M is for Malarkey

I tell stories. Frivolous stories full of unapologetic malarkey and hyperbole. I have been doing this all my life.

When I was little, as my family would sit down to dinner, I would be asked one simple, almost insignificant question: What did you do today, Heather.

Without a second of hesitation I would launch into a detailed description about my day interspersing actual occurrence with snippets of malarkey just to see how far I could take the tale. Nine times out of ten, I was encouraged to spin the tale out further beyond what I could have readily imagined. 

Oh how I wish I had a record of the stories I told. Looking back, I’m sure not a single one of them made sense and my siblings only tolerated my shenanigans because I was the baby of the family.  My childhood was fantasy wrapped in delusion filled to the brim with malarkey.

Today, I still tell wild stories full of malarkey. Just ask the girls about the orangutans that I blame for everything. Or Scott. Poor Scott. Last night while we sat at dinner, a thunderstorm rolled overhead with flashes of lightening and great booms of thunder that shook the windows in their frames. As we ate, I bemoaned the fact that we left my newly purchased bags of soil – the ones for the raised garden bed I’m building – out on the lawn. Unprotected. Scott and the girls looked at me incredulously.

“It’s dirt,” Scott said.

“Yeah,” I sighed, “But it’s my dirt now and I should take better care of it.”

“What are you going to do once you put it in the garden?” He asked.

I looked at him like he was the crazy one, “Put umbrellas over it, obviously.”

Like I said. Malarkey.

Malarkey is a noun from the 1930s that means nonsense.

Example: Marty the Magnificent managed to mumble the magic word making Melvin the Mouse move. “What malarkey!” Marcus moaned at the meager maneuver. 

This post has been brought to you by the Letter M and the fine folks at Blogging A to Z. And by the number 566. Check out more A to Z blogs here!

Poor Amaryllis

Recently I got it in my head that I needed to garden. I had purchased a few bags of potting soil intending to repot my lime tree and a few other plants that had gotten too big for the britches...I mean pots.

Let me backtrack just a bit...you see, I can't garden. Or rather, I'm learning to garden and the plants tend to giggle and scoff at my attempts. But a long while ago when we bought the townhouse we discovered that the previous owner left a multitude of potted plants on the back patio. Instant garden that I completely and utterly ignored. Way back then I had no interest in plants. And because I am lazy to boot, I left the containers right where they were and went about setting up house. A month or so later as spring fully arrived, I was delighted to find that one of the planters had some pretty flowers blooming. I was soon to discover via my mother's wisdom, the huge flowers were in fact amaryllis. I didn't know I like them. Turns out I do. I loved those flowers something fierce.

I know they're hard to see here, but I combed through every photo I had looking for a decent shot of the flowers. Apparently I never actually took just a picture of them. They were caught here in behind the girls during a Easter morning pinata frenzy!

Again, hard to pull out clear details, but I had pink, red, and white flowers.

Oh how little my angels were. These are circa 2009 three years after we moved in.

Despite my love for the plant, I took a strict hands off approach to my care. Sure, during the dry months I threw some water on them occasionally. Once in a while I pulled out the dead leaves, debris, and weeds that clogs around the bulbs. Ninety percent of the time this is what the container looked liked:

When we moved in 2011, I dumped every other container of soil out and took just the pots with us. Except the amaryllis. Those I left alone. I made Scott take a special trip back to the old house just to pick them up because I wanted to keep them.I swore up, down, left, and right that I would become a gardener. I had space now to do so and I knew I could take care of my amaryllis.

And I did.

Sort of.

Here is last Easter. I hid an egg in the amaryllis. See how tall and filled out they are? Those four blooms - two full and two just getting ready to bloom - were the only ones I saw last year. This year? After the autumn dying barely any of the bulbs had any growth at all.

Sure there's some weeds in there...but that adds nutrients and junk, right?

