[FeliciaLee]

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A heard an old Cockney saying the other day that reminded me of all you who prefer growing veg to flowers.

"Flowers is nice, but it's taters what feeds ya"

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Great quote!

I have lost a lot of things over the past month. Sorry I haven't been updating.

The gypsy peppers came back hard and strong. One of my tomato cuttings got blown off of my garden cart during a freak storm, flipped completely over, and broke the main stem off. This, after months of babying the poor thing. Another cutting is thriving, though, and the original tomato plant keeps producing, even though it has been attacked by aphids and now some kind of caterpillar, grr.

The berries look just horrible. Sick, sick, sick. I had been warned that blackberries and raspberries don't do well here, and I believe it. I should have made them indoor/outdoor plants.

The sweet potatoes are taking off like gangbusters. Even the non-budding trash we planted on a whim instead of putting in the compost bin is thriving. I am starting to believe, more and more, that root plants will do very well here, since they aren't as subject to the crazy winds.

I nursed some low-water usage cantaloupe and watermelon (persian canteloupe, desert king watermelon) seeds and got them sprouted. I hardened them off, then planted them in a bare, southern area of the garden with lots of room to spread. So far, only one canteloupe and one watermelon has really taken off. The rest either died, or didn't sprout in the first place.

I am starting several plants indoors now and not even contemplating ever taking them out permanently. They are either cool weather crops (baby sweet lettuce) or tender crops. I have black cherry tomatoes, currant tomatoes, red cherry peppers, Italian basil, blue bush beans, little finger carrots, and two varieties of blueberries.

Glenn brought the gardening cart/greenhouse inside, put it directly in a south facing window, and we took the solar shades off to allow more sunlight in. So far, so good.

We inquired about a wind turbine, and even got permission from town, but then we ran into bad news. Although the wind is very strong here, it is erratic, as I had suspected. So the overall, average windspeed is only 6 mph. Horrible for a turbine, really, due to the patterns making maintenance a nightmare (one minute it will be dead still, the next, it will be blowing 75 mph), and the unreliability of providing usable energy for us. Oh, well!

Glenn finally got the solar oven working again. It still needs lots of work, but we are hoping to build a more permanent, cob structure around the oven, to keep it protected from the crazy wind.

All was going pretty well until last night... (poker drama ahead):

Glenn usually tries a freeroll satellite here and there online during a few months leading up to the series, or other big festivals. He kind of enters on a whim, knowing the fields are gigantic and the odds of getting a seat are long. But he multi-tables so that it isn't quite as boring. He can usually tolerate doing a couple of these per month. Last year on Paradise, only one seat was being given away, and he had already had to get past the first tier. In the second tier he came in 5th (ouch).

It can be very frustrating, and I can't understand how anyone could tolerate this over and over again, but Glenn can pull it off every once in a while.

Well, this time, he just kept winning. Tier after tier, until he finally got a seat plus 1k in hotel expenses for the main event.

So what is the problem, you ask? The problem is that we registered for Party back in the dark ages when they had one account per household or some kind of rule like that. So I registered as FeliciaLee, in my name, not knowing at the time that I would hate online poker. I rarely ever played, so Glenn kind of became the primary user of Party. We never bothered to open an account in his name, especially with all of the hassle that Neteller has about having two accounts in the same household, oy.

So now I'm waiting for find out if Party is going to make ME play in the event, or if Glenn gets the seat he won. I'm hoping to play the cancer card here, lol. After all, it's not really a transfer or a sale of the seat. We played fairly and opened the account under the rules at that time, I believe, which were one account per household. So I would think they would let him play.

At any rate, this kind of blows my plans for nursing my plants indoors the rest of the summer. Unless Glenn busts out the first day, which is nearly impossible since he is such a rock.

I don't think I'm strong enough to play day after day, either. I have recovered quite a bit, but not to that extent. I don't even want to play, oy.

I hope it works out. What a soap opera!!!

So how are the rest of the gardeners doing here???

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]