Buds're bustin' outta bushes/And the rompin' river pushes

After a long stretch of rainy days, there was finally a sunny streak. And the garden loved it!


We've just had our first sungolds ripen. And the lettuce has been growing gangbusters, so we're having daily salads. (Although because of all the really hard rain immediately after planting, some of the seeds travelled and there are leaves in interesting places...) Oh! And out of nowhere a chili pepper matured. Woohoo!


The basil is finally recovered, which is great. And the peas are peas - we can't add string fast enough!


The bad news is that we gave up on the peppers from seeds and bought some more seedlings. We also added some cucumbers into that bed, since there's now room. But! I think as of today, there is one (1) plant pushing up in that bed that isn't necessarily a weed - it might be one lonely surviving pepper seed. (Too soon to tell, but the leaves resemble the pepper leaves of the transplants.)

Also, the spinach is struggling. At first we thought it wasn't at all viable, then finally we got a little bit, and over the past week we have a small-but-noticeable patch. However, it is already yellowing and shrivelling. Sad spinach :( Guess we'll have to replace it with something different next year. (For now we added one pot of garlic chives.)

We're trying to figure out how to handle the beans. They're bush, so we're not supposed to stake them. But after one of the violent storms last week, they're flattened and entangled. So they're not standing up on their own anymore, and in fact some of them are now being smothered by others and are dying. We tried to untangle them, but it's difficult to do without breaking off the tops accidentally. (But they're beautiful. We bought seeds for purple beans, and the flowers/buds on these plants are just a gorgeous shade.)


I think we've finally made a dent in the weeding. I've never had to weed this much. Whatever it is that came in and blanketed everyone's spaces is pretty invasive. In one of the gardens near ours, the weeds are actually killing off the vegetables. I've been weeding daily, and only now do I feel like it's at a "normal" level. (In a "gardening as spiritual practice" moment, I got to vent some anxiety by going all crazy on the lack-of-pepper bed. I needed to tear up the weeds to make room for the cucumbers, and I no longer had to be careful. I could just take tools and attack the weeds with abandon. It felt good. Very good. Especially since that's now the clearest patch in our entire plot.) I've been ignoring the weeds by the tomatoes (since the tomato plants are pretty tall and can take care of themselves), but I should at least take a minimal pass this week.



I wasn't sure I'd be good about maintaining a garden that isn't right outside my building. But we've turned it into an evening ritual - I do some weeding while Arthur thins the lettuce. A short, but daily, task. (And at least for now, pretty endless in both cases.) And it really helps that today's weather is perfect. Couldn't ask for a better day to be in the garden.



Oh, and someone's dill keeps popping up next to my lettuce. I still smell like dill. Which is sad, because dill is something I can't really eat anymore.

And Ann Arbor is extra fabulous for a weekend

Shuttling ~20 people around town all weekend is a great way to feel at home. It switches the mindset away from "I'm still learning my way around." Suddenly, I'm the local. I know where things are. Wait - I know where things are! I live here! I have learned something over the past year!


We got to show off Ann Arbor (and SE Michigan in general). Play hosts. Eat good food. Drink good booze. I even had a few folks over to play bridge (I had a lot of leftover snacks from the UU bridge game the week before, and needed to use some up). It's another item in a growing list of things that makes us feel like this is home now.

Urban Decay, Urban Art, Urban Revival

Part of this weekend was a tour of Detroit for those interested. Arthur rented a van and drove people around with a tour guide. Detroit is vast, and to get a sense of how far away some of these isolated neighborhoods that are getting cut off are, you really need to be in an automobile.

It's still sad to see the reality of some of these neighborhoods. But the tour guide was great and also focused on some of the positive history, and a lot of the great renewal projects underway, and parts of the city that remain untouched by trouble. It's difficult to capture the incredible range of Detroit in half a day, but this was a good sampling. I hope guests both learned a lot and enjoyed the more positive aspects.

We got to spend a while walking through The Heidelberg Project. I don't understand most of this type of art, but it's still incredible to see. And even I found some things I liked. George took some great photos as part of his Detroit Tour album.

I found myself feeling sad looking at some of the art, though. There were several places where piles of shoes were used as part of a piece. And when I was back in Boston last month, it was piles of shoes that made up the Marathon memorial. It was jolting. I know that this work predates the bombings. But it's still an association my brain makes right now.

The tour was coupled (for most guests) with time at the Henry Ford Museum. Which showcases a lot of the positive history of the region and the auto manufacturers before the decline.

It is, however, definitely a college town

We were at the beer garden one night, when an obviously drunk heterosexual couple came over and introduced themselves to a member of our party. The inebriated female proceeded to drape and wrap herself all over him, even after he told her he was gay. (She is already a motss.con legend.)

