TGIF baby! (Update)

Big plans this weekend, and I am so excited it's Friday, it's a little ridiculous...

Tomorrow me and R. are going to set up our compost bin, set up a recycling center, hit up another local nursery to try and find some edible flowers/vegetables-we-don't-have, and we're also driving up Monte Sano to go do some serious Thoreau-type camping with nothing but some munchies, notebooks, and possibly a sketchbook or two. At some point we also have to make a guest appearance at my company picnic tomorrow evening, but given the breadth of things we plan to do, we probably won't be staying for long.

We got a bunch of transplants last weekend - the lettuce and spinach and onions are officially gone, replaced by peppers of all stripes (jalapenos, chilies, cayenne, cowhorns), tomatoes (cherry, regular), and cucumber. The latter we planted around the stub of what used to be Monster Rose Bush(tm), heroically cut down (AGAIN) last weekend by R. Our little plantlings were shocky and wilted the first couple of days (didn't help that we had a heat wave) but a dose of sugar water and some TLC brought them around just fine.

We now have no TV, no cable, no video games, no media center to speak of. All of our media comes from the Internet, and most of it at this point is news and current events. Our living room has been taken over by art supplies and its walls are covered with quotes which inspire us (ex. "My country is the world and my religion is to do good" ~ Thomas Paine). A large part of our vegetables now come from either the garden or the farmer's market - we are almost quasi-locavores. We have cut our electricity consumption back to a minimum, using an electric light ONLY in the room we currently occupy (if that).

I personally am learning to enjoy the tranquility of silence again; I believe the lack of television has been one of my favorite transitions so far - I definitely have missed it a LOT less than I anticipated. Instead of listening to the boob tube quacking away from the moment we get up, we sit in the quiet and drink black coffee, smoke cigarettes, make small talk about politics/whatever, or play with the dog. We do dishes by hand (even though we technically have a dishwasher) and listen to Alicia Keyes - not on the honking huge three-CD changing stereo we had in the living room before, but instead on a radio/CD the size of a small melon. Despite cranking up our thermostat to 80, the apartment is dark, cool, and spacious.

I'm lovin' it.

Monster rose bush.

So there is a lot of new stuff going on in the garden. R. went out and pulled up all the bolted lettuce which wasn't edible anymore and had definitely seed-podded out. I also harvested the entire crop of onions, and we've been cooking with those for several days. We've also pulled up the spinach. The kale, cabbage, and leeks are still going strong and making numerous guest appearances in our cuisine, particularly the kale and cabbage which are great for sauteing and stir fries with a little bit of chili sesame oil. Yum yum.

This Saturday is definitely going to be plant-oriented. We plan to go to the farmer's market first thing to find some local heirloom transplants to replace the ones we're pulling up - I'm thinking cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and a variety of other similarly overambitious projects. We definitely want to go organic and heirloom, since almost all seeds and transplants found in commercial plant farms/nurseries are ultimately supplied by Monsanto Agriculture, a company which has monopolized the agricultural field and is a major perpetrator of corporate terrorism on a global scale. Not only that, they are genetically manipulating plants to NOT yield seeds after producing. That means when the plant dies, instead of being able to save your seed and restart your garden again that way, you have no choice but to go out and by more genetically manipulated Monsanto seeds. So we say boo to that.

Not only does Monsanto genetically manipulate your fruits and vegetables, it is also responsible for the unnatural (and potentially dangerous) hormones that are being introduced to your dairy and meat products.

If you want to learn more about why Monsanto is an ethically bust, moneygrubbing corporation of politically-corrupt scumbags, go here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

We will also be tackling the giant rose bush in the center of our vegetable garden. I hate this frickin' thing. I've already cut it down to the ground twice and each time it just comes back bigger and meaner. But no more. No longer will I have a 4'x4' plot of ground in our garden taken up by a black spot ridden eyesore like this rose bush. So this weekend it's definitely got to go.

The bohemian life.

So I finally got my roomie R. moved into the apartment this past Saturday, where we have hung out in easy Guitar Hero-jammin', acrylics-slingin' tranquility until he promptly turned around to fly back to Texas for family business. So the last few days I've been flying solo.

I just got paid today, so I am already deep into plans for environmentally friendly upgrades on the apartment. I really want a few flowers for the porch, new vegetable transplants for the garden, new aquarium plants, some organic pest control, recycling bins, a vermicompost, and maybe some hemp and beads for jewelry-making. I need to buy a desk so I can officially move my desktop into my bedroom, but I think I am going to hit up the Goodwill store and Freecycle.org first before throwing my money at a corporation like Target or whatnot...

Highlights:

- We totally made a soup out of several ingredients in the garden (leeks, onions, cabbage, kale, and French tarragon with some egg, turkey burger, udon noodles, ramen noodles, and various Asian spices - I called it Kitchen Sink Chinese Soup) and it turned out absolutely great, with the exception that the udon noodles cooked a bit long and turned gummy. I was so proud to be able to eat something I'd grown myself!!!

- Working on a new painting for my goddaughter (finally). It should be done within the next couple of days. R. and I have been painting a lot, and it makes me SO happy to be creative on the regular again! It relieves sooooo much stress.

- Trying to get back on a writing (and gym!) schedule for next week.

Wow...

It's been almost a month since I've blogged anything? That's redonkulous.

Well here's a quick garden update:
- 4 days of torrential rain killed almost all of my spinach. Boo.
- My lettuce bolted from a heat wave and is now inedible (but very cool looking); this was partially due to the fact that I didn't harvest early enough, but it happened while I was on vacation, so...ce la vie.
- The onions and leeks are officially ready for harvest. Must find onion recipes!!!
- I have been to New Orleans and Ft. Walton, Florida in the last few weeks.
- The broccoli bloomed. I didn't even know broccoli florets DID bloom, but I guess it's implicit in the name "floret"...learn something every day.
- Strawberries rotted from the rain.
- I don't know what the hell the brussels sprouts are doing, other than that they look absolutely nothing like brussels sprouts...

Also one major piece of news - instead of moving in with my folks when my apartment lease is up in June, I am taking in a roommate who is none other than the infamous java-slinging cynic pissipissi baobao, aka The Alabaman Barista. A kindred spirit and fellow artist-bohemian-warrior for humanity, he is pretty much the perfect fellow to kick my rear into gear on a LOT of my personal goals with regards to activism, autodidactism, etc...

To say I am excited that my delightfully strange best friend is coming to live with me would be a major understatement. We are both eccentric people, and our eccentricities are definitely amplified in each others' company because we are completely nonjudgmental of each other and have no problem being our random selves. It will be interesting to see exactly how weird we get in confinement (lol)...

Therefore, there will probably be a lot of odd social experimentation going on at the apartment in the coming months, herbalism and vermicomposting not the least of them (hopefully). I will try to keep a log of our bizarre adventures here particularly when they relate to permaculture, gardening, or any of that sort of thing.

Yay!