"Too much is never enough"

This, I believe, is my husband's motto in life. Perhaps his farming ancestors are part of this but Peter firmly believes that one must always have more rather than just enough. He already has a family story about him. You see, while Dad was in the hospital during one of his operations, Peter kindly offered to bring us all dinner. He picked up some Chinese food and brought it to the weary group at the hospital. You could smell the Chinese food wafting down the hallway as Peter got off the elevator, and we were all blown away by the number of boxes that he unpacked. They just kept coming and coming. Kung pao and General Tso's mixed with some Happy Family and several boxes of potstickers with rice and veggies and more and more. All to feed three stressed out and scared women and one cancer patient. We took most of those boxes home.

I tell you this story to stress that Peter is WELL known for this behavior. But, it still came as a surprise to me when I showed up at THE GARDEN Tuesday morning. He told me it was big. He described the number and variety of plants. But, somehow, the true scale of the garden was lost on me.

We are so screwed.

The garden is really huge. Like crazy. There are at least 60 squash/cuke/melon mounds without an exaggeration and each mound has two or three plants. We'll be sneaking around the neighborhood and leaving squash presents on people's doorsteps in a month or two.
The white marks on the lower right aren't fungus, rather it's a melon variety called Moon and Stars. The Fruit are also supposed to have green with yellow dots.

There are 20 or so tomatoes putting out fruit. You can see them here tied to stakes.

You can start to see the scale of the garden in this picture. The lettuce, radish, carrots, basil, and weeds are in the foreground. Tomatoes and beans are in the middle and the squash are there in the back. We still have at least 100 radishes to pull, and I have two bunches in the fridge. The beans are going to go crazy any minute and the zukes are putting out babies fast. There's an entire "field" of basil. We harvested three zukes already as well a few different types of peppers. Our farming companions took home the few peas that managed to grow (it was past their season when they went in the ground). The beans have tiny beans growing (just thicker than a pencil lead) but by next weekend I'm sure they'll be huge. I'm hoping we get enough to can!

The farm project is intense and crazy, but incredibly enjoyable. Of the garden gang, I'm the only one with actual growing knowledge and it's great fun to watch them learn about plants and figure out who needs what. (Although they all need to learn to harden their hearts and THIN seedlings. By the time I got home it was too late and we have so many little two headed radishes).

And we're rather well known now. On Wednesday I went in to campus to lesson plan a bit and say hi to various profs. German prof asked how Peter was doing since his garden had flooded. I explained that he had a new garden project going and that it was a little ambitious. We talked for a while and then I mentioned that it was near PEter's old job. German Prof's jaw hit the ground as he exclaimed, "You mean that's YOUR garden?" He and his kids apparently have walked by regularly. We also get visitors from the gym and the restaurant and people drop off gifts as well (farming tools, hay etc).

I never would have wanted or planned a garden on this scale... but it sure is fun!

Tornados

Well, we're not even home for a week and the storm season is starting. They just interupted NPR with a severe tornado storm warning for our county. This means that they haven't sighted an actual tornado, but that the weather conditions are right to produce one. I've canceled my plans to head out and look for a new laptop and we're staying downstairs near the "tornado shelter" (aka the space under the stairs).

It's not particularly scary, more crazy than anything else. They just announced on the tv of visibility at near zero on the freeway and cars blown off the road.

Interested in following? Put our zip code into weather.gov

Updates to follow

5:00 pm-
Well the rain and excitement have passed safely. No tornadoes were spotted and the cat is coming out of his secret hiding place. We're supposedly in for a week of rain and excitement! Wanna come visit?

Gardening

Peter and I have been working hard these past few days, getting our various garden projects under control. Not only do we have the giant garden... but we also have a few side projects at our apartment.


Today, we worked on our little patch of dirt. We weeded around our volunteer squash which seemed to have sprouted from a rotten squash that Peter tossed outside this spring. So far, it only has male flowers, so we don't know if we'll actually get any fruit from it. This isn't too surprising as it was a commercial plant and probably some sort of freaky hybrid anyway.



We also harvested potatoes. Yep, just as before in the Rose City, Peter and I are doing our heritage and forefathers well and planting potatoes. We picked these beauties that we'll have lightly boiled with butter and thyme for dinner tonight.


We also noticed these. They appear to be potato fruit. After some googling, it seems that they are indeed the fruit of the potato plant (as the tubers are just the roots). Wikipedia says they are highly toxic. We'll probably follow the directions for harvesting the seeds to see what happens. I've never planted potatoes from seeds before, but since it's the International Year of the Potato , I figure we'll give it a try.

We also rescued the chives and a pepper plant that survived the floods from the old garden plot. They are safely replanted up here at the house.