This Week on The Pale Gardener...

After the MANY votes of my poll were counted, verdict says that the blog will be a nice mish-mash of information. Frankly guys, thanks for getting me off the hook because it is MUCH easier to write blogs about well, whatever the heck I feel like, than about gardening in late February. "So today I watered!" Yeah, not interesting.

So what do I hope to accomplish at some point this coming week? Blog plans include:

- Show you all my knitting skills while I continue to work on an awesome little sweater for this adorable little cutie!

- Share some stories about my fun trip to Maine last week.

- Tell of an upcoming trip.

- Enjoy Thanksgiving and family and maybe even get some awesome food shots up here afterwards.

Short work week for us lucky ones! I hope you all enjoy it!

My Real-life-Translating-to-Blog Resolutions...

Resolutions are sometimes an evil beast. You make these promises to yourself, are extremely happy when you accomplish them, but if you don't, pssh let down city here we come. So let's preface this post with the thought that I'll probably let myself down at least once.

*Sigh*

OK, now that I have that out of the way.

As my astute readers, I'm sure you've noticed and I've alluded to the fact that I am no longer in an apartment. So the whole, "what happens when you mix a garden lover with an apartment complex," thing isn't so much applying anymore.
So I said to myself, "self, what should we do about this predicament?"
Well, self must be in indecisive mode because she was worthless for definitive answers. But here are some thoughts about the where the heck I can go with this here blog:

- Still be garden-focused but now it can be more open-space gardening and include a disclaimer that gardening only happens here in the Northeast U.S. a few short months of the year, so be ready for random jibber-jabber?

- Rock the houseplant route for a while. There is something to be said about having all of your plants originally in a centrally, gas-heated, Southwest facing apartment only to move them into a wood stove heated (read extremely dry air), Northeast-ish facing house. That is quite the change for creatures of habit like hibiscus, begonia, etc.

- Go for a bit crafty. I have picked up knitting again (having a new baby in the family will do that to you). And I now have a place where I can use a sewing machine that isn't in a closet and I have a "summer" dress just itching to be made. (OK soo late on that one, but I can always wear it next summer, right?)

- Don't change a darn thing about the page and hope no one will notice.

- Mix it all into one! Hey, the cold winter is so on its way and I will need anything and everything to keep my sanity so whatever I wanna post, damnit, I will post!


What do you all think? What would you like to see? Or have you forgotten I existed and only clicked this page by accident?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Lunch Lady Patsy and Janitor Willie!*

Oh what's that? Halloween was days ago? I know. I just thought I should follow suit with the rest of my slackerness. Don't want to go changing it up too much on you guys! Whoa!

Tomorrow you can bet there will be a real, live, (not to be confused with the undead) post.
Promise.
Until then, please enjoy a picture of my little brother on Halloween. This picture brings tears to my eyes every time I look at it. That is how hard I'm laughing. I'm actually laughing at it right now. Please, do yourself a favor and click on Rodeo Steve to get the full-sized, full effect of his beauty.

*Bonus points to whoever picks out the sweet reference on our costumes (hint: you can only really see it on mine)

Pond Fun

If you remember way, way back to the Spring, (yes, I know, it seems absolutely forever ago, especially now that it's in the 30's when I wake up in the morning!) the E.S. Garden had a pond that looked like this:

My Dad modeling nicely for us

Now here we are, the middle of October and it looks more like this:

There is a pond in there, somewhere, I promise

So you might say it's a bit overgrown. The plan was to dig this out and make it into a nice little area with a bank and even an island! This was a project we just didn't get to this year. Mostly because it never dried up down there! Ever! The entire summer, that area was at the very least soaking wet. This is very unusual. Usually the froggies have long packed up and moved to wetter ground by July. This year I think we had a froggie family reunion going on in our pond! We must have had two dozen frogs in there at one point and some of them were no little teeny things either. I always liked walking along the path around the pond and hearing all the frogs in front of me jump into the water with a big *thunk!* as I approached their lounging area.
So the hope is next year we'll have a few weeks of dry land so we can dig out this here pond because darnit I want to iceskate on it in the winter!
The Boy and I recently took a peruse around the pond and snapped a few pictures in the process:


And here are our goof-asses enjoying some pond fun:

What do You Get When You Cross a Turnip With a Cabbage?

