It hasn't died. And I haven't really forgotten so much as I've been lazy. It's doing SWIMMINGLY, in fact! Observe:
These are our beans and radishes. They've both done really very well, considering the heat and everything. I'd recommend beans, radishes and tomatoes to anyone looking for Florida-hearty plants.
A couple of our green peppers (one of which I believe is going into some sort of bean and rice dish tomorrow...if so, I'll let you all know how it tasted).
They're getting large enough to pick now, so we've had a couple of radishes and beans and peppers. YUM.
Since we've had some marginal success, we decided to plant some squashes (above, butternut and zucchini if my memory serves me correctly. Which I promise you, it never does.) and watermelon (below).
Artistic photo is artistic.
Our potted tomatoes have gotten bigger. It'll be a while before they're ripe enough for eating but OMG SPEAKING OF TOMATOES...
LOOK AT HOW BIG THE BEEFMASTER HAS GOTTEN. He is a giant amongst vegetables.
These are his offspring, which I'm sure will be delicious (tell me how many times you can actually SAY that sentence with relevance in polite society?!).
And yes. I'm now on my way to being dwarfed by a tomato. Laugh, I invite you. I do it all the time. ;)
So that's the garden! If you missed my first post or obsessively want to compare the sizes of our growing veg like I do you can catch it here.
I highly recommend planting something. If you think about it, and this is really sad, gardening or growing plants of any kind is really the most contact any of us have with the Earth. Like, actually touching, digging, getting it under your fingernails, in the soil and Earth. And it's also a connection with the past. Humans have been planting and growing since the beginning of time, and it's neat to engage in an activity that's so ancient without feeling like an obsessive freak. It's really cool. And it's very rewarding when you pick and eat something (that tastes NOTHING like storebought vegetables, for better or worse) that YOU GREW from a tiny insignificant SEED. It's pretty awesome. But only if you think about it a lot like me or are a tree-hugging hippie. Ideally if you're a deep-thinking tree-hugging hippie.
AWESOME, YOU GUYS! I'm now kind of officially a college senior! Super!!
I thought I'd upload some pics of just a few of the books I read this semester. Books for my research paper. Yeah, I read them. Wanna guess my topic??
Books I'd rec: Great Expectations, Dracula, Northanger Abbey (naturally), Hothouse, Evelina and War of the Worlds. Books to avoid like the plague: To the Lighthouse (not pictured) and Caleb Effing Williams.
This was my bitch of a sci-fi book (quarter for size reference, hah). This was an awesome class and I definitely recommend taking it (LIT 3310, for non-English majors), especially if you need elective credit, but be ye warned: this book plus 3-4 novels are REQUIRED reading. You really can't BS your way through the class. Or, I mean, you can. But you'll fail. Miserably.
Anyway. To all of you who gave me bookmarks this year, THANK YOU. I used every single one of them.
I think it's time now for some of this: Only I don't look like that AT ALL, my pool is freezing cold and I don't have a nifty inflatable recliner, even if my pool was warm. IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THING, YOU GUYS.
ETA: I JUST ate our first radish out of the Victory Garden! SUCCESS! No pics because people who blog pics of themselves eating radishes are probably pedophiles weird. But I'll try and take pics of the garden and some more of our bounty, hopefully this weekend. HOORAY!
Victory Gardens were grown during World Wars I and II under the pretense that gardening would help extend the life of food rations. Lots of people did garden in the hopes that growing their own food would help out, even in just a small way. Not too sure about that hat that looks like an internal organ (stomach maybe??? Help me out, Beth!), but her gladiator sandals are awesome.
My Mom and I decided to start a garden.
Some genius out there came up with these really cool things. They're trays with little individual sections made of peat. You fill them with soil and drop two seeds in, and then, once they grow big enough, you just tear apart the sections and drop them into the ground. Because they're made of peat, the whole thing can go straight into the ground! No plant-death-by-transplating. Also, you can start them indoors. It's like gardening for the florally challenged, which we are.
We planted the above vegetables (repetition would be obsolete).
Carrot seeds! Look how tiny they are! All the seeds (except beans) were pretty small. I'm kind of baffled how they go from being that tiny to like, a plant. Way to go, God, that was quite clever.
A pouch full of magic beans. :)
So this is what they looked like on Day 1:
And this is what they look like today!
Look how teensy weensy our lettuce is! It boggles my mind that lettuces start out so smallish!
The beans and radishes seem to be doing the best. If these beans keep it up, I may well be able to climb to the castle in the sky to fight the giant and get the Golden Goose. This is my goal.
This is the garden plot we made up in our backyard so that when they're ready, they can go in. The neat thing about the peat tray (well, there are lots, but this is one of them) is that it's re-usable. You just have to buy refill peat pots and then you can go again! I think once these are out, we're gonna try some squashes. Will keep you posted.
We also have some potted plants. They probably won't go into the ground....unless they get epically giant or something. I believe you're looking at a red pepper and a strawberry here.
Also, we got a pineapple. It apparently takes three years for them to go from seed to maturation. I'm not sure how old this one is, but I can pretty much guarantee it won't be until next Spring/Summer before we're able to eat it.
This one is probably my favorite just because it's called a BEEF MASTER tomato. He's just too epic for words. I wish I'd taken a pic when we first got the Beef Master, because he was about half the size he is now. Apparently, radishes, beans and tomatoes do really really well in Florida.
So total: two rows of radishes, carrots, lettuce, beans, red and green peppers, patio and BEEF MASTER tomatoes, strawberries and a pineapple. I'll keep you guys posted as to whether or not the Victory Garden is indeed victorious. If I never mention it again, either assume it's going swimmingly and I'm just being lazy, or that they all died and am too ashamed to admit it.
