a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Love You, Love You Not

    Sunflowers

    A sunny day is a good day to crack out of an egg. The sunflowers are blooming as brightly as the sun. Sunflower’s hens started hatching on Sunday. One of her new chicks is part Turken, a breed of chickens which has no neck feathers. This one is all yellow, an usual color for a Turken. You’ll see it in the last picture in this post. When it walks around, it looks like a tiny bobblehead doll.

    Sunflower is a very protective mother, one fierce hen. With her chicks, she is all love and sweetness. With everyone else, there is no love, just a threatening glare, and a painful, blood-drawing peck if you dare get too close.

    NewChick
    Sunflower
    FourNewChicks

  • Artemis

    Artemis0820

    The artemis melons in the hoop house are developing. In just a few days, the size of the melons have grown noticeably. They get to be round, two pound melons. The description from Territorial Seed Company reads:

    A French Charentais type, Artemis produces ravishing, rounded globes with silvery white, lightly netted rind that’s ribbed in emerald. The 2 pound fruit have luxuriously sweet, deep orange flesh with a divine bouquet and relatively small seed cavity.

    I have the vines growing vertically and am limiting each vine to producing one or two melons. Not too long ago, I watched a show on how the $100 to $400 melons sold in Japanese department stores are grown. They are grown in greenhouses, vertically, and only one melon is allowed to develop on each vine. The ones that end up in lavish, satin-lined boxes with $100 plus price tags, are specially selected, with only one out of a thousand ranked good enough to fetch the eye popping prices. Think I’m making this up?

    Artemis0821
    Artemis0823

  • Letting Go

    LettingGoA

    The dancing poppy blossoms of late July are gone. What was a bed of delightful poppies is now a morgue of wilted poppy plants. It’s time to let them go. Gardening is a meditation in letting go. You want those delightful colors to stay, to tickle you again, but they move on without your permission. It’s as if you don’t matter. They will slip away no matter how hard you try and make them stay.

    LettingGoB
    LettingGoC

    So let them go. Toss them on the compost pile and move on. Plant something new and watch it slip through your fingers too. That’s life, holding your fingers out and enjoying things as they slip through them. You can’t hold onto anything in the end, but that’s OK.

    LettingGoD

  • Happy Greens, Happy Reds

    Arugula

    Few vegetables let you know you’re alive like arugula. Some lettuces are so bland, you could fall asleep eating them. Not spicy arugula. Toss this in with your salad and your eyes will pop out with happiness when you bite into their peppery, nutty leaves.

    And if you’re needing to get fussy people to eat vegetables, serve them a plate of chioggia beets, and watch their dour faces burst out in a smile. Not only are the beets sweet and tender, the beet greens are fabulous too.

    ChioggiaBeets

  • One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four

    OnePotatoeTwoPotatoes

    Tomorrow is market day at Bow Little Market. It’s time to sort the potatoes. This week I’m weighing every potato and sorting them by the ounce. So if you’re coming to Bow Little Market tomorrow, you can buy just the size of potato you wish. How’s that for customer service?