Deer are the scourge of the forest and my garden

You’re back, SuperKasey!  Your strawberries look great.  I’ve heard you can make tea out of them.  And also ice cream.  Delicious.

I have some scary news, SuperKasey.  They’ve come.  The Deer.  Cue horror music.

Do you know what deer are?  Deer are what happened when a rat and a pigeon cross-bred.  They are just big vermin that eat everything in sight.  Oh, sure, they are cute to look at, with their big eyes and bushy tails and running from forest fires, but then they come out of the woods and get all territorial and try to trample people and eat every bushy green thing or colorful flower they can find.  They also eat bark and trash and cigarette butts.

Like I said: vermin.

I’m Back! Now to Talk about My Mobile Strawberry Patch

Hey bud,

I have missed you, BraceKyle. Sorry I’ve been such a blog bum. A short life update before the garden update. I have officially left my job, taken a week off, gone to Maine and started a new job. Its been crazy, but I was very dutiful in taking pictures and now I can fill you in on all of it!

In between the last job and Maine, I got a couple days to play in my garden. It was very welcome after staying late in the office to tie up loose ends. But when I went back to my yard to see what had happened when I was away, I saw that some restructuring was necessary on my strawberries.

Check out the Herban Lifestyle and other great blogs

Good morning, SuperKasey.  Today is the Monday morning after a short week.  Also, the CEO at my office has been out of the area for many days of the past two weeks, so she’s in “LET’S COMPLETE ONE MILLIONS TASKS!” mode.  I only have time to leave a quick note for you (and for those of you following this gardening battle).  Here comes some link-dumping.

My first real harvest

SuperKasey, I’m very excited about the content of this post!  I’m excited because this thing that we’ve begun has finally yielded me my first real harvest.

Sure, I’ve snipped off some herbs and a few baby chard leaves here and there, but that’s not the same as an honest-to-god-true-blue-dyed-in-the-wool-I’m-a-big-boy-now harvest.

And that’s precisely what I’ve just had.  My first one of those.

Swiss chard and radishes!

A thorough update and overview of my efforts so far

SUPERKASEY!  We are now nearly two months into our little competition, and I hope you are feeling as good about this as I am.  Because, uh, you know.  They say it’s my year.

Whatever that means.

I wanted to drop you a general update on the goings-on in my garden.  Here is how things are looking now:

“I don’t have my giant telephoto lens.”

Good morning, SuperKasey!  It is a Thursday in a 4-day week wherein I’m only working a half-day on Friday.  That makes it like a…Friday morning?  How does that work out in hours?  I’ll let you do the math.

My dear friend Julius recently visited me, and among our hiking and camping and watching the TV show Glee (he talked me into it; I liked it more than I thought I would, but I still don’t understand how TV shows work), he managed to snap some photos of the garden.

I was briefly proud of my radishes, but then…

Good morning, SuperKasey!  Long time no see.  Your potato situation SUCKS!  Were you able to salvage the little fingerlings, or is it a total wash?  I’m so sad!  So many tasty potatoes lost in the garden battle.

I have camped a lot lately, and that excites me to come home and dig in my garden, where things are getting big.

The radishes are coming along beautifully.  I was feeling very proud of myself, me being a new gardener and all, but then I found out that many schools have their very young children (at 6-8 years of age) plant radishes as an experiment because they are so easy to grow.  Oh.  Okay.  Now I feel like I’m bragging about finally coloring inside the lines.

I’ve intercropped the radishes with bush beans and carrots.  I’ve read that intercropping (planting different crops in very close proximity) works in this fashion, because the things that grow quickly shade the soil (keep it cool on hot days), hold moisture underground and partly block the growth of weeds.  The idea is this: intercrop when you have a crop that goes from seed to harvest quickly (like radishes) and another that takes time to reach maturation (like carrots).  It is like providing a big brother to protect the little guys from bullies at school (the bullies are the weeds).  It is working well so far.