baby before he or she is born - I would never want to know, and I realized the reason is because that is the ultimate surprise.

I steamed the carrots to go with dinner on Saturday night. I melted a little butter on top of them and Kev said they were delicious and asked me what I'd sweetened them with - nothing. That is how fresh baby carrots taste. Sweet, tender and delicious.

Until next time.

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I Cancelled My Dentist Appointment Again

I was supposed to go in two months ago and get my tooth looked at - the one that has a cavity. Because the cavity is in the molar behind the "pocket" I thought the cavity had been caused by food in the pocket. I was hoping to help my tooth heal but I'm starting to think there is no way because I'm a failure when it comes to doing the things I am supposed to do, to help the tooth heal. I am taking all the supplements haphazardly. The cod liver oil is just fine, but I can't remember to take it. It's deodorized so it doesn't even taste like fish. I hate the minerals. They taste disgusting. I can't figure out what the disgusting taste is. And it doesn't last that long in my mouth but it's nasty. I'm not drinking hardly any raw milk. I am not drinking bone broth on a regular basis. I'm ingesting too much white flour and sugar, not a lot but my understanding is ANY is going to be detrimental to our health. The only thing I am doing with any regularity is I have stopped using toothpaste altogether, using baking soda instead.

So my new appointment is this month... I guess May 21st. I thought for sure I remember it being May 23rd, but that's Saturday and they aren't open on Saturday.

While flossing one night about a week ago... I realized that the tooth behind the pocket has a white filling. That means the cavity is beneath the filling. Crap. Now I have read that people are talking about their fillings popping out because their cavities are healing, but I guess I'm going to succumb to the drill and get the tooth taken care of since I can't seem to do anything right.

I am not feeling any pain whatsoever, not even the "ghost" pain I was feeling when I went in originally. No tooth sensitivity either.

I wonder if I should call the dentist for some type of sedative to take ahead of time. I have never had this kind of paranoia about going to the dentist before, but I just find myself filled with anxiety at the thought of being stuck with the needle and the sound of the drill, and the burning smell.

Do you know they have painless dentistry nowadays? I think they use lasers instead of drills. And you don't even need painkillers to numb the pain of the drill. Did you know the pain of the drill is caused because the drill is going so fast, it's heating up the tooth and causing it to get really hot and that is what hurts the root?

May is going to be a big month for me. A lady is coming from California to finally help us get our electronic accounting going at work. I am excited and yet stressed out. I wouldn't mind if you said a little prayer for me that I can get through this month.

Here's to Kava Kava. I may need to start taking it on a daily basis.

Until next time.

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Will There Be Corn or Tomatoes?

My corn is beginning to sprout tassels but I don't see any sign of ears of corn within the stalks. I'm worried that something is wrong. I just googled and found that corn needs at least one inch of water per week in order to do well. I am concerned because this corn is supposed to grow to five feet in height and is maybe half that height. I told dh last night, if the corn doesn't grow, at least the goats will like the stalks.

My tomatoes are doing great, with plenty of blossoms. But so far no tomatoes. Only blossom drop. :-( If the blossoms drop off, this means they didn't get fertilized. This can happen is the weather is too hot or too cool. Too hot is likely the problem I'm having.

My eight sunflowers are doing great, and marigolds and zinnias have germinated. The zinnias in the photo below are lighter green, with leaves that are rounder. The marigolds are darker green and the leaves have zig-zagged edges.


The watermelon is growing pretty good, and taking well to the upward training of the fence it was transplanted near. The only problem is it wants to grow through to the other side, but if it does, the birds will be able to peck at it more easily. So I have to keep feeding the growing tip back to the inside.

I put another strip of chicken wire around the corn and cucumber bed. The original chicken wire that was installed under the bed was only 4-6 inches high around the perimeter. I like to make sure the chicken wire is high enough that the gophers can crawl into the garden. I also piled up dirt all around this particular bed as I don't think it is getting enough water. That could be why the corn is still so short.

I discovered that one of my pink Swiss Chard had bolted (in a neighboring bed), so I thought I had better hurry up and harvest all the Swiss Chard. Once one bolts, the others aren't far behind. And in my experience, bolted vegetables are bitter tasting. I also harvested the last of the beets. The Swiss Chard bed looked like this before harvesting:

Here is the huge pile of Swiss Chard I harvested. Some of the leaves including the stem are nearly 18 inches in length.


