Yeah Corn

Vois la!

Pumpkin Stolen!

Miss Brewer with green onions

Yo my compost is out of control and feeds the super-sleek groundhogs who have grown to have magnificent coats

Nice little front shot with enticing pumpkin

Mad Beans

This one got snatched a day later

This one's still cool/hidden

I don't care if anyone steals the pumpkin. I only care if they steal the big tomatoes.

they can steal anything they want- I have money to buy groceries.... I just hope that the people who take the pumpkin have an opinion-altering experience, a conscience shift, or some new urge to do it themselves. It would be harder to lift the damn gourdes than it would be to plant them and grow them to this size! Not ready for pie yet, and vines are growing into the street.

D.I.Y. Grass Cutting!

I would like to convince the owner of the lot that long grass is "cool", but he'd think i was looking for an excuse to be lazy. There is a difference between being lazy and "over-doing it", where in I lie - in the grass! Cutting it does help to take inventory of lot contents. In this case cutting the grass is like a magician pulling up his sleeves, or like an arrestee welcoming a frisking. Why is it that we assume dereliction, impulsivity, and epicureanism with long hair, and the same for long grass? What decadent grass, what random grass, what a drummer-in-a-band grass. Maybe my lot just needed lots of time to think, but now it was time.

Before

After

More cut grass

with a machete!


May freak-out neighbors, but this is how i've been doing it since december. I started with a kitchen knife, doing it at night. A car once parked outside a neighbor's house and made me a little self-conscious. The police had been round, slowed down and kept going, so i figured it was legal-enough. Sure it's dangerous, and bad for the back, but Lukas Strzelec once relayed to me a phenomenon he had experienced during a stint in Ghana. There, it was not uncommon to see people out on their lawns, cutting grass with a machete, scythe, or a "big knife". The rhythm such chores like that and others required (things done by hand) moved him to postulate that rhythm commonly seen in dancing and in relation to sound stems in a large part from us using our bodies as machines, performing repetitive movement. (Thinking about this since, I have also wondered whether Bossa Nova comes from the rhythm of 2-cylinder engines interpreted by an ear accustomed to Samba.) Does the rhythm of slimming lawns with a blade translate through the body as a means of coordinating the limbs with one another, "congealing" the motor system via the introduction of choreographed impulses? I think Luke was onto something. Let's just look at all of the dances of old days, and try to abstract a task from their movement. What the fuck were those germans doing bending their knees while bringing up their elbows!? I dont know. I could make a conjecture, but it would offend my german readership. JK. Another wealth of evidence for Strzelec's theory comes from the anecdotal observation that it's not hard to get someone to dance by asking them to adapt a complex routine they now consider perfunctory, this time to the music. Take "the dish scrub", "the ironing long pants", "the shopping cart", "the bus driver", "the cyclist". It is not surprising, though i haven' noticed until now that it was Strzelec, himself, who, in his characteristically tempered exuberance, had demonstrated for me "the lawn mower" some time ago. Oh ho ho, the times we had...ho ho. Anyway, I haven't noticed any cross-over from grass cutting to better rhythm of any sort, but I do find that whilst in the act, I take to a shuffle reminiscent of the dance from the wedding scene in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof (know what i'm talkin about?). There could be more on this task, but using the machete is getting easier.

Luke's current blog is at http://yinzinmali.wordpress.com/ he's in Mali

D.I.Y. mustard?

Mustard seed pods. Allowed to dry and get tan colored. They are very brittle and will, via evolutionary-trickery, burst, allowing seeds to travel. Have them travel into a bowl.

Snap all the mustard seed-pods off and put them in a bowl and smash them, but not too much to get really little pieces. (this discovered after meticulously trying to peal them and shake the seeds out)

 Using a cheesecloth, shake shells and seeds over a bowl.

 A shit-ton's worth of mustard seed-pods. ----verdict: not worth it,,,,,,,,yet. next, mix with vinegar and salt (preferably sea), use your imagination->>>....>>>..>> mmmm, wow, what a wholesome mustard, so wholesome it will make Ball Park franks taste like they aren't the festering jibblets of a thousand abused mutants....

Mammoth Raccoon Seen

Even without glasses, Anna was able to spot this on the neighbor's roof. In buddha-like repose, absorbing sunlight with hands at sides, this is how chicken calories are being spent. Hard to tell from the photo, but this animal is bigger than the biggest house-cat, and smaller, just barely, than a full-grown german shepherd - but way fatter. Ps. Sorry for referring to the other, puny raccoon as a "bitch-face".  Just outside of the photo to the right and below is an old dog kennel which might be able to be converted into a chicken-coop since friends of my landlord say he will never agree to a coop. The house with the kennel is abandoned so if any neighbor (nay-bor) complains, (as I am told "the law against chickens is on a complaint basis")  the birds will be removed, but no-one will lose any money or face, and I won't need to claim any responsibility. Now the question, which is more aggravating, to have raccoons eat your chickens, or cops carry them away? Something not to think about as I make any plans toward commandeering the Kennel. My only focus should be making sure the raccoon can't repel into it from here.

Garden then/now photos

 Greenhouse winter/summer

 

Corn mid June/ August 6th

 Painted by Methodists from Grove City

 Pumpkins July 1st and August 6th

 

 young grape tomato June/daily Harvest of tomato August 6th (and young miscellaneous pepper)

 Beans, Chard and Tomatoes.

Raccoon Caught

We had wondered if it could have been ground hog that had done the deed. Ed made a spear, and almost killed one.  I put a rib from Wilson's, the most revered food item/delicacy in all of the North Side. I checked the trap the next day... 

I called animal control. A few hours later, it was gone. Kinda cute. Faith even came by to see it. Even squirming visibly vexed by its captivity, it played interestedly with a grass stalk Faith stuck in the cage. This passivity seemed to represent a lack of morals, as if honor would require being pissed or least unresponsive toward your captors. When i caught it I could not believe how small it was. It weighed as much as a pair of boots. The beast I had been describing to friends and coworkers must have inflated in my memory as my mind struggled to provide logic to the story of the chickens. This little bitch-face could not have downed 7 chickens in one night. Could it have?

The psychologist doing that study on mood disorders ( two post ago) jutted in after a pause indicating that the story had appropriately ended due to my lack of words. "A clear sign of hypomania" he said like a referee saying "strike three" or "home run". Fuck that guy. I'm never taking pills because of some chickens. Maybe a tums. Maybe something for salmonella poisoning. ciprofloxacin .

TO BE CONTINUED. well it' kinda done.