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Just to demonstrate that I actually do have a garden, and not just a lot of words about gardening. And it’s quite clear that this is really my very own yard, because who else would admit to such less-than-stellar shots of a thoroughly unkempt and unprofessional landscaping job?
So… if you want better artwork, you’re gonna have to email me pics. And how are things looking in your gardens, this week?
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PurpleGirl
I love the mad profusion of flowers.
What plants are those frames for? And are they bordering the side-walk, by the street?
TheMightyTrowel
(your street reminds me of my parents’ place. Most of the time I’m thrilled to live where I do, but sometimes i really really miss the Boston area)
HeartlandLiberal
Sadly, although we have had lots of lettuce, sugar snaps, cabbages, beats, even some potatoes (heat killed the plants, so I started digging up the tubers that had developed), and tomatoes, squash, peppers; the heat and 7 days ago the attack of the squash borers wiped out my pumpkins and squash. It looks like I may get a half dozen nice size pumpkins, but there is no guarantee given the drought and conditions they grew in that they will last till November, even if I move them inside in the next couple of days. It is a big disappointment, because I like to grow at least a dozen pumpkins every year for display, and some sugar pumpkins for pies. The rabbits or deer ignored the water scarecrows and pretty much destroyed my attempts to start okra this year.
So it has been a mixed bag. Including three rows of bountiful bush green beans, which I forgot to mention above. So many they filled a tall kitchen garbage bag.
I came in yesterday, and told my wife that most Americans simply had no idea anymore what it takes to grow the food they eat, how tenuous and difficult a proposition it is. The vast majority of Americans think food comes from the supermarket, and their chain of thought and evidence stops right there, in an air conditioned aisle, with music playing in the background.
Actually growing stuff is one of the most painful existential experiences there is. It is genuinely a daily life and death struggle.
My wife noted that although Iowa has escaped the recent drought declaration covering 1/3 of the counties in the nation, temperatures that hit 108 degrees within the past week apparently cooked the corn crop in the field. It is pretty much destroyed.
Perhaps when the Peeps suddenly see food shortages and rampant increase in food prices because of the effects of global warming, the reality of what is happening will finally sink through their thick little skulls.
One can only hope.
Anne Laurie
@PurpleGirl:
Those are half my tomato plants (you can see one ripe red tomato near the far right side of the picture). And, yes, the gro-bags are about six feet away from the street, separated by a narrow bed of lilac bushes & the sidewalk. The rest of the tomato plants are in rather more permanent planters on the other side of that ‘driveway’, further away from the public way.
All these pictures are ‘visual cheats’, to a degree. The top photo was taken from our front steps, focusing on one of two parallel (approximately) 9’x4′ concrete-block raised beds, the one next to our walkway that gets the most sun and the most attention. The fourth photo is from the sidewalk, on the same sightline but looking in the opposite direction — you can see the steps at the top right, and the same tall daylilies (Love Glow & Child Bride) just below that. The guava-colored daylilies — which are not the Catherine Woodburys I though I planted seven or eight year ago, so I have no idea what they’re really called — and the white ‘Little Barbie’ miniature roses are actually in an 18″ stripe running along the sidewalk, separated from the planter by a strip of grass just wide enough for a lawnmower.
The Apricot Sparkle daylilies in the second picture are tucked next to the steps, and the “vegetable garden” — tomatoes, six pots of various basils and a pot of oregano — is the auxiliary driveway behind & perpendicular to the car behind the giant 20-plus-year-old lilac bush in the upper left background of Photo #4. The double-ruffled You Angel You daylilies in the last photo are in the corner of the raised bed (notice the patio blocks) just below the bottom of the top photo.
Which is probably more information than you or anybody else wanted, but it proves my point: It doesn’t take vast country spaces or a green thumb to grow flowers and vegetables, just persistence and a willingness to experiment!
Linda M
I love the colors in your garden, especially those in the last picture. A neighbor has some of those lillies and it’s such a great contrast of dark and light. Here in Indy, the heat and drought has taken a toll on gardens. We used to be Zone 5, now they are saying Zone 6a. It seems more like Zone 8!