I harvested the rest of the beets for the same reason - I didn't want to lose out on the delicious beet greens if they bolted. They sure do grow a lot faster at this time of year. When it's cold, they take five months to grow into small beets.


I also found that my carrots are big enough to harvest. And I harvested the Brussels sprouts off of one plant. I didn't take all the carrots, there are probably one to two dozen still in the corn bed, nestled among the corn. The carrots look good and healthy, so maybe the corn bed has been getting enough water and will eventually produce ears of corn. Still it bothers me that the corn stalks are barely 2.5-3 feet tall.

Here is the Swiss Chard bed after harvesting the Swiss Chard and beets:

Here's a side by side comparison:


There are still a few heads of leaf lettuce in the garden, I had better harvest those before they go to seed and turn bitter. I cannot stand to eat bitter lettuce.

I bought some mint on the way home from a farmer's market last Sunday. I haven't decided where to put it since mint can be so invasive it really needs a bed all of its own. I'm thinking about dragging the porcelain kitchen sinks I've seen sitting out in the yard to an area of the garden and maybe plant the mint in one side.

Until next time.

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It's Amazing How Fast Times Flies - Memories from 2004 - Part III

While looking for my squash photos on Sunday evening, I ran across this set that I thought was pretty hilarious. I couldn't quite figure out how this cat's head was embedded in this table at first glance.

With this one I started remembering this couch. It had a center part with cup holders that were missing.

Now you can see how she got into the thing in the first place as she plays with the handle of a brush.

Squeezing out of the drawer.

All the way out!

Until next time.

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It's Amazing How Fast Times Flies - Memories from 2004 - Part II

More memories from 2004...

On Easter Sunday, in April 2004, our dogs dug up a cottontail bunny nest. Dh brought the little critters with their eyes shut tight in a wheelbarrow and knocked on my bedroom window. He didn't know what they were. We estimated them to be six days old since their eyes were sealed shut.


I did some research and found that it's not true that the momma will abandon them if you touch them, but you have to put them back and leave them alone. The momma only visits them in the morning and in the evening, so the experts said. We put them back in their nest and secured it so the dogs couldn't get into it. We checked the next morning to find that two little bunny tummies were full, and the other's tummy was very empty. By the next morning, only one bunny had a full tummy, so we ended up bringing them in the house. Here they are at 9 days old.

I looked and looked for a "bunny rehabber" because the experts said you can't raise a baby bunny on your own, you have to have someone who knows what they are doing. But the bunny rehabber's phone number had been disconnected. Since I'd raised abandoned kittens in the past, I had an idea what had to be done. With the information I'd found on the 'net as to how much to feed and how often, I started to take care of them. We had to help them potty by gently wiping their bottoms with a warm, wet washcloth.

Between dh and I, we helped them learn to eat from a dropper. We gave them raw goat's milk. I lost the one that hadn't had a meal for the longest, the one with the empty tummy that next morning. Apparently the momma stops in to nurse the babies and if one has crawled away from where she expects it to be, it doesn't get a meal at that feeding. The other two thrived. Here's "Bunny Bunny" at 17 days old. Isn't he tiny? He was so adorable. The other was named Squinty Eyes. Squinty Eyes never liked the humans quite as much as Bunny Bunny did.

The experts say you have to start putting the baby bunnies out in their natural environment by the time they are about 4 weeks old, or they will become too reliant upon the humans caring for them. So we made the two bunnies a safe place to adapt to being outdoors.

Pretty soon they were making their way out of this "safe" area and around to other parts of the yard. Bunny Bunny continued to come back and visit us when we'd call him for several weeks. Here he is at 56 days old. We would call "Here Bunny Bunny" and he'd come running to get what we had for him to eat. We'd bring carrots some days, greens from the garden on others.

Here he is walking toward dh, showing no fear of the human.


Eventually Bunny Bunny moved to the property next door and it was so funny when we'd call him and then throw a carrot over. All the other cottontail bunnies would scramble madly, running and hiding, while Bunny Bunny would come running over to pick up the carrot and then run off with it. He came to visit us for many months, and then he would only show up every other day, then every few days and after a while he never came when we called. We figured our Bunny Bunny was finally too grown up to visit with his human parents.

