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After our moderate success with beets, we thought we'd try the mighty rutabaga for dinner tomorrow night. I'm not even sure what a rutabaga is, let alone how to cook one, so this should be educational.
Update, 8:47 p.m.: Aw, man, they're just turnips?
A picture I took at the park the other morning. I've been trying to take a walk before work every day.
I took a picture of the sunset from the roof of the parking garage at work tonight. Pretty, isn't it? Well, this picture looks like a box of cat dingleberries compared to how the sky looked five minutes later as I was trying to merge onto the upper deck of I-35.
The sky was so vivid it looked downright dangerous, like liquid fire, and with downtown and the Capitol and The University of Texas silhouetted against it, well, gosh, we all just freaked out.
Most everyone on the ramp was pointing and smiling and sticking their phones out the window to take pictures. We were all driving like complete shit, slowing down and braking and trying to catch up, and nobody honked because holy crap! crazy sunset! The whole thing was so amazing and fun that I didn't stop laughing until 51st Street. I really think that might have been the best sunset I've ever seen.
Hey, this is my 2,000th post (not counting all the ones I wrote in a fit of drunken rage and deleted later, of course; that would put me up to at least twenty-three hundred).
I wish I had something special planned for this milestone, but instead all you get are crappy old run-of-the-mill garden pictures.
Have you been to Backyard Salvage and Garden, at Koenig and Avenue F, where the Howard Nursery used to be? If you live in Austin you should go. It's cool.
Some of the scavenged stuff, like old bathtubs, seems a little pricey (although you can buy a confession booth for $500 there, a solid investment if you want to freelance as a priest). It's hard to tell whether their plant selection is going to be any good, seeing as it's midwinter and all. But their rocks and dirt are very reasonably priced, and I am just happy to have a garden/building supply store that's not Home Depot so close to our house.
Plus they're really nice; the guy got out his forklift to weigh our tiny, bullshit, not-even-worth-his-time pile of stones without batting an eye. They even have bulk dirt and compost. I love the Natural Gardener, but Oak Hill is on the exact other side of Austin from us, so it pretty much takes an entire afternoon just to pick up a few bags of cow poop from them. Having BS&G up the road will make our lives a lot easier.
I told those durned revenooers not to come around meddling in my business anymore...
Haw haw haw! Did you like my joke? It is really a garden bed, with the aforementioned rocks. Later it will be home to tomatoes, peppers, and basil. I was tempted to make the bed bigger, but the droughtacular failure of last summer taught me I need to be patient and keep things small until I have a good season or two and figure out what I'm doing.
The Meyer lemon tree is blooming. The flowers smell great, but I wonder if they will actually set fruit. So far not much has come of this tree. I think Meyer lemon trees are kind of picky, and I haven't been great about figuring out what the hell this one wants. But I can't be treating it too badly if it has flowers, right?
And finally, for the hell of it, the return of the paddle plant. This froze all the way back last winter, and we were sad because it had been the centerpiece at our wedding table and we killed it, killed it good and dead. But it came back, and it looks pretty happy now.
I think that about covers today. But the suspense is killing me: What will the 2,001st post bring?
Lettuce, beets, carrots--2010 is shaping up to be the year of the vegetable for me. (And also the year I need to work on my printing registration.) Hey, whatever. It felt good to make something again after a long, long break.
Will you please locate this photo:
in this photostream:
http://www.austin360.com/spas/cutest-couples-in-austin-173002.html
and vote "Yes" as often as your computer will let you?
I would be most appreciative; a $100 gift card and the smug satisfaction inherent to being named "Austin's Cutest Couple" are at stake.
(And yes, I know I left a word out in the caption. I totally didn't mean to, but it's kind of awesome how it makes the whole thing extra shitty.)
Edit, 1/12, 7:44 p.m.: I am kind of in awe of the power of Facebook. The traffic to this site more than tripled today, and we are one of the top couples now, at 52.4 percent. You guys rock.
The contest will probably go on for a while, so if you get bored and need something to click on in the next few days, please go back and vote again.
Hey, what do you know? The lettuce not only survived the cold snap, it seemed to like the fake greenhouse. It was bigger than ever when I took the plastic off this morning, and a few spinach seeds I'd tossed in there and forgotten about even sprouted under the cover. It's supposed to freeze again tonight, but not nearly as bad, so I just threw a sheet over it before the sun went down. The end about the lettuce, forever.
To prove I do leave the house sometimes, here is a picture I took today on the hike and bike trail. I almost never go down there. People who are super-serious about exercising weird me out a little, to be honest, and the trail is a constant flow of gasping, vacant-eyed people in technical gear. But it was a nice day for a long walk, and there are some really great views of the city and the park from there. Note to self: It is dumb to avoid fun things just because there will be other people there enjoying them too.
Later I took a nap and then got up and roasted some beets. I have never felt one way or the other about beets, but Eric has always professed to despise them. Yesterday I learned he had only ever eaten them pickled, and I thought maybe that was the problem. Lots of canned vegetables, like spinach and asparagus, are revolting, but their fresh counterparts are great.
So I laid down some fat beets. (Sorry.) The rooty parts look a little like rat tails.
I cooked up the greens too, just to be extra beety about the whole thing.
The verdict: Beets are tasty with salt, pepper, and goat cheese, but the work/mess-to-deliciousness ratio is not quite balanced enough for them to make it into our regular dinner rotation.
Eric: That was pretty good.
Me: I wonder what our poop is going to look like tomorrow.
Eric: You know, I was just thinking the same thing.
Me: Aww. That's why we are married.
I went to unswaddle the cilantro and parsley this morning, and it was covered with ice crystals. It got down to 15.1 on our back deck last night.
So I don't even want to know about the rest of the plants yet. And really, you know, whatever. I'd love to eat some more lettuce this year, but it's not like I have much out there that won't come back or be easily replaced.
Instead of fretting about the lettuce, I'd like to concentrate on the amaryllis, which puked up two lovely blooms this morning.
I'd like to concentrate on Sweetloaf for a minute too. I make fun of him a lot for being dumb, because he is, but he is also a very nice and handsome cat. Way to be, Loafy.
It's cold and work is slow today, so I drew a picture.
I just spent an hour and a half dragging potted plants inside, covering planters with sheets, and hastily constructing the saddest greenhouse ever. All this is in anticipation of the Great Cold Snap of '10, which is forecast to sweep all joy and pleasure from our lives with its 40 mph winds and temperatures in the teens. It won't even have the decency to bring us any interesting winter weather, like freezing rain or thundersnow.
I hope everything makes it. Well, everything won't, because I couldn't cover everything without stripping the mattresses. But I hope lots of stuff makes it. I especially hope the lettuce survives; it exploded after we took some trees out a few weeks ago and they started getting more light. The entire planter might cough up a side salad every two weeks or so before, but lately we've been eating it every day without making a dent.
So: Will the plants live, grow, and thrive? Or will they freeze, shatter, and die? Will the cold north wind tear up the plastic sheeting or just make it flap around annoyingly all night? Log on to our website at starsandgarters.com--that's double you double you double you dot stars and garters dot com--in the next few days to find out.
Between silly web games and awesome console games, I fear 2010 will be the year I never leave the house. But you know, it's unusually cold outside and I just started a lower dose of nicotine and I have a bad cut on my finger, so I doubt I'd be doing anything that interesting right now anyway.
(Picture for Gary!)