I'm a vegetable murderer

Aren't these lovely squash? The only problem is that they're not squash, they're cucumbers from my garden.

They're HUGE and lacking that certain greenness that cucumbers are supposed to have. At the beginning of spring, I planted 2 cucumber plants, 3 tomato plants, 2 strawberry plants, 5 lettuce plants, and a handful of red onions. Fastforward many, many hot Tennessee days later, and all of the plants except for the tomato and cucumber plants have died. Actually, one strawberry plant is hanging on for dear life and has produced 5 strawberries the size of dimes - does that count?

I had some hope for my lettuce plants, but when we went on vacation to Pittsburgh for a week in June, this is what I came home to:

My heads of lettuce had bolted. I had never heard that term before, but from Googling "my lettuce plant looks like a mutant," I discovered that "bolting" basically means my lettuce plants thought they were going to die so they decided to flower, which makes them grow upward and flower. Unfortunately this means the leaves become bitter and inedible. Which meant I got to add to my compost pile.

I had some hope for my cucumbers, so when they were growing in humongous proportions, I looked past the fact that they were yellow instead of the typical green cucumber-y color. After realizing that they had yet to green up, I picked one and cut it open to see how it tasted.

Yuck-o.

It was bitter and had this gross white inner rind. After visiting my friend Google again, I found out that cucumbers weren't supposed to get this big (oops) and that the yellow color probably meant that they had some crazy plant virus or that the weather was too hot. Sigh.

So now I have a big pile of these cucumbers the size of my calf that taste like a shoe. Anybody want one?

Living off the land

I'm not doing a very good job of convincing my neighbors I'm not crazy.

Does anyone else have a bunch of wild onions growing in their yard? My yard is absolutely covered in them. And I think it's awesome. Apparently, most people don't share my enthusiasm.

I actually discovered these when I was out on a walk with some of my co-workers. One of the girls dug a couple of them out of the ground to show me. And I tried them. Because that's the obvious thing to do when you find random wild vegetables growing along the side of a busy road.

I guess I thought it was pretty cool that there was actually an edible plant available outside of the grocery store. I know, I'm easily amused. After my discovery, I went home and realized that these things are growing like crazy in my front yard. In every one's front yard actually. Maybe it's a Southern thing? I don't remember any of these growing in my yard when I lived in Virginia.

See all the tall, green tufts? Yup, those are wild onions. And the purple tufts are weeds (we mowed recently, I promise! Thank goodness we're not part of a homeowner's association...) I immediately looked up "wild onions" on Google, and apparently these bad boys are a big problem in Tennessee. Most people consider them to be a nuisance because of how much they grow and how hard they are to get rid of. Me, I look at them and think "garnish".

Recently, I took my daughter outside to play for awhile while I gathered some of the onions. I gave her a box of sidewalk chalk to play with and then I set out on a mission. I attacked the ground with my shovel, removing one small bulb at a time. I was Bear Grylls. I was living off the land, providing for my family, assuring our well-being. I was becoming one with Mother Nature, one wild onion at a time. And then I heard the voice of my neighbor who I had just met a few weeks ago.

Although we've lived in our current neighborhood for 2 years now, we know only 2 sets of neighbors. Well, 3 if you count the little boy across the street who comes over periodically to ask for food. We know our next-door-neighbor because he complains when our leaves fall in his yard and when we left a pile of sticks too close to his house. Apparently sticks attract spiders? News to me, but his wife is deathly afraid of spiders, and our pile of unassuming sticks were an infestation waiting to happen.

The other neighbors (the ones witnessing me digging in my front yard) we know are a couple houses down. We met them a few weeks ago when we were off work because of a snow storm. After talking to he and his wife twice, we were pretty psyched to have met 2 really nice, seemingly normal people outside of work who were our age and who had kids too. As fate would have had it though, they pulled up in their car just in time to see me on my hands and knees, feverishly hacking away at the lawn. It also didn't help my case when my daughter came barrelling at me, her entire face covered in every color of sidewalk chalk.

After my attempts to convince the neighbors that I actually am, in fact, a perfectly lucid human being, I gathered my bushel of wild onions and took my chalk-covered child inside. Then came the fun stuff. And by fun, I mean incredibly time consuming. I washed and cut each of the little stalks of wild onion that I found. It was a labor of love...and it took me over an hour.

Most of the stalks had tiny onion bulbs, but I did have a few that were the size of my pinky. Now, what to do with 1/2 cup of wild onion bulbs? I risked my sanity to retrieve them from the front yard, but now I have no clue what to do with all of them. After doing a little research, apparently Native Americans ate these all the time with eggs. But I feel like I could fancy them up some.

So I ask you, what in the world can I make with wild onions? I'm sure there has to be others of you out there who have tried wild onions before. Maybe you make some fancy quiche with them? A roast perhaps? I need to know. My sanity depends on it.

How does your garden grow?

Well this past summer I've learned a very important lesson: I don't enjoy caring for flowers.

They're pretty, don't get me wrong, but I learned very quickly how many weeds a garden can produce in a very short time. Weeding is a full time job, and I couldn't handle keeping a house, a toddler, and a weed-infested garden at the same time. I think my other problem with flower gardens is that they don't seem to give back like fruit and veggie gardens do. I would much rather pick a ripe cantaloupe from my garden and happily eat it feeling like all my hard work paid off. With flowers, you pick them and put them in a vase, just to have them die a short while later. What I'm trying to say is basically that I'm a lazy weeder. And I'd rather eat cantaloupe.

