The garden needed, and got, some attention!

Definitely. Here was the situation when I got to Sebago around 6:45 -

After an hour plus of concentrated work weeding, pulling out the sugar-snap peas (they had lots of peas ready for picking or beyond, but were at the end of the line), and staking:

From How Does My Garden Grow?

I get a lot of produce out of my little 4x6 plot. The key, I think, is making anything that can go vertical, go vertical - that does take a little attention, though. Having had no attention for several weeks now, everything had gone rampaging off on the horizontal plane & the slow-motion wrestling match for survival was well underway, with the cucumbers bidding fair to come out the winner. Holy cow, they were THRIVING, tendrils running off to every corner of the garden - if I'd just left things alone I think I could have had enough of a crop to sell!

However, I'd rather have some tomatoes too. Maybe the tomato plants will be more interesting in making tomatoes now that they aren't being strangled by runaway cucumbers...

or just plained squashed by a giant runaway crazy 2nd-year chard plant!

Yep, I hadn't done it by the time I took the "after" picture tonight, but after a little more gardening, I decided it was time to end the science experiment tonight.

It was a fun experiment. At the end of last season, I'd left a couple of chard roots in the ground over the winter, out of pure curiousity. One made it through. It dwindled back to a couple of little tiny leaves that never quite seemed to die; No matter what rottenness the winter threw at 'em, they just hunkered down and stayed at least partly green. Here they were on the day when I got the bed cleaned up & ready for the season:

As you can see, the biggest of the 3 little over-winter leaves got halfway frozen - but they never quite got nipped all the way & by this time (mid-March), it was already starting to perk up & get back to growing.

It started like a normal chard plant, and provided me with some of the first pickings of the year. Eventually, though, it bolted, just like lettuce when the weather turns warm - only it got a WHOLE lot bigger than any rambunctious Romaine!



I had a lot of fun watching this thing go rocketing off, but tonight I discovered that there was a volunteer tomato plant that was fighting to exist in the same space. I let the tomato win.

No ripe tomatoes yet, although plenty on the way, but the pickings were GOOD tonight!

I had a fine "mess" of beet greens & green onions for dinner tonight! Simply sauteed in olive & sesame oils, with a little butter thrown in. Delicious!

Aiea Ladies Kick A Little Car Thief Okole.

Fun story from my hometown!

How Does My Garden Grow?

I have no idea! Haven't seen it for 2 weeks. Last visit, things were running a little wild, but the sugar snap peas were delicious.

Checking in tonight if all goes well at work today.

Fail Blog Fail

That's not a fail!

Good thing there were 20 kayakers there to set them straight.

....O
:D/>
.O

(er, of course taking yet another swing at the poor Fail Bloggers a year and a half after the original post, instead of actually blogging tonight, might just = Blog Fail)

Correction to yesterday's post -

Unsurprisingly, for a post written on a lunch hour I probably should have spent working, I managed to foul up a bit!

Here is Sweet Bluesette.

Instead, I'd accidentally dropped in the link to the Pacific Islander post in which Pandabonium made the startling announcement that he & K were sailing a 14-foot dinghy across the Pacific.

Review of a New Sailing Blog!

photo most egregiously swiped without permission from Pandabonium!

Jumping in on one of Tillerman's Group Writing Assignments!

OK, very busy at work so I have to keep it short & sweet almost to the point of cheating. Actually I wasn't planning on posting until tonight if at all, but Tillerman's review of a kayak excursion in Maine oops make that Massachusetts inspired me.

So here's my short & sweet review!

I can't remember how I first found his blog, but I've been reading Pandabonium's Pacific Islander for a long time. He's from Hawaii, he now lives in Japan, and his blog is primarily a thoroughly enjoyable series of photos & writing of the adventures he, his lovely wife "K", and Momo the Wonder Dog share in those islands. There are occasional snippets of Hawaii, either from the days when Pandabonium lived there, or of his family (kids & grandkids) who are still there.

His blog has been in the non-boat-blog section of my pathetically neglected blogroll for ages.

Then one day, I went to his blog to see what interesting bit of life in Japan he or Momo (yes, the dog occasionally posts too) had chosen to share and read the following:

K and I have decided to sail an open 14 foot sailboat across the Pacific Ocean from California to Japan!

I just about fell off my chair.

But within a few more sentences, things were cleared up:

Besides, our boat will be sitting on a trailer and tucked away on a very large ship for the whole voyage. We'll not have to leave home until it arrives.

This was the first of a few posts in which Pandabonium shared the story of how he & K came to buy a boat.

It was a long time from the time when the order was placed to the time that sailing was even imminent, but finally it was time to find a club and start sailing (yay!).

And so in June, it came to pass that Pandabonium started a new blog, Sweet Bluesette, named after their new blue Lido 14, which was in turn named after the song.

