Tag Archives: Dogs

Jun30

June Garden Updates

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The Good:

  • The garlic is doing great!  It’s almost shoulder high with beautiful scapes.
  • I have tall tomato plants and one huge green tomato on which I cannot wait to see some color.
  • The cucumbers have survived the dogs’ rearranging session and are starting to climb up the trellises.
  • Carrots, radishes, and beets are coming along nicely.
  • Our strawberry plants are establishing runners.

The Bad:

  • The corn is calf high, about 6 inches shorter than everyone else’s crop 😦
  • While I spent the weekend in Connecticut someone came through and ate the leaves off of all of my green and purple bean plants 😦
  • The squash is coming along but is moving much slower than I remembered.
  • My peppers are hit or miss – some are thriving, others are being eaten.
  • I never put my broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage in the ground; I’ll try again for the fall.
  • Weeds and Violets have taken over the beds by the garage.
  • The dogs LOVE to climb into the beds and dig around in the loose soil.

Note: I added a harvest tally to the sidebar –>

Oct28

7:21 Wake-up Call: The cement blocks are here.

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I ordered 450 cement blocks (often misidentified as cinder blocks, but are no longer made of cinder) online from a big-box hardware store.  I would heartily prefer getting them from my local hardware store (and if I ever need replacements you can be sure I’ll do just that), but for this job the big-box store delivers!  There is no way I can pass up home delivery of 450 cement blocks.  I don’t even know how many trips and how much time it would take up to get those from the store to my driveway in the back of my first generation Prius (smallest car ever).

My order confirmation clearly states that once the order is received, the store will contact me within 24 hours to set up a delivery time.  “Great!” I think.  “I can order tonight and schedule a delivery for later this week so the blocks will be here for our event this weekend.”  Er, no.  The delivery man called me at 7:21 this morning – on a weekend! – and said gruffly, “Uh, yeah, I’m calling about a delivery for a Mr. Dillon Hendrick.  I’ll be around to drop the blocks off between 8 and 10 AM. Bye.”  This left Dashel very excited.

I bolted out of bed, threw on some incredibly warm [sarcasm] yoga pants and a sweatshirt, and started chucking things from my driveway over the fence into my backyard to clear a path, disconnecting hoses along the way.  I moved the car to the street, turned on all the outside lights, and then I waited.  Sure enough, at 9AM, right square between 8 and 10, the delivery truck shows up and wakes up every dog on the block.

Six shuttles back and forth brought me 450 cement blocks and six pallets to work with this weekend.  George, the delivery man, was very nice and remarkably pleasant for having been up so early in the morning on a weekend.  I actually think he drove the truck past the house at 7:30 this morning on his way to work, checking out his drop location.  In the time it took him to unload I was able to feed the dogs, makes a grilled cheese sandwich, and empty/reload the dishwasher.  Not a shabby start to the day.  Now I just have to resist picking at the plastic on the pallets until it’s time to use them.  It’s like homesteading christmas!  With that checked off my list I’m moving on to the next item: obtaining massive amounts of quality compost.

Oct26

Cover Crop and Recycled Toilet Paper: What the neighbors know about us

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Molly & Dash guarding the mail.

I suppose this is as good a way as any to start this new blog; it is certainly better than waiting around for the perfect inspiration or appropriate topic.  Today I received two very exciting packages: A) a box from High Mowing Organic Seeds and 2) a box of recycled toilet paper.  This says to the mailman, Sean, “Yes we are kind of crunchy and no we don’t have time to go to the store.”  I like using our mail as a way to update the neighbors on the goings-on in our household and as a way to tell them about us without actually having to talk to them.  If I had to talk to them, they might tell me that they don’t approve of my barking dogs, long grass, unweeded driveway, the vegetable garden that is remarkably close to the front yard, and our compost bin (the last two are, of course, prohibited in this city).

We occasionally get organic produce deliveries which tell the neighbors that we’re tech-savvy and serious about our pesticide intake.  Then there’s the huge packages from Home Depot that they watch me struggle to pull into the house on my own, which tells them that someone in the house likes to do things his-or-herself and also that I cannot lift more than 40 pounds.  There’s the Coldwater Creek and Lane Bryant boxes which confirm that the ladies in the house are in fact plus-sized and that one of us probably has a new job/internship/interview or that I’ve run out of underwear again.  They know that we have an Amazon addiction and while they don’t know what we buy, they can assume by the frequency of deliveries and package size that it is probably toothpaste, books, and cat food.  They would be right.

These last two packages tell the neighbors a few more things about us.  First, the recycled toilet paper tells them that I prefer to buy in bulk and that I hate superfluous plastic packaging and virgin bleached paper so much that I’m willing to wipe my lady-parts (that’s right, it’s that kind of blog) and stuffy nose with toilet paper that resembles the last parking ticket I received more than any kind of cottony-soft like an angel or an adorable dancing bear’s personal paper products that may or may not have been quilted by tiny grandmas in the oak tree out back. (I forgot the golden retriever puppies, but hopefully you get the idea.)  The High Mowing Seed box tells them that I am serious enough about gardening that I am throwing down my first ever cover crop, oats, as a green manure to prepare for next season.  And that I’m attempting to plant garlic, my first ever fall/winter crop.

The neighbors see that I live in this house with a man, Sammit, who my mailman knows I’m married to after all those save-the-dates, invitations, RSVPs, and Thank You! cards he lugged around in the Summer and Fall of 2010.  They also either realize that I live with another woman or they get really confused about my hair length and dress style changing so rapidly, sometimes several times in the same day.  The mailman can probably deduce that she is my sister given our last names are the same and our parents named us Dillon and Devin.

They also see that Sammit works nights and is at least pretending to be a doctor given his white coat and over abundance of scrubs.  I would have my doubts too though; he is way too silly to be an actual medical professional.  I think he goes somewhere each night to play Borderlands and knocks over a gas station on the way home in order to fake a salary.  They see that on those nights when Sammit works, if I leave the front window shade up, that I spent most of it not cleaning but reading on my computer with a documentary, television series, or RuPaul’s Drag Race on the TV in the foreground.  They probably don’t know what I do given the inconsistent schedule and long breaks I have as a student.  And they have no idea what Devin does but they do get irritated when she parks her car in front of their house too long (they leave notes).

They know that we recycle everything, forget to take the trash out most weeks, and that our pets escape the house/yard unexpectedly and have to scour the block in our pajamas while shaking treat-bags.  They see that we have an annual pumpkin carving party (except this year – sad – ) and we celebrate Indian/Hindu as well as American secular holidays and solstices.

So, that’s kind of what you would know about my family if you were our neighbors.  But you’re not our neighbors, at least I don’t think you are, so you’ll probably learn a lot more if you stick around.  You can start by checking the About Us page.