Stay tuned for more memories from 2004 tomorrow with Part III of III.

Until next time.

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It's Amazing How Fast Times Flies - Memories from 2004 Part I

I was talking with some of our church sistren today at church about gardening. One of our sistren, Lisa Datadyne, has a garden, and we like to compare notes. Today we were talking about pollinating squash. I remember that I've not had a lot of luck with squash being pollinated by the bees and other pollen spreading insects, so I usually end up doing some pollinating on my own.

The important thing to know is that the female flower can be identified by the squash which will be right behind the bloom. The male flower has just a thin stem. Often when the squash plants are just getting started with blossoming, they will produce either male or female blossoms. The male will look like this inside. Excuse this photo, it's quite blurry. It was taken back in 2002 with the first digital camera I ever had access to, the one owned by my employer.


As you might be able to see, nestled inside the flower petals is the stamen, which is covered in pollen. If you have plenty of bees around, they will busily crawl in and around all the flowers, and hopefully they will crawl inside males first, then female flowers. The female flower has pistils, and the pollen from the stamen needs to get onto the pistils in order for the squash to grow.

Here is another photo I found where I have removed a male flower and am wiping the pollen on the female flower's pistils.


While searching for the squash photos, I came across these others. It is hard to believe five years has passed!! I really loved seeing these zinnias, I have some that are just germinating now and hopefully they won't take too long to start producing flowers.

These are photos from May 2004; I planted zinnias along the porch this year. They look so colorful and pretty!! I am going to have to remember to plant more colorful flowers in the garden during the winter at the end of this year.

Here is my squash and green beans. I didn't remember planting squash in this area before! That is the same area the squash is in this year.


Some of my Garden Art. The cats were quite intrigued.

Stay tuned for more memories from 2004 with Part II of III tomorrow.

Until next time.

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I Just Had Something Delicious

I'm feeling much better today. Since I shrunk my stomach not eating for over a day I'm trying an experiment to see if I can somehow train myself to eat less food. I know I eat too much, food is just too darn delicious.

Last weekend - has it really been a whole week? Anyway, last weekend I decided it was time to get the spinach out of the bed it was in, it is getting warm in the daytime and it was probably ready to bolt any second. I also harvested about a dozen baby beets and some Swiss Chard because it was crowding the cucumbers. The cucumbers were hardly growing due to not getting any sunlight and I think I wasn't getting enough water to them either. You know now that I think about it, I think I might have done that work in the garden on Friday. Well, no matter. I washed up the beets and spinach and put it into grocery bags and popped them into the fridge. Where they have sat all week long, waiting to be eaten. I'm making them for dinner tonight, to go with the chicken breasts I've thawed out.

I've made this twice in the last couple of days, this delicious little lunch idea I came up with. I made 2 cups of rice on Thursday so I would have some to go with my broth [broth - bone broth - bone broth helps tooth remineralization - oh no - dentist appointment this week - anxiety - stress - will the dentist get mad at me if I tell him to leave my tooth alone - should I cancel my appointment - again - should I just go and see what he says - calm down - stop worrying - he's a nice guy - but he might get mad - where was I] when my stomach was not feeling right.

Here's what I made:

Beet Greens and Brown Rice

1 T. butter
12 beet green leaves
2-3 Tablespoons water
1/2 cup cooked rice
Salt, pepper to taste

Cut off the beet if there is one attached to your beet green leaves. (Save for a later meal). Put the tablespoon butter in a cast iron skillet and start heating it up. Chop the stems of the beet greens into inch long pieces and put them into the melted butter. Saute for 2-3 minutes. Add 2-3 tablespoons water. Cut the rest of the greens into larger pieces, about 2 inches wide. When the stems looked a darker red then their original bright fuschia red (another minute or so) put in the rest of the beet greens. Put a tight fitting lid on the skillet and let cook 2-3 minutes. Remove lid, stir, add in one-half cup of cooked brown short grain rice. Stir to heat the rice. Salt and pepper to taste. Beet greens are naturally salty so taste before adding salt.

This was really delicious.

