Plea for gardening advice

I planted this baby carrot from seed in late spring. It somehow survived the Evil Squirrel Excavations of May and the Great Groundhog Scourges of July and August. I carefully watered and weeded around it, showered it in encouragement and nurturing thoughts. I was encouraged by the healthy-looking leaves above ground and decided to harvest it before the frost.

I know it's supposed to be a baby carrot, but this looks more like an embryo carrot. I SO do not have a green thumb.

No wonder the groundhogs and squirrels left it alone; it wasn't worth their time! They were probably laughing their guts out.

I've never had a particularly green thumb. I also planted a tomato plant from seed. Like its baby carrot counterpart, my tomato plant seemed to flourish. Yet I've only managed to harvest four (4) baby tomatoes so far, while my neighbour's baby tomatoes are practically jumping off the vines because they're so heavily laden with fruit.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong. One possible problem is that I'm using planters. Another theory is that the plants know that they're just going to get dug up and eaten by the neighbourhood groundhog, so what's the point anyway? But that doesn't explain why my neighbour's vegetables are doing so well and mine aren't.

Gardening advice welcome!

Archive page revamped, LJ feed, renovations

I've installed the Clean Archives Reloaded Wordpress plug-in to revamp the default (and somewhat dull and unhelpful) Wordpress Archives page into something that is more search-friendly. Check out my new Archives page, which you can access from the navigation bar at the top of the page. I notice it's a bit slow-loading, so I may keep looking for other plug-ins; there are so many to wade through.

And this is one of the reasons I decided to switch to Wordpress rather than design something from scratch or even upgrade my installation of MovableType. I hadn't upgraded MT for several years because the last time I tried, something went horribly wrong and I ended up having to pay MT to help me. Wordpress upgrades are much easier (one click), plus there are tons of useful plug-ins. Upgrading MT now would involve a major learning curve for me since the user interface has changed so much and I just don't have the time.

By the way, I won't be updating my LJ quite as often but Brooke has kindly created a Blatherings