The rutabagas are one of a few veggies that did absolutely awesome in the E.S. Garden this year. They have been poking out of the soil like this for quite some time now but we were waiting for a frost to pluck any of them up to devour. They always taste much better after a good frost has hit.
Now, you may be thinking, "what the heck can I do with a rutabaga?" They are a bit obscure in mainstream cooking so I am always trying to find new ways to prepare the rutabaga. One of my favorite ways to cook them is to mix them with potatoes and make a mashed rutabaga/potato mixture. It's extremely simple to make.

Jess' Rutabaga/Potato Mixture o' Deliciousness

- a few potatoes
- a few rutabagas
(usually about half and half is what I like to do)
- cook them like you would cook potatoes to mash them
- add some milk and butter or whatever you like to add to your potatoes
- salt, pepper and some parsley
- mmm, mmm, you're good to go!

Any other favorite rutabaga recipes out there? Shoot em' my way, I'm always looking for ways to cook them, and as you can see we have quite a few to use for experiments!

Proof of Mohawk Jess

In response to my recent 7 things post, a buddy of mine may have thought I was yanking the chain of truth about some of my more wild hairstyle days. I am here today with proof; cold, hard evidence to lay these rumors to rest and, well, have a good laugh that I would actually do this to myself. (I was 18, what do you expect?)
And here we have a few pieces of nostalgia for us all to get a kick out of. Feel free to click on the image in order to appreciate history in its full size. (Please don't mind the horribly unflattering pictures.)

And there we have it! And no, I am not being choked in the first picture, nor am I forcing my friend there to drink a beer. We thought it would be a funny picture if the non-drinker had a beer in his hand...ha.

Just in case you were thinking of giving yourself a mohawk but didn't quite know how to approach the ordeal, it goes something like this:

- Lose a bet in order to get the mohawk
- Take ratty old scissors, any old kind will do, non-hair cutting scissors would be so punk rock, and proceed to cut hair off but make sure you leave that nice skunk pattern down the top and back.
- After said hair has been cut, go back with a set of clippers (can be ratty and old too) and buzz that head right down, remembering to leave your mohawk in place.
- Shake off the hair and presto! You have your mohawk!
- Now, we must also spike the mohawk to be extra punk - with a longer mohawk I found the best product to use is Elmer's glue. Forget the gel, hairspray, pomade route, we need some anti-gravity staying power and you will only find that in glue.
- To get the mohawk nice and straight I found that by taking a piece of cardboard and cutting a hole shaped like your head, it makes a nice "table" for your hair to sit on while you coat it with glue.
- Let the glue take hold for a few minutes while your head is resting on the cardboard cutout.
- Remove head from its resting place and presto! again! You have your full blown, punk rock, mohawk.


Now, go on out there and get bad-ass!

The Peskiest of all Pests

I have never been a fan of insects. The creepy crawliness of them just....eck....I am getting the chills just thinking about bugs and their many legs walking on me...ooooo!
However, to the gardener, many bugs are helpful little critters: spiders protect our plants by eating tons of other harmful bugs, ladybugs eat aphids, centipedes eat those slimy slugs, and there are many other examples of creepy bugs doing great things to keep our gardens looking wonderful. So that means my shivers need to be subsided temporarily and when I see (or feel!) an insect, I must turn and walk away, knowing that it will then go eat something else that is trying to eat my garden.
There is one such bug, however, that I cannot find any useful purpose for. One that has been known to carry diseases and if nothing else, packs a wallop of annoyance and unending itches.
That insect, my friends, is the mosquito. And boy did it show its face this season! In years past, we could wander around the E.S. Garden pretty much all day up until dusk hit. Then the mosquitoes would come out in full force and we either had to arm ourselves with bug spray, find some campfire-shelter nearby, or run inside and hide.
This year we saw a whole new side of that obnoxious buzzing creature. It did not matter what time of day you were outside - morning, night, whenever. You were instantly barraged with a wall of mosquitoes. Normally the mosquitoes don't bother me quite as bad as many people. This year they showed no mercy, no preference. They were out for any and all blood.
And that certainly squashed some of the garden-love I had for this year.