Jump back to last week and my grand plans for repotting. I decided to repot the amaryllis thinking that the bulbs weren't doing well because they were overcrowded. Overcrowded is a massive understatement. My careful neglect over the years had led to nearly two dozen bulbs in that tiny container.

As I was pulling them apart, being exceptionally careful with the roots, I noticed that every single bulb was, to varying degrees, splotched with red spots and patches. I was fairly sure that this was not a normal thing so onto the interent I went to find an answer. In all of the pages I searched mention of a bulb killing fungus that made the Audrey 2 look nice was made but I could find no photos of this dreaded disease.

Where the internet fails, elderly neighbors prevail. I took one of the bulbs and marched across the street where last year, I knew, a gazillion amaryllis bloomed in carefully planned reckless disarray. Mrs. Elderly Neighbor took one look at the bulb I carried and I swear she might have reached for a cross to ward me off!

"Oh, my!" she said as I held it out to her.

"So...that's bad, right?" I asked still just a bit hopeful that my amaryllis could be saved.

"I would say so." She shook her head, "Nothing to do for it. Get rid of all the bulbs and dirt."

"The dirt too?"

"Yes," she said, "it's all been infected."

I sighed, thanked her gratefully, and trudged back to the house to dispose of the bulbs. Stupid things can't even go into the compost.

A pile of bulbs and roots. In the top left of the mass of bulbs you can see one clearly discolored.

But as I was going through them I found three bulbs that only had a couple of little red spots on them. I smiled and pulled out three half-gallon pots. With new soil and individual containers, maybe, just maybe, I'll get a few blooms and I can try to save the seeds and start again.

Meet the Good-ryllis: Angelo, Frankie, and Vinnie. Yeah. I named them after mobsters but it's okay because they're deadly.

Assuming, of course, that the fungus won't affect the seeds.

I Broke the Lawn Mower (And They Say it is a Capital Offense)

NOTE: I am posting this despite not being able to solve the photo issue I was having. 

I love wind chimes. I have five right now strung up across the yard. I used to have six.

Remember a few months back when I had all that yard work done? Well, the guys were good enough to take down the chimes and rehang them if they got in the way of their work.

Looks like they forgot to hang one back up.

And I found it.

With my lawn mower.

By the way, notice that fancy star shape in the center? That apparently makes this a "special" blade that needs to be special ordered from a parts depot because NOBODY carries it.

This blade is now good for ripping the grass from the ground in a whirlwind of inefficiency.

Keeping in mind that lawn mower blades need to be replaced or sharpened every season I don't mind having to replace it. And it was sort of fun hearing that thwackity clunk clunk clunk for about 10 nano seconds before I let go of the lawn mower and jumped five feet away from it expecting it to of course blow right the heck up!

But having to spend an entire day searching the stores for the replacement was a prelude to a tantrum. After an hour in Home Depot (where I was told to go to Sears because they'd have it), then waiting a half an hour for Sears to open only to be told that they don't carry that particular blade so I should check the bigger Sears in the mall. At the bigger Sears I was told they could order the part for me to pick up later.

"You don't carry it?" I frowned at the khaki wearing man.

"Nope. This is a special order part." He walked to an in store customer computer. "Here, I can help you order it."

Right, I think, because I can't order something online by myself! Jeesh! I don't want to pay for shipping which was the whole point in coming to the store.

"I'm really trying to understand this." I said slowly, my patience had already worn down to a very thin strand ready to snap at any moment. "I bought the lawn mower here." The man nodded at me. "You were in fact the one who sold it to me." (I have a great memory for faces plus he has been working at this Sears in the lawn and garden department for as long as I can remember). He nodded again, but he was clearly just trying to appease me at that point.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And you are telling me that you do not actually carry the parts for the products that you sell?" I am sure steam is shooting out of my ears and my eyes have rolled into the back of my head.

"I can order it-"

"No," I interrupted, "I'm done. I'll just order it at home."

"I'm very sorry," he said as I turned and walked away.

