Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Second rate reporter says what?

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You cannot shame the shameless.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Gardens From Scratch

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Gardens From Scratch

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat 57

From beloved commentor MomSense:

Thought I’d send some photos of our neighborhood garden. It started with the compost bins [bottom photo] and a few raised beds and expands a bit every season.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat 58

The garden is next to a fire lane between our neighborhood and another development. It went from an overlooked area to a happy place.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat 59

This was a leaf pile last summer and now it’s the start of a new flower/herb garden.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat 60

Sunday Morning Garden Chat 61

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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That is a very cute scarecrow. Does it really scare off crows, though?

    ETA: Community/neighbourhood gardens are such a great idea on so many levels! MomSense, I hope you’ll continue to provide photos and stories of this one’s progress.

  4. 4.

    MomSense

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Ir keeps growing.  Past the raised beds is an overflow area.  I plant my pole beans there but it’s full of all kinds of things.  And then past that is a huge pumpkin patch.  The little flower bed is across the lane.  We are going to expand it and hopefully add bees next year.

  7. 7.

    MomSense

    @satby:

    Not so much red tape, but some convincing of the HOA.  We started with the compost bins.  Then we added four raised beds.  Then people asked to join and we kept adding more area.  We pay for the water and our own plants.
    The one thing they haven’t agreed to is keeping bees.  The man who started the garden is a beekeeper and he thinks we will get the OK to have bees for next summer.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I love community gardens, they just look like a bunch of folks having fun. Probably because they are.

  9. 9.

    Zinsky

    Very impressive! That must have been a huge amount of work – thank you for beautifying America! We are wrapping up our gardens here in Minnesota, as there has already been a hard frost, so not much to show but brown vines and dying hostas. Lovely gardens.

  10. 10.

    satby

    We’re heading into a full week of overnight frosts / freezes and daytime highs only in the 40°s, so now that the rain stopped I have just today to plant /mulch /clean up and generally batten things down for winter. Going to try to rig up a temporary green house for the two tomato plants with green tomatoes on them.

    Then, having done that, next week promises to be sunny and back in the mid to high fifties. Which is good, because the last hardy hibiscus (hibisci?) I ordered haven’t even been delivered yet.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MomSense:

    Having bees would be wonderful — not only for the valuable work they do (pollination), but also as a potential, if small, source of income. I’d buy raw honey from a community garden!

  13. 13.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Exactly!  It’s just a lot of fun and we get a ton of produce out of it. There is also a small garden sub-committee – the cannabis society.
    If we get snow this year hopefully we can build some igloos out there again.  That is really fun.

  18. 18.

    MomSense

    @satby:

    Nope.  Heavy rain all night.

     

     

    @sab:

    INORITE!  The compost bins did cut our trash production as promised.  It’s become a party place now.

  20. 20.

    MomSense

    @sab:

    The last time I saw one was 18 years ago. I know it was because it was the night before I went into labor with my youngest.  I saw them more frequently when I was growing up,

  24. 24.

    Betsy

    I’m enjoying getting a few pansies into pots and the ground to bloom through the winter. Pansies are so tough — they can take hard freezes and keep flowering.

    One trick to making sure they have frost endurance is to make sure the tops don’t thaw in the sun while the roots and soil are still frozen —that will dry out the tops and  kill them — so if you have hard freezes without a snow cover, you have to plant them in a place or pot that is shaded in the morning, so the tops and bottoms thaw at the same time — as the day’s ambient temperature comes up above freezing.

    I’m starting a full time job and won’t be home as much, so I have to limit my winter garden to a few pansies and some kale and spinach and arugula.

    I got a few magenta pansies to go with some orange ones.  I love putting bright orange and deep dark pinks together.

    Then I went just a little past my self-imposed limits and picked up a few more that are bright yellow and bright blue.  Another color combination I can’t resist.

  26. 26.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense: One more reason to visit you in Maine!

    Is the garden producing for everyone in the garden group? Or do you just produce for yourself and share if you like?

    Also, this can’t be your HOA, you have a barn!

  28. 28.

    sab

    My brother in law wants us to go on an Alaska cruise. I find the idea of cruises claustrophobically horrifying. Of course I have never been on one. What are the chances of Northern Lights? I don’t know the time of year. I don’t know if we can count on the kids to tend the menagerie. My retirement is nothing like my parents was.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: The best chances of seeing them are in the colder months when the pole is more to the sun. We are currently coming out of a lull in the sun cycle:

    The Sun is stirring from its latest slumber. As sunspots and flares, signs of a new solar cycle, bubble from the Sun’s surface, scientists wonder what this next cycle will look like. The short answer is, probably a lot like the last — that is, the past 11 years of the Sun’s life, since that’s the average length of any given cycle. But the longer story involves a panel of experts that meets once a decade, a fleet of Sun-studying satellites, and dozens of complicated models — all revolving around efforts to understand the mystifying behavior of the star we live with.