Anne Laurie
@HeartlandLiberal:
Every time I’m out in my crappy little urban garden, digging & weeding, I say a little prayer thanking my Irish grandparents and great-grandparents for running away from the Old Sod at the first opportunity. You are so right that we don’t appreciate our good fortune… and, like you, I have the uneasy feeling we’re going to have our noses rubbed in the unpleasant reality.
geg6
Our garden is still growing at an astonishing rate given the ridiculous heat and lack of rain for the last month. I have no idea what we are going to do with what seems like a million Romas and Hungarian peppers. It will be too much for us to possibly use, even taking into account our canning and freezing bushels of them. What really excites me, though, is the peaches ripening on the trees we planted last year. They are getting fat and I can’t wait to eat one.
In other news, the Obama ad with Willard singing is running on heavy rotation here in Western PA. My John and I saw it three times last evening before we started watching “The Help” on dvr at 9pm. And then twice more during the 11pm newscast and the start of the SNL repeat. We cackled with glee every. single. time.
the Conster
@geg6:
Holy awesome shit about the ad. That is all.
ETA: With extra bankster-in-jail schadenfreude. This could be a very interesting next couple of months.
JPL
Your photos are beautiful and I’m glad that you shared them.
Don’t forget that Chris Hayes is going to interview a former Bain partner who wrote a book about how we should be grateful for our meager handouts. Stephanie Cutter is going to be on Face the Nation..wahoo.
geg6
@JPL:
And that dreamy Paul Ryan is going to be
tongue bathedinterviewed by Bob Schieffer, former Senior White House Correspondent during the McKinley administration. My heart flutters.I think Charlie Rose has an interview with the Obamas on CBS Sunday Morning, though. I detest Charlie Rose, but I love me some Obamas.
WereBear
You have excellent taste in daylilies!
i really should order some of my own…
HRA
I went to my granddaughter’s graduation party yesterday in Rochester NY. My daughter’s garden and yard highly surpass any of my gardens. It was a great moment of fun when her moon flowers opened up and everyone’s ohs, ahs and gasps at the sight.
That Obama ad is superb. Reading the responses from Willard’s
cheering sections is amusing in their attempt to weakly diss it.
jnfr
I love this time of year because I can practically see the tomato plants leaping up several inches every day.
Nunca el Jefe
Shoot, I’d admit to that garden of yours in a heartbeat. Around here(Chicago burbs) the only thing doing well is the crabgrass. And the peppers. Many, many peppers. And our lone attempt at a basil plant is actually doing ok. But as far as landscape plants, not so much.
RoonieRoo
Do you like the tomato ladders that I see in your pictures? I’ve thought of trying them over cages but they seem like it would take a lot of trimming and training of the tomatoes to work. I think I am too lazy of a gardener of it.
Josie
@HeartlandLiberal: This is exactly what I discovered when I started vegetable gardening a couple of years ago. Each time a plant doesn’t blossom or fruit or gets a disease, I think of how devastating it would be if that were my only source of food. It’s a scary thought, and many people are totally unaware of the possibilities.
the Conster
Up is on now, and it’s so good. His panel that now includes the Bain guy also includes an OWS and NAACP people, all of who are smart and bringing such a lively set of arguments to the table. Chris Hayes could be channeling John or DougJ with his questions – he actually mentioned young bucks with their t-bone steaks in the last segment. This is how it’s done Fluffy, you mediocre hack.
WereBear
It points out the incredible blind spot with corporate death grips such as Monsanto as placed on our throat; from bees killed by the genetic pesticide in the pollen they eat, to us getting sick and providing a source of revenue to Big Pharma, the present “food industry” is an extraordinary danger to all life.
mai naem
I don’t fully understand the LIBOR deal partly because I don’t understand how bank regulators didn’t catch it. But, I alson wonder if Geithner’s going to end up getting caught up in it being that he was at the NY Fed Reserve. They got info from the Barclays employee and they have emails to the Brits from Geithner saying that they need to follow certain Best Practices to avoid this but ti doesn’t sound like it stopped in the US and it doesn’t sound like it was followed up on. Granted he was busy with TARP and other more important economic stuff but this is 4 years later.