I nod but just kept walking. I had a lethal weapon in my hand in the form of a rusty old lawn mower blade and I so wanted to shank someone.

Friday Photos

Get ready for the Cinder Block Harvest Fest!!

When we first moved to our new house, I noticed a large pile of bricks and cinder blocks sitting just beyond the fence line. I was curious about them but didn't give it too much thought because as they were on the other side of the fence, they weren't mine.

Every so often over the course of the past year, I'd give them a glance and sigh because if only I had those cinder blocks I could do so much good in the world...well, in my yard at least. Specifically this - a raised garden bed made from cinder blocks. But alas, with out the cinder blocks, I went ahead and repurposed my old milk crates into a a container garden. Still...I yearned for the day when I would make a "real" garden.

It wasn't until my landlord came over to supervise the recent yard work that I made a startling discovery. The cinder blocks were actually on this property! The previous tenant was the one who put up the fence for his dogs and, being sort of lazy about it, just fenced around the brush and pile of cinder blocks instead of following the property line.

I asked my landlord if I could use the bricks and cinder blocks and after he looked at me like I was crazy said he didn't care at all what I did with them!

So I have started harvesting the bricks. They are easy to get as they are lighter than the cinder blocks. In order to get those, I need to disassemble part of the fence and I haven't gotten to that point yet.

Here they are...just waiting for me...waiting to fulfill their purpose.

See how sad they are behind the fence? Poor things! They long to be made into a garden!

These are some of the bricks I was able to save. A sad little pile now, but when I have some more, I plan on making a couple flower beds with them.

It's hard to see in black and white, but the sun filtering down through the branches above really made the cinder blocks pop out. It was pretty in a creepy sort of way.

I love the vines that crisscross over, around and through the pile as though trying to hold onto them.

The bricks are in the best of shape and I have no idea how long they sat neglected, but it will make an interesting juxtaposition  - old bricks, pretty flowers... Nice!

Heart of Flame

We have a zoo membership to the local zoo and as much as I love the antics of the animals and listening to the keeper chats (seriously, Cyra can give her own keeper chats about the bald eagles and has, on many occasion, corrected zoo visitors she overhears talking about the eagles. Obnoxious, yes. But also so freaking cute).

But the zoo is also a botanical garden and every spring the gardens burst with such fantastic colors and flowers, I often spend more time taking photographs of the flora rather than the fauna.

This past weekend, the girls and I went to the zoo with Cyra's Girl Scout troop. Ashleigh and I lagged behind quite a bit and often got sidetracked which happened to be a very good thing because otherwise I would never have found this:

This is a Heart of Flame. It is a South American flower which is weird because it was planted in the Africa section of the zoo.

And it is so very orange!

As a new gardener, I am finding that I am more fascinated than I ever was by flowers. And I must have one. Or three. Or twelve. They make me smile all over my face they are so bright and orange and cheerful! And also slightly pointy and spiny.

Who Needs A Truck?

I do. Seriously and for real. Need a truck.

I was only able to fit two in the back seat and I need at least four! By the time I got back to the store that gave them to me for FREE the other two I wanted were GONE!!

I bet someone saw me joyfully cramming pallets into my car and they were all like "HEY!! Let's ruin that lady's day and take the other ones BEFORE she comes back! Bwa ha ha!! That will keep her from ever being able to complete her awesome pallet project!"

My project, by the way, is indeed totally awesome. Check it out here.

Friday Photos

Sometimes, in this big, big world we forget that epic things happen every day…on a slightly smaller scale. Animal Planet, Discovery, History and Disney all like to produce shows detailing the lives of great creatures: dinosaurs, lions, whales, chimpanzees.

But who, I ask you, tells the stories of the small creatures? 

Well...today, I guess that would be me.

Witness, for instance, the Epic Battle I almost stepped on while puttering in my garden the other day. 

This is the Epic Battle of a spider wasp named Bronte (because spider wasps have trendy names) and a lone wolf spider, named Murray McGilroy, a good, hard working spider out for his morning coffee break.