We spend so much of our time around grad student families (here in Northwood) or other adults out of school that it's easy to forget that this is very much a college town, and there is a large population of stereotypical young drunk fools that we manage to avoid most of the time. It's useful to be reminded of this from time to time, just... not in so dramatic a manner.

Summer is here

Of course, it was also the most humid and hot weather since we've moved here. So we and our guests were drooping slugs a lot of the time. Ugh. You'd think I wasn't half Puerto Rican.

However, the Botanical Gardens are now in bloom. The canoes/kayaks are available for rental. And it's light out until late, so we worried less about our guests getting lost on the way to/from dinner. Sure, there's a giant hole in the middle of downtown, blocking off a major intersection next to our dinner location, but hey - you can't miss it with that much daylight ;)

And I'm really glad the rain held off the night we were at the beer garden. Ann Arbor has a lot of local breweries, so hanging out in a beer garden after dinner is a great way to get a sense of the town. People watching. (Until they drape themselves all over you, that is.) Moving around the group, to connect with different guests. Sampling the rosé.

Summer also means the farmers market, although we got there pretty late and the selection was noticeably smaller. Still, the market always attracts creative buskers.

Send in the postcards

Seriously, I know there are postcards at the M Den (because I've bought them there before), but apparently none of the downtown shops carry them. !!! While it was sad not to see AnnB this year, it's a good thing she wasn't here - she'd have had to fight Chris for the few postcards he could find! (Round 1: fight!)

Anyway, for those of you who couldn't make it this year, this is why y'all didn't get a group postcard. It's not because we hate you. Well, it might also be because we hate you. Yes, you. But it's mostly because Ann Arbor hates you.


I wish that the Supreme Court decision had come two days earlier, or that the .con had been two days longer. Because the downfall of DOMA would have made for the best .con event EVER.

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In summary, we had a great time. It was good to see everyone, as always. And putting on a tour guide hat does help make this place feel like home.

Oats, Peas, Beans

Our garden is finally up and running. Mostly.

It took us a while to get started, because we were travelling, and then we had guests, and then we were sick, and then enough other stuff had piled up that we didn't have time to turn over the plot and put up fencing (we're required to fence ourselves, and fairly high due to deer).


BUT! We finally managed to get started a few weeks ago. We're trying a mixture of seeds and seedlings, since there were still frost warnings in late May. We get a 10'x15' plot (or we could buy a double plot, which many people do) over in the Northwood community garden area. It's a lot of fun to see what everyone else is growing.

We have a lettuce bed (3 kinds), a pepper bed (both hot and sweet), a tomato bed, a peas and beans bed, and the last one has basil (including Thai basil) and spinach.

When we were buying our materials, we noticed a lot of cantaloupe, both seeds and seedlings. Very popular. I'm not used to seeing cantaloupe so prevalent in gardens! Watermelons, yes. Cantaloupe, no. The climate is fairly similar to back home, so I don't know whether it's a cultural difference or a subtle soil difference. (Zucchini does seem less of a problem here.)


Just after we finished planting, we had several days of heavy rain. Really heavy rain. Enough to move some of those seeds around, so we're not sure where everything will wind up. It also resulted in this giant influx of some weed that is covering the entire garden (and most of our neighbors'). Until this week, it's been too small to pull up. But we absolutely need to, since the worst patch is blanketing the sweet pepper seeds. They're the only thing we haven't seen hide nor hair of. The beans and peas, of course, shot up out of nowhere and are already flirting with the tomatoes for height. The lettuce is looking great, but it's almost time to thin it out - which I've never done before.


Besides this annoying weed, we're struggling with the basil plants. The first day or two, they were thriving and happy. When we went back after the drenching rains, they were really unhappy. Turning yellow. So, we assumed they got too much water and left them alone. I watered them lightly once later that week, since the soil was almost bone dry. The problem didn't go away.

I've taken to watering one of them and not the other so I can narrow down whether it's too much water or too little water that's killing them. No difference - they're both barely surviving. I'm going to have to buy another bush to ensure successful basil! At the same time, everything else has had the same amount of water and is doing just fine. I'm used to basil being stronger than this.


As of today, the spinach is finally poking through. It was another spot with so much of this weed that we were afraid that the seeds would be crowded out. However, the spinach made it. Still no sign of the sweet peppers. I left room on that bed for a couple of seedlings if need be. It may needs be. Pepper seedlings and a new basil bush. Yeesh.

I love watching how quickly the beans and peas grow. My photos are already out of date!