    NASA scientists study and model the Sun to better understand what it does and why. The Sun has its ups and downs and cycles between them regularly. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of this cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip — on Earth, that’d be like if the North and South Poles swapped places every decade — and the Sun transitions from sluggish to active and stormy. At its quietest, the Sun is at solar minimum; during solar maximum, the Sun blazes with bright flares and solar eruptions.

    Solar cycle predictions give a rough idea of what we can expect in terms of space weather, the conditions in space that change much like weather on Earth. Outbursts from the Sun can lead to a range of effects, from ethereal aurora to satellite orbital decay, and disruptions to radio communications or the power grid. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center is the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and alerts: With accurate predictions, we can prepare.

    4 years from, now will be the maximum cycle.

  32. 32.

    satby

    @sab: I think the best season for Northern lights is from late autumn to early March, depending on where you are. I’m not a cruise person, I don’t think, so cruises don’t appeal to me even though I love boats and being on the water. Not sure if they have winter cruises to Alaska, which is supposed to be the best time to see the lights.

  35. 35.

    satby

    I made a Kodiak high protein pancake mix into a buttermilk-pumpkin quickbread this morning for breakfast. Pretty good, but now I’m kicking myself for not using maple syrup instead of sugar. Maple syrup glaze, here I come.

  37. 37.

    satby

    @sab: ?! I have constant comma disease and I try to edit them out before posting. I blame whichever nun taught us in grade school that commas go wherever you have a pause or change in the train of thought in a sentence.

  39. 39.

    sab

    @satby: I battle with comma rules a lot

    ETA Distracts me from typos where I hit the next key on the keyboard from what I intended.

  40. 40.

    germy

    @satby:

    James Thurber on his editor’s (over)use of commas:

    The New Yorker’s overuse of commas, originating in Ross’s clarification complex, has become notorious the world over among literary people. In Paris, in 1955, an English journalist said to me one night, “The biography of Ross should be called The Century of the Comma Man.” A professor of English somewhere in England wrote me ten years ago a long, itemized complaint about the New Yorker comma….He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: “After dinner, the men went into the living room,” and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all right. I wrote back this particular comma was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

    Thurber goes on to recall a fight over whether “the red, white and blue” should be punctuated:

    I suggested, and still think I was right, that the style should be “the red white and blue” and I told Ross that. “All those commas make the flag seemed rained on. They give it a furled look,” I said. “Leave them out, and Old Glory is flung to the breeze, as it should be.”

    Finally, he admits that it took 10 years for him to come up with the comeback, “This magazine is in a commatose condition.”

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @Immanentize:

    I don’t have a barn, yet.  I hope not to have a barn for a long time because it’s my dad’s barn.  I just spend a lot of time with him there and my son is the caretaker when they are in FL.  It’s a little over an hour  north of my house.

    We grow for ourselves but always end up sharing.

  46. 46.

    Nelle

    I had eight summers above the Arctic Circle on Barter Island, just off Alaska’s north coast.   No northern lights,  as the sun was up from the end of May tl the end of July.  Before we married, mu now husband spent part of a winter up there (he was a bush pilot then) and said flying through them was amazing.  I have seen them in autumn and winter, camping on the Ambler River and living in Fairbanks.  Just gorgeous.

    They may have been lovely in Iowa last night but my booster shot yesterday is hitting me harder than the first two.  Even skipped Tai Chi group at the lake this morning.

  47. 47.

    debbie

    @sab:

    Oxford commas should be mandatory; commas marking pauses, never!

    I’ve edited academic papers and those pausing commas drove me nuts.

  49. 49.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @satby:One a cruise ship they don’t really turn off enough lights for it to get dark. Disclaimer: I’ve been on only one cruise and that was from Miami to San Diego via the Panama Canal in the Celebrity Infinity. I know couldn’t see many stars from the upper deck and I tried!

    Also summer nights are long and the further north you go the lighter it stays at night.

  52. 52.

    sab

    @MomSense: That garden looks amazing. Kudos.

    I tried to do a German  highbed or container (forgot the German for it)  garden this year, and the carpenter bees really liked the plant frame we built, so it just sat in the driveway all summer while the bees went in and out. Freeze this week so we will move it out then to where it belonged. So I can put in two years of gardening stuff I was savingfor it.

  54. 54.

    satby

    @sab: Hugelkultur building a garden bed on top of dead logs and tree limbs as well as other garden refuse like grass clippings and leaves. W Which you could certainly do within a raised bed frame instead of just a pile on the ground.

  55. 55.

    eclare

    @sab:   Most cruises to AK go in the summer, when it never truly gets dark, so no chance of seeing the Northern Lights.

  56. 56.

    J R in WV

    @satby: 

    I’m not a cruise person, I don’t think, so cruises don’t appeal to me even though I love boats and being on the water.

    Lindblad Expeditions specializes in small ships, some of which are ice-breakers for touring Antarctica and the Arctic. We too hate crowds and could never do Carnival or Disney type cruises, but the 76-person whale watching cruise we did to Baja California and the Sea of Cortez was great. We really enjoyed it, no fancy dress-up for dinners, nice bar, great naturalists and guides on the zodiac boats. So I would feel safe in recommending their small cruises to see the Northern Lights, or the Southern Lights for that matter!

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