Recap (sans pictures)

As Benjamin Linus once said, “Destiny is a fickle bitch”. So wise his words, so terrible his series finale. I promised in my last post that I would add to the blog more regularly and unfortunately I feel that I am destined for far fewer posts than I had anticipated. After watching the piece of garbage that was the LOST series finale, I became extremely ill. Hallucinogenic fevers, unending nausea and loss of appetite were just three of the symptoms I caught from that trash bag of a series finale. So this will be a recap of sorts.

April

I had intended to title this blog post “Brooklyn Hipsters Are Useful?!”. I’ll save you all the drunken details but Dave and I went to a party in Crown Heights that his former roommate Danny was hosting, and by hosting I mean was caught in the midst of. Some Jewish guy out in Bay Ridge owns the building where Danny lived and he basically gave one of the girls who moved in years ago free reign to rent up the building with whomever she wanted. They slowly created an artists cooperative-type building, complete with art installation parties and a communal chicken coop in the back. Hmm. A racial and socioeconomic segregated neighborhood, angst-y white artists who need to spend their parents money wisely on rent....all signs point to hipster-dom.

Fortunately, these folks were reasonably talented and incredibly well organized. During the party, the top floor apartment was made into a bar run by a girl who just happened to be A REAL LIVE URBAN FARMER. I’m sure Dave’s enthusiasm and mine did not impress her, especially since we were 3 drinks deep, but she did play along and offered some solid advice. Zucchini became a definite no for growing in the middle of the garden. It wants to curl around everything and overtake anything it can get its vines on. Potatoes would need more depth. That’s all I really remember. I was more focused on the predator issues. From her experience chicken wire is the only effective way to keep squirrels out.

May

The weather was spectacular and the herbs were growing like WILD. We made another trip to the nursery to pick up vegetables and some flowers to spruce up the newly cleaned deck. Once again, the women at the nursery said it was too early for some veggies and more herbs would have to keep us busy for a few more weeks. We bought some pansies to put in a window box, which T-shirt expertly pruned (sorry Shirt-they look pretty wack now). We bought a small basil plant and luckily it survived some cool nights. We also fixed our watering problem. With access to a car and dogged determination, Dave went to Home Depot and bought a hose and an adapter. We unscrewed the tip of the faucet, placed the adapter on it and can now pop the hose onto the faucet. The hose hangs out the bathroom window and runs all the way to the top of the deck where we have an adjustable garden nozzle. This has made our life much easier. Instead of running up and down the stairs 6 or 7 times with a pitcher of water we can run up and down the stairs 3 times and have unlimited water (special thanks to Dave for taking the initiative to buy the hose and teaching me how NOT to flood the entire bathroom with water at 7:30AM...again).

June

DISASTER STRIKES AGAIN!! This time it was the most natural of predators...the sun! Dave went out to Long Island for a few days and I was so sick I could barely fart without crapping my pants. Needless to say, very little watering was done and just our luck, it was above 80 degrees everyday. I do have to pat us on the back for the resiliency of our herbs, though. Not one of the bushes died due to our negligence. The only casualty was a bush that neither flowered nor was edible (waste of time!). We can also probably use the dried stems and leaves for our brand new compost (holler!). I don’t know much about composting but I do know that our refrigerator doesn’t smell like a dirty diaper from old veggies that were being saved for said compost. I can’t smell it from my window either so it must be working (buzzkill- we learned it takes months before the compost dirt is usable-doh 2.0).

As trigger happy as we were, we didn't plant any real vegetables until this past Sunday. I have some pics to be posted soon. So far we have planted:

3 Tomato plants (Italian, grape and Amish/heirloom)
1 Arugula, genetically modified to include Chris Hansen repellent
2 Zucchini (one in the planter to drape over the side, 1 in a TOPSY TURVY)
1 Green pepper plant
1 Serena Vaccarino approved strawberry bush

We also plan on maybe an eggplant and some more herbs. Stay tuned for pics!