I didn't think I'd feel up to gardening this weekend since being sick, but I seem to have bounced back pretty good. I actually got some work accomplished in the garden this weekend. I pulled weeds that had cropped up in several areas, including some that were fairly big and already gone to seed. The chickens really appreciated those. Some of these were in the gopher's garden bed and I'd been leaving them there for him to eat so he would hopefully leave MY vegetables alone. Some were growing in between the chicken wire of the pallet bed so I had to cut through the wire to get the weeds out. I pulled out a broccoli that was flowering. No sense in trying to save its seeds as it was a hybrid variety (the babies of hybrid's seeds don't grow up to be like the plant you had but often like one parent or the other of the hybrid seed - as me if you want to know more). I found some straw-like hay nearby the goat pen that was totally perfect for using as mulch in the beds. It is getting warmer and I want the soil to have a good covering so the ground stays moist longer. I utilized the straw for the eggplant bed, the tomato bed, and one of the green bean beds. I used this straw-like material in the potato cage also. Let's see. I got the zinnia bed dug out, underlayed with chicken wire, got the bricks around the bed and the seeds planted. I also planted marigolds in the zinnia bed. Eight sunflowers have germinated and are getting their first true leaves. The squash I transplanted a week ago is still alive. The basil is still alive, but not doing too well. I hope it will be able to snap out of it.

I think that's all. I am planning to go out there later this afternoon and harvest some to share with my coworkers. I need to pick Swiss Chard, beets, and kale. It occurred to me that the beets take much less time to mature when the weather is warmer. Even though it is okay to plant them in September through the winter, they grow so slowly. It usually takes them 5 months to produce the root. Also, this is one of the only times I've planted beets in late winter/early spring. So it is interesting to see how well they are doing. Now I just have to be careful about getting them harvested before they bolt. And also I am doing some overhead watering and I have had to deal with blue mold in the past with beets. The overhead watering apparently encourages the blue mold because of the leaves getting wet. It's really bad to water overhead later in the day. Early in the morning is safer, but there is still that danger. Once they have blue mold, the beet leaves taste horrible. You can still eat the beets and they taste fine, but the leaves taste awful if they have blue mold.

Here's the new zinnia/marigold bed. I can't wait to see the colorful flowers blooming here!


Until next time.

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Food Poisoning

If you're sensitive to hearing about vomit you may want to stop reading now.

I hate throwing up. Detest it. Despise it. I don't know how people with bulimia do it. And then there's my mother-in-law, and my husband and my son, who will cause themselves to throw up at the mere hint of a stomachache, if it will make themselves feel better. Ds1 has always had a stomach of iron. He can throw up, come out of the bathroom and eat pizza or tacos, or chips and hot sauce. Agh. My mother-in-law says she is the same way. One of my sisters had to be hospitalized, if I remember correctly, for six weeks to learn to get over bulimia. So it's probably a good thing that I don't have a penchant for vomiting.

We participated in the Tea Party on April 15th and went to a Mexican food restaurant before we walked down to the Capitol. I think that's where I got food poisoned. We ate around 4pm and when we got home by 8:30 my stomach wasn't feeling "right". I had a feeling puking was inevitable, but there's no way I can do that voluntarily. If my body makes it happen, then I have no choice in the matter, but I'm not doing it purposefully.

Finally the puking commenced around 10pm. I hoped against hope that once would be enough. I know from past experience that two times is more likely. I lost count when I'd puked five times. The wretched heaving, feeling light headed and weak as I bowed over the Porcelain God. I slept fitfully, in between visits. Finally by 4am Thursday morning, my stomach started settling down. No more vomiting, thank God. I woke Kev at 3:30am to see if he had a ginger ale in his stash as I wanted something light and fizzy to help settle my stomach. I managed to eat one saltine cracker. Thankfully my stomach continued to stay settled. Dh found some beef broth in the freezer so I had that and he also made me some chicken broth. A few hours later the diarrhea began. I ate light throughout the day, mostly broth and crackers. By evening I had some brown rice in chicken broth. That was pretty delicious.

I would loved to have stayed in bed resting the entire day, but my back won't allow that. If I'm in bed too long, it starts stiffening and the pain is too much to stay in bed. I have to get up. I then have to stay up for several hours, standing up and sitting up before my back will allow me to lay down again. I went to bed exhausted at 8pm. I slept well and woke at 4:25am. I'm feeling weak this morning, but my intestinal system seems to be nearly back to normal. My ribcage is aching and sore.

