Spring! Garden! Veggies!

It's getting warmer and almost time for t-shirts and shorts (and most definitely flip flops). It also means time to make camping reservations and casino trips. I love this time of year because it no longer gets dark at 5 (when I feel like I'm staying late at work everyday and don't want to do anything once I get out because it's so dark).

And spring also means I get to plant warm climate vegetables in the garden! I've been neglecting the garden because 1) it's been getting dark so early, 2) I get home late from work, and 3) I haven't had to water thanks to the steady Bay Area rain. This past weekend I went to the Flowercraft and picked up some starter seedlings (since slugs and snails and birds have been picking off the ones I grow from seeds). I picked up more cabbage because I think they're beautiful and the last batch made for some good soup. The hard part of gardening is getting rid of all the weeds after letting them go wild for months. I wore my plaid flannel shirt because I knew I'd be doing manly weeding and manly soil-turning and other manly things. It took a couple hours to clear out my two tiny plots.

I love when my plots are nice and tidy. It's much more inviting that way. Below is a photographic inventory of what I've got going in the garden so far. You can bet there'll be more updates soon(ish).


Strawberries


Cauliflowers from last year. One of them finally started to actually get big.


I've been growing zucchinis every year since they produce so much fruit and are so easy to grow. This year I've moved on to round zucchinis.


Three kinds of cherry tomatoes because I'm indecisive. There's a red one, orange one, and yellow one.


Carrots


A mix of regular and Roxanne (red) cabbage


Chard mix


Artichokes, also from last year. There are two plants left after one was dragged into a hole by a gopher.

The garden is growing

A month after planting the first seeds, they're finally starting to look like something I'd buy at the grocery store. The sugar snap vines are starting to take over the trellis that I put up, but they're kind of lanky and fall over a lot. The beets aren't as lanky, but they fall over even more. My favorites are the spinach and butter lettuce, with carrots coming in a close third. The spinach and lettuce leaves, I think, are really pretty (especially the spotted lettuce). The carrot tops look like a mini forest. See more photos of the veggies here.

Also, on the bus home from the garden, a couple girls were doing what I can only describe as "speed talking." Kind of like the Micro Machines guy in the 90s, except they were having a conversation. Well, it was more like they were trying to talk over each other (and loudly), but they could understand each other. It was pretty amusing. And then they got into a fight with a preaching drunk.


Pretty lettuce.


A row of baby spinach.


Carrots!

Eff the farmer's maket

The "eff" is for "forget."

Lately I've been seeing lots of veggies being harvested, including Joshua's giant cucumber, so my green thumb started itching to dig into some soil. That being said, it's not easy to find a good bit of ground for seed sowing in an urban area.

Lucie suggested community gardens, which I thought was a great idea. With enthusiasm, I started dialing all the numbers I could find. To our disappointment, every garden I called had a 3 to 8 year waiting list. Ridiculous! I also emailed a couple places, but had already given up the fight for a plot. Surprisingly, the person running the 25th & De Haro St. garden wrote back and offered us two "very small plots." Man, was I excited. I saw tomatoes, okra, pumpkins, and eggplants flash before my eyes...until I was told that those were all warm season vegetables. Fuck. Well, that didn't stop me from being excited.

Yesterday I went to see the garden with Audrey and even cleared off one of the plots. I also got a couple pairs of gardening gloves and a bunch of cool season crop seeds.


Seeds w/ pretty illustrations


Hangin' at the gate


Someone else's zucchini


One of the plots before it was cleared out


Weeding the garden and shredding my hands


The view of the Mission, Noe Valley, Castro, and Twin peaks from the garden

My bike doesn't look good in nude

My little Peugeot was in desperate need of some new handlebar tape, so I went down to Freewheel Bike Shop and tried to buy some medium-dark brown tape (I want to replace my seat with a nice brown leather seat eventually). Apparently the color I want is really hard to come by, even though purple tape, pink tape, and purple tape with pink speckles were readily available. So I decided to go with a tan cork tape, figuring that it'll eventually get darker from wear. It took a while to put on the new tape, but I actually did a pretty decent job. However (and this is a huge however), my handlebars now look like they've been in an accident and are all bandaged up. It makes me a little sad to look at the bike. Sometime this week I'm going to have to go with another color, probably black, because I can't handle the tan.