My flower garden did do well for awhile...that is until the crazy Tennessee rain storms kicked in and made the weeds sprout more than the flowers. I had good intentions, I tried to weed when I could, but I just couldn't seem to keep up. Eventually, one side of my poor garden was so overgrown with weeds that Pat just put it out of its misery and mowed over it one night as he was cutting the lawn. The remaining flower garden lives on in weed-infested misery though, doing what it can to survive despite my neglect. My fruit and vegetable garden on the other hand? Well, that's another matter.

Pat planted a small garden in the backyard for me in early spring so I could try my hand at killing growing some fruits and veggies. I planted 2 cantaloupe plants, 2 tomato plants, 2 strawberry plants and a handful of red onions. Fast forward 3 1/2 months and I can proudly say that most of my garden is doing great. The strawberry plants were planted a little late in the season and never produced anything and unfortunately the red onions didn't do well in the soil, but the tomato plants have sprouted about 20 tomatoes and the cantaloupe plants? Well, they've pretty much taken over the entire plot.

This is actually a picture from over a month ago. We had some heavy rains recently and ever since then, the cantaloupe plants seem to have a mind of their own. So far, we've managed to get 2 ripe fruit from them but as soon as those two were picked, I've found about 12-15 new cantaloupe growing.



I haven't had to weed the fruit and veggie garden as much (big plus!) and it's already made up for itself by giving us some delicious produce.

Tiptoe through the sandwort with me

As I told you in a recent post, I was rooting around in the dirt last weekend to prepare my sad, weed-ridden little garden for some flowers. Now, let me start by saying that I've never actually planted my own garden before. I've seen a garden before - that's gotta count for something, right? My parents have had plenty of gardens, and I have a few memories of being forced to weed said gardens as a child (child labor!!), but those days have passed. Now, I'm all grown up and have decided to venture out into the wide world of flora on my own.

With a Home Depot gift card in my pocket, I set out this afternoon with a singular goal: buy flowers that will look nice in the front flower beds (and second less important goal: stay within $50.00 since that was all the gift card had on it). Thanks to many tips from more florally-inclined friends, I learned the difference between "perennial" and "annual" plants, and had decided to get some of both. Buying bulbs was a no no because I'm impatient and want instant results. If I was going to spend hours digging in the dirt on my hands and knees, I want to see flowers right away dang it! There was no way I was going to wait a year to see flowers.


I pulled up to Home Depot, grabbed a cart and headed for the garden area. Thankfully, Home Depot understands what it's like for those of us who are flower-impaired, so they had large signs with bold print reading, "annual" and "perennial." I wanted to get at least one perennial, that way I would have something that would grow back each year (i.e. less digging in the dirt for me). I settled on one called a "sandwort," which sounds more like something from Harry Potter than a flower. It's a nice, white bushel of flowers that looks nothing like sand or warts, but who am I to judge the Flower Namers?

Next, I wanted to get a bunch of pretty annuals that I could plant in front of my yellow and green shrubs. After much searching through the jungle of annuals, I settled on two different kinds: petunias and marigolds.

I thought that the combination of all 3 flowers would make for a nice contrast in the garden with the yellow-green shrubs. So, not knowing exactly how many flowers I needed to buy, I loaded up my cart and went in search of some topsoil. After finding that (and proving how weak I am by trying to lug several 40-lb bags into my cart), I headed to the check out line.

Needless to say, I did not stick to my $50.00 budget. I tried to, but in my defense, the Home Depot card had less money on it than my husband claimed (shameless justification). After several more hours of planting and more weed removing, I'm done! Well, almost done. I also picked up a couple strawberry plants and a tomato plant, so if I loose the battle of the flowers, maybe I'll be able to keep the produce alive.

Spring has sprung!

Spring is in full swing at the McCaffrey house. The tree in our front yard has sprouted beautiful pinkish purple flowers, and our lawn (or should I say our weeds) is growing like crazy thanks to the rain lately.

Today, I spent 2 hours weeding the flower bed in the front yard to get it ready for planting some flowers next weekend. I've never planted a garden before. My husband says I have a black thumb, and I (unfortunately) have to agree with him on this one. I have slaughtered at least 3 orchids that he's given me (can I blame it on the lack of tropical weather in the house?) and the poor little potted tree in my front window is in serious need of some H2O. It's dropped so many leaves that I have to do constant "leaf checks" on the floor because I keep finding Haley gnawing on fallen leaves. I suppose while I'm doing my leaf patrol I could stand to water the plant, right?

The previous owners that lived in this house did absolutely nothing with the garden. We have several overgrown yellow-green shrubs in front of the house (which Google just informed me are called "Golden Euonymus" and are able to grow in poor soil and are "easy to grow" which translates to "Jen can grow these without killing them.") There is also a lovely selection of dandelions, clovers, and other random weeds that snake from the front flowerbeds and back into the alcove between the garage and the front wall of the house. For the record, I don't know why this little alcove exists, other than to be a varitable "weed wonderland" because it's not like you can see it well from the front of the house, and it's so shadowed that nothing could ever grow there. Except weeds. And lots of them. Hence the 2-hour long weeding session.

I never knew how stubborn weeds were before today. These suckers had some amazing root systems that were several feet long and grew all along the length of the alcove. I have a new hatred for weeds after all the digging and grubbing around that I did earlier, but never have I been so proud of a plot of dirt in my life. I think I'm ready for some planting next weekend!

For those of you with green thumbs, do you have any tips, words of wisdom, or prayers for me as I go to choose flowers? I have no idea what grows best. I know I don't particularly like roses, and I like a lot of color. That narrows it down to a few thousand...help?