I've been thoroughly enjoying following that new blog as he chronicles the fun he & K (no Momo on this one, I did mention in a comment at some point that she'd look adorable in a puppy pfd but I'd missed the bit where Pandabonium mentioned that the wonder dog is a wonder land dog, not a wonder seadog) are having with their sweet little dinghy!

Which, btw, is very much like the picture of the sailboat I'd love to get if I had money & time for it - Sunfish and Lasers and Force 5's & the like are all tons of fun but if I were to get a sailboat, I guess I'd really like one that I could singlehand if I wanted to, but was a little more comfortable for taking friends along.

Belated Happy 4th of July (and Canada Day, too!)

Hope everyone's holiday was happy & safe!

Getting in the swim!

In honor of Tugster Will's Swim Day on the Net, I would like to share a few pictures from one of my favorite swimmin' holes in the whole wide world.

Ladies and gentlemen, Hanauma Bay:

Me, possibly even happier than I get in a kayak or a sailboat. I LOVE snorkeling, and TQ was the one who took my picture. What's better than snorkeling in Hanauma Bay? Snorkeling in Hanauma Bay with him. I honestly don't know if I ever would've taken up paddling if I'd ended up back in Hawaii - kayaking was a means to an end for me, and the end was just plain being on the water.

Uhu, or parrotfish. This one is having lunch. They're called parrotfish both because of their beautiful coloration and because their teeth are fused into a hard beak, with which they literally chew on coral. The coral polyps are digested; the ground-up coral goes through the fish and comes out as sand.

A fish of many names - people call it trevally, crevalle, but in Hawaii, it's the ulua.

A pair of Achilles' tang (orange spot by the tail), a couple of butterflyfish (ornate, I think) and I think that's a filefish that's alone & behind one of the tang.

I'd actually planned to share the story of how getting competitive with a squad of Marines at one of the on-base pool finally cured me of my attachment to my "bubble" swimming aid, way way back in "small-kid time", but it was yet another long long long day at work & I got home pooped & still needing to pack (heading off to see TQ for the holiday weekend). I hope this glimpse of one of my favorite places in the world to swim will suffice!

However, there's still occasional sun here.

Post-storm sunset at the Hudson River Greenland Festival 2009, Croton Point, NY.


I don't know what they're sacrificing, but the Yonkers Paddling & Rowing Club & other assorted organizers have certainly had the cooperation of the weather gods for this event, at least the times I've attended -

let's have a comparison sunset from 2008:



And I've just gone through & done some captions for all the 2009 pictures I posted to a Flickr set on Sunday night. Check out the set here! It was really a fantastic weekend.

You know it's been a rainy time...

when people from NY City go to a city famous for fog & end up commenting on the sun instead!

(taken Friday night at the Hudson River Greenland Festival)

Nice Animals in Michigan And A Nice Trip Report.

Sorry no time for real posts this week, got back from Michigan to an unexpectedly crazy situation at work. Mostly wrapped up now but now I've got a lot of catching up to do on the work I'd actually planned to do this week that didn't happen.

In lieu of a real post, here are some nice animals in Michigan:

Peacock and sheep.

Sheepdog and sheep. More specifically, Shetland sheepdog seeing sheep for the first time. By pure coincidence, the sheep are also Shetland. Now if we'd only had a pony, we'd have had the complete Shetland barnyard scene. The dog did seem quite interested in the sheep, but a little bit later he was nose to nose with a very tense kitty looking about the same...

Dog and very tense kitty. Don't worry, nothing bad happened to either of them, actually dog was displaying the exact same sort of friendly interest as dog was giving to sheep - he's a very mild-mannered, sweet-natured little guy, pretty much greets everyone he meets with the same sniff sniff sniff & a gently wagging tail. Kitty wasn't interested at all but stood his ground - he loves people & there were enough people around that he was not gonna leave the party on account of some visiting dog.
Frog.

Baby robin (fell out of nest).


Fortunately there is somebody out there in the paddling & rowing world who did something fun last weekend & actually had time to write about it!. Sounds like the Village Community Boathouse (including their sommelier...dang, is that a classy club or what?) had a good time despite the downpour. Oh, man, I made it out to my garden for the first time in 2 weeks this morning (needed to get my PFD mostly) & I wish I had had my camera - I've got sugar snap peas & they have gone so completely bonkers with this cool & rainy weather that they overwhelmed the bamboo I use for a climbing trellis & fell down. Entire garden is going crazy, could really use some intensive weeding thinning & staking. Too bad it's not getting any of that for quite some time - it was a dreadful week at work, but part of dreadfulness was having to get 5 days worth of work done in 4 so I could head off to Croton Point myself tomorrow for the Hudson River Greenland Festival, and then next weekend I'm heading off to see TQ. Garden will just have to fend for itself. I just hope it doesn't start actively snaring clubmates or anything in the meantime.