Culture of Truth
Tunch is sweet, but is he ambitious?
the Conster
Ed Conard of Bain is just about to tell us what Mitt was doing between 1999 and 2002. Chris Hayes won’t let him get away with bullshit so this should be good.
Linda Featheringill
I heard a prayer for rain this last week, in NE Ohio. Over the four decades I’ve lived in the area, I’ve never heard anyone pray for more rain.
They also asked for cooler weather while they were at it.
Sign of things to come? Oy.
the Conster
So, it took three years to negotiate Mitt’s terms to leave Bain, which included the compensation he got during that time, because of the implication to the other partners’ terms, and a managing committee took charge of the company in his absence. No real answer to why his name stayed on the SEC filings except it was a “technicality”, and no discussion yet of the contradiction between his various filings.
JPL
@the Conster: Did he really say that Mitt is going to stand up for his company come August or September? I’m only half listening.
the Conster
@JPL:
He says Mitt should, and probably will. That was a really interesting segment, about Mitt OWNING what Bain does, not just as sole shareholder, but as a defense of that kind of economic activity. I hope he takes Conard’s advice.
HRA
@the Conster:
I had to leave watching it when the Bain guy spouted out exactly word for word the Romney campaign talking points. I don’t buy the excuse(s) of why it took 3 years of negotiations to have Romney leave Bain. The stench is higher than the one I encountered on the Thruway from a dead skunk.
Walker
@the Conster:
Is he a concern troll? There is no way that strategy would help Mitt.
jeffreyw
Let’s examine your point from all sides. It’s the only way to be fair and balanced, after all.
JPL
@the Conster: It really was great advice. This closing of factories and ridding the employees of benefits especially health insurance and pension is good for us in the long term. Just like milk.
edit.. builds strong bones and character..
the Conster
@HRA:
I’m not buying the three year “technicality” thing at all, and it’s too nuanced to work politically either. He was being paid a lot of money as a no-show, and that’s what the issue is. Let him try to explain that on a bumper sticker.
the Conster
@Walker:
Conard’s a corporate raider who sees all of us peons as meat puppets on a global chess board who thinks what Bain does is necessary and “healthy” for the overall economy. He wants Mitt to champion that kind of capitalism because it works – for them. I suggest that Mitt take his advice.
Mino
I just love the “insulation” of middle class wages he claimed his outsourcing provided.
And no one addressed the good name Mitt was providing the firm when he wasn’t even there.
Can we draft William Black for AG ?
the Conster
@Mino:
Ditto for William Black, and the OWS woman had an answer for every one of Conard’s arguments that shut him up. Great show.
General Stuck
Ought to be a best seller. Right up there with the Catholic Church doing a book on raising children
Mino
@the Conster: That quote Chris provided from the book was devastating. But he didn’t even notice. Let us rape the world since we are constrained by law at home. And enjoy all the profit, too. Ferengi is too mild for these vultures.
Did you notice most of his economic stats were from the fucking 80’s.
Walker
@Mino:
I immediately ignore anyone who does that. Like all that investment literature that says “look what you could have made if you started investing in 1982”
Mino
@the Conster: Can we make her head of the SEC? She knows where the bodies are.
I notice Holder is threatening criminal charges in the US for LIBOR scandal involvement. Pardon my cynicism, but expect Dem coffers to start seeing Wall Street donations.
Amir Khalid
@General Stuck:
George Walker Bush, economics policy wonk? Surely thou kiddest. Or The New York Times kiddeth.