 See how Bronte attacks with relentless force, driving the looming Murray back again and again. Fear rolled off Murray like a thick fog in London.

Murray rears back hissing and cursing (I assume that's what it is doing since that's what I'd be doing if a wasp was trying to lay its eggs on my abdomen).

 

 Again and again Murray tries to flee fearing the biting pierce of Bronte's...egg laying sting?

Bronte finally flies off, the action so quick I was unable to determine who was actually triumphant. Did Murray manage to scare the persistent Bronte off? Or did Bronte sneak in with a quick snap of her ova...duct...depositor? and lay an egg on Murray's back as he tried to flee?

We may never know. Murray was gone when I came back to check on him.

Pickleworms?!?! WTF!

So remember how braggy I was the other day about my awesome garden? I was all conceited and proud.

Oh how I have fallen.

My beautiful cucumbers are gone. So very. very. gone. Because of a stupid moth and its offspring! Remember that scene in Wrath of Khan where Kirk screams "KHAAAAANNNNN!"

Yeah. That's how I feel right now. Thwarted by a stupid moth. And BABIES!

All the sites and books pretty much say the same thing - once infested there goes your crop!

That is grody.

Many of the vines and all of the fruit had this inside.

My friends, The Pickleworm!

This one, and the one behind it I had hope for when I first spotted them! Oh how my idealism has fallen!

All those little green pellets? POOP!!! Not only did they eat my cucumbers, they pooped in them!

PICKLLLEEEEWOORRRRMMMMM!!!!!

I Made It Monday

Until I became obsessed with the Apocalypse, I never gave gardening much thought. My dad grew a huge garden every year and I can remember times when I helped weed, sow and pick. My mother had beds of flowers and pots of plants but I still didn't pay much attention.

Now, I am borderline obsessed with my little haphazard garden. I've got a stockpile of mason jars and I'm ready to can as soon as more veggies grow. This year was my practice garden. I recycled milk crates and bought cheap pots at Wal-Mart. I broke apart an old bed frame that I knew I wasn't going to use again to build makeshift trellises for my cucumbers and peas.

I am ridiculously proud of the fact that I put seeds in some dirt and now I am starting to get to vegetables to feed my family.

from left to right: peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, peppers, carrots, celery, lettuce. in front: onions, basil, tomatoes.

cucumbers and a head board

sugar snap pea blossom. it totally smells like peas.

the peas were the first veggies to grow!

a mix of jalapeno and bell peppers

crazy color carrots.

my favorite herb - basil. and the only one I planted.

lettuce

tiny tomato blossoms

Sour

When we first moved into the new house this past summer I was thrilled to discover we had a mature citrus tree in the back yard. The girls, especially Ashleigh, have been begging for a lemon tree for years now. With this tree, I was one step closer to a citrus grove.



Notice Ashleigh mowing the lawn with an old fashioned push mower? That lasted about two weeks. It mowed just fine. It just took us three days to get one section of the lawn mowed.

At first we were unsure as to what type of citrus. The fruits were small and green when we moved in. I had such visions of delicious fresh oranges and juice every day! No scurvy for us! Then the fruits began to ripen and turn a delightful orange. Every few days the girls and I would go out and survey the tree making plans to buy a basket picker to get the fruits from the upper branches. And then we noticed the thorns. And even though the oranges were clearly ripe - falling off the tree ripe - the flesh was so bitter and sour it made us gag!

Lovely, ripe oranges full of anti-scurvy goodness!

It turns out that our beautiful orange tree is one of the few types that produce sour oranges. These oranges are mostly used for essential oils although I have seen a few recipes for marmalade and other sauces.

 

How perfect! Not pictured Thorns of Death and Destruction!

So I have not a sweet delicious orange tree but a sour bitter one. Looks like I'm going to need to learn how to can pretty soon so I can make marmalade!

Marmalade still fights scurvy, right?