I decided I'd better try to get something down besides broth and carbohydrates and had two scrambled eggs for breakfast. Dh said he'd milk but I told him I really needed to get a bit of exercise so that my back will loosen enough that I can come back in and lie down and rest. Dh wrangled each milker for me, I pretty much just sat and milked. Then I watered my garden, which was last watered on Tuesday evening. Everything looks good, and of course bigger, as often is the case when I don't visit the garden every day. Seven sunflower seeds have germinated. The corn is much larger than it was just three days ago. The tomato plants are bigger, too.

It's 9:30am. I think I've been up long enough that my back would allow me to lay in bed and rest, so I think I'll get off this computer and go back to bed for a while.

Until next time.

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Garden Update

Just a quick update on my garden. Tonight I transplanted the basil, which is not doing very well, and the last two watermelon plants. I left them outdoors last night and it blew so hard that they were thrown from a table onto the ground and they are just looking all wilted and unhappy. So I figured what the heck, I'll just get them transplanted and hope it doesn't do them in for good.

I also transplanted three squash plants out of a "hill" that had seven plants.

I have ladybugs and ladybug larvae!! They love the aphids which are living on the cilantro. I keep seeing all the bright orange ladybugs, and today saw all these black spots all over and looked more closely and realized it was the larvae.

I worked on this bed yesterday morning. I removed the spinach and some of the beets and swiss chard so that the cucumbers can get more sunlight. I also transplanted some corn so they are a bit closer together. They came up spread out further apart. They seem to be handling the transplanting well.













It has taken FOREVER for these green beans to germinate. I finally laid a black piece of plastic over the bed to try and warm it and get the seeds to germinate. It is the romano-type green bean. I hope more than this one plant comes up.




I need to get a monthly planner where I can quickly jot down notes for what I planted or harvested.

Until next time.

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Sweet Pea Flower and Front of the Garden Cleanup

I've been really tired today. Got to bed too late last night, almost 9pm. I was updating my desktop PC, hoping to avoid tangling with Conficker. I managed to get Windows updated, but couldn't get AVG Anti-Virus Free to update, uninstall or reinstall. I decided to finally go to bed and Kev took over for a bit. He found a possible solution, but was not able to finish up with it before he had to go to bed as well. Thankfully my computer does not appear to be affected.

At 4:26am this morning, I woke with a start. My phone alarm had gone off at 3:15 like it usually does, and I stumbled over to the dresser, grabbed it, opened the flip to turn it off. In my half-asleep state of mind, I thought that would set it on snooze. I fell back into bed and stashed my phone in my bookshelf beside me. It never went off again.

The house was completely dark still, at 4:26. I stumbled out of the bedroom and checked the air vent over Kev's room. Darkness there, too. I knocked on his door, then opened it, and told him to wake up, it's 4:30. He groped around in the dark for his Nintendo DS, his alarm. Finally he found that he'd been laying on it, and he also hadn't charged it. Usually dh is up at 2:30 and never later than 4am. We've overslept like this more than once in the past couple of weeks.

So I was tired most of the day, and tired driving home. Dh made roast, baked potatoes and made from scratch with real cheddar cheese mac-n-cheese for dinner. I was also very hungry when I got home, over-hungry, and started eating the delicious mac-n-cheese. Pretty soon I accepted the fact that would be my dinner. After I ate while standing at the stove... I changed from my work clothes into my shorts and t-shirt uniform. I was so tired. I laid down for a while, and wondered if the garden could make it without watering. I remembered that I'd only given the tomatoes a very small drink last night, so I made myself get up and headed out to the garden.

I discovered that dh had watered the tomatoes and some of the beds earlier in the day. That was a great help, and inspired me to do some other garden chores. I went back into the house to get a plastic bag to put the bolted lettuce into so I could save the seeds. I brought my garden bucket out with me.

I was watering, and found this lovely:

This was her two days ago:

I wish I could somehow transmit the delicious heavenly scent emitting from that Sweet Pea flower. I promise myself I will plant dozens of Sweet Pea flowers this coming fall.

Since I had some extra time saved from dh watering earlier in the day, I decided to tackle the front of my garden. I still want to plant sunflowers there. Here is what it looked like before. I'm not sure when the front of my garden turned into dumping grounds.

Here's what it looks like now. I still need to clear the area around the entire perimeter of the garden, but this is a good start.

Off to bed.

Until next time.

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