General Stuck
@Amir Khalid:
Stranger than fiction
Mino
Melissa Harris Perry is letting Mitt have it over his “free stuff” slur. Honestly, Mittens was invited in to speak and he shat on the carpet. Seamus would have had better manners.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: I saw that last night and poured myself another drink. It was either that or drown my sorrows another way. Maybe it’s one of those books you put next to the john.
Mino
@General Stuck: I think I have brain damage. I can’t have read what I just read.
JPL
@Mino: Good.. Free stuff for me but not you peon is what he meant to say.
hep kitty
I’m sorta done with politics for the moment.
I could go on about a book I read in 1991 that warned about people like Mitt (unlike “Wall Street” it was non-fiction) so it doesn’t really matter all that much that he left Bain in 1999 or whenever, when you think about how much damage had been done to the country and the American workforce during the time period he was there, but I won’t.
hep kitty
Oh yeah, and a book written around the same time that predicted the devastating effect the Reagan years would have on the country.
YellowJournalism
“He wrote the foreword for the book, a collection of essays from an array of economists, including five Nobel Prize winners”
Do the ex-President equivalent of cutting and pasting from Wikipedia?
General Stuck
Mitt Romney Bain Capital Document Lists Him As ‘Managing Member’ In 2002
Drip Drip Drip
WaterGirl
@the Conster: I haven’t watched it yet (Tivo) but is the OWS person the young dark-haired woman with bangs who identifies as part of “Occupy the SEC”? The conversation is always great when she is at the table on UP.
Edit: I think the name of the woman I am thinking of is Alexis.
hep kitty
So we are reaping the harvest of our naive belief that the good times would never end and we had nothing to fear.
Blow out the candle, now. The world of our mothers and fathers is gone. Now, at the end of our dreams, take the leavings and go.
General Stuck
Teh Irony. It lives
the Conster
@WaterGirl:
Yes, she was an executive of IT at Merrill Lynch. She’s awesome. Conard’s argument about “a few bad apples” on Wall Street being the problem was really shut down completely by her and William Black. It’s so refreshing to have a panel discussion with people who are the subject matter experts in their field, instead of Hilary Rosen to represent the Democratic agenda, and Ralph Reed and Ari Fleischer to rebut. I love good arguments, and Chris Hayes does a beautiful job of framing the issues and moderating the discussion. It’s a great show.
Mino
@hep kitty: Philadelphia Enquirer series of that period was pretty prophetic, too.
I didn’t know, but a compliation fo their nine articles is available here:
http://www.politicalindex.com/wrong1.htm
It’s titled America, What Went Wrong.
Libby
I believe the correct term for that style is informal, not unkempt. It’s a lovely garden. I’m especially fond of daylilies myself.
HeartlandLiberal
@Anne Laurie: I just finished an article in the Smithsonian Magazine from the past year or so that covered the history of the potato. It literally changed the course of history. Within decades, Europe changed from a continent of hungry, often and repeatedly starving and famine devastated peasants, to a country of farmers and working class people who got so many calories that the population and western civilization jumped ahead dramatically.
The flight from Ireland after the potato blight hit occurred in the context of one million people who died in the famine years. The population of Ireland TO THIS DAY is still below the level it had reached before the potato famine.
In Peru and much of the parts of South America where the potato came from, farmers in the rural areas still cultivate around 5,000 varieties of potatoes, of all colors and flavors. The rest of us are pretty much stuck with the half dozen major varieties that are the result of monoculture, and the annual battle with the blight and the potato beetle, both of which are kept at bay by an annual rotation in the arsenal of chemicals, changing each year hoping to stay one step ahead of the evolutionary arms race being waged by the blight and the beetle.
That is the problem with monoculture. When disease or a pest emerges that can wipe out a crop, it does exactly that. It wipes it out. All of it.
Nellcote
@the Conster:
Don’t know what you were watching but Hayes got rolled by Conard. No relevant push back from Hayes. Another wasted opportunity by our progressive betters.
Mino
@Nellcote: Hayes missed some opportunities, but Black and the OWS girl slapped him. And, Hayes did make a point of his cherry picking among the decades for statistics that bore out his theories.
Mino
@HeartlandLiberal: Heh. I once wrote a seven(a poetic form) that covered the Conquistador’s search for gold that totally overlooked corn, beans and squash.
Mino
@Mino: If you were refering to Conard’s explanation of Mitt’s retirement, then yes, Hayes totally wiffled it.
auntie beak
i’m a little late to this thread, but here’s a link to my garden as it is today. so much good stuff! i’ll be canning pickles and beets and jam this week!
Hypatia's Momma
“This is my country. Wherever I go, I will leave it more beautiful than I found it.”
Me and my siblings used to go on her hikes; the Monarch Butterfly ones are those I remember best.
Kristine
Illinois is officially under 100% drought conditions. Scattered and isolated t-storms have drifted through over the last few days, and I do mean scattered and isolated. One town could receive 1 inch+, which a town a few miles away would get zip. My town got a little. We would need a week of showers to close the 1-inch cracks in the ground.
Even so, hydrangeas are nuts even though the heat has knocked the stuffing out of them–they’re browning early. Once again, the deck tomatoes are falling behind the raised bed cousins, both in size and number of blooms/greenies. However, blossom production has slowed on all the plants due to the heat, and I’ve had to discard a few greenies due to blossom end rot.
if this heat keeps up, I’ll be lucky to get enough tomatoes for fresh salad, much less a batch of freezer sauce. The herbs are doing well, though. May have enough basil for a batch or two of pesto.
Maude
It is gorgeous. A pat on the back for you. AL. The Day Lillies have been out around here and just wow.
We need rain. It’s awful hot and humid.
WaterGirl
@the Conster: Completely agree.
I am watching the show now – an hour and a quarter in. The Bain guy: blah blah blah, bullshit. Alexis and Black: actual facts and logic. They completely blew away everything the Bain guy said. Chris Hayes, too, when he said: you can’t separate everything that caused the problem from the outcome that resulted.
Best political show on TV. I think Up with Chris Hayes beats Rachel all to hell, and I like Rachel. This conversation was no accident. It would have been all blah blah blah bullshit if Chris hadn’t had the guest he had, people who could actually refute the bullshit.
Alexis and Black were like the one-two punch against the Bain guy’s bullshit.
WaterGirl
@Nellcote: @Mino: @the Conster: I am now an hour and a half in, with the last 15 minutes being the topic of Mitt leaving Bain. Have to agree that Chris Hayes did not do well here.
Noticeably, Chris keeps referring to Mitt getting 100k, but that’s not the case at all. All we know is that he got AT LEAST 100k. It could have been 100 million for all we know.
He also let a lot of other stuff slide, too, in this part of the discussion. I don’t understand why he didn’t keep Alexis and Black for this part. The other guests were great for the first 45 minutes, but I think he blew the decision on who to keep for this portion of the show.
For the most part, for the past 15 minutes or so, blah blah blah bullshit seems to be winning.
Edited to add a couple of words I had left out.
Anne Laurie
@RoonieRoo: I like the tomato ladders because I’m a lazy gardener! They are more stable in my gro-bags/pots than the spirals, and if I set them in the pots when I put the two or three transplants in each bag, I can velcro-tie the plants up as & when I get around to it. (I always had trouble keeping up with the cages — if I didn’t catch the vines shooting up during peak growth, they’d deform themselves around the cage wires and I wouldn’t be able to reach the ripe tomatoes without toppling the whole structure.) Also, because the ladders are considerably more sturdy than the cages, at the end of the year I can toss them in the side yard and they’ll still look good the following year… which is not so important to me, but it’s why the Spousal Unit volunteered to pay for them in the first place, since he loathed the “messy, makeshift” look of the old cages.
Starlit
After desperately seeking ways to fix a leak in the water feature, I passed on the $800 in new pond liner and fixed the leak I couldn’t find with a $20 can of rubberized polyvinyl something-or-other I found in an auto parts store. My yard has returned to awesome in the midst of the heat wave. I’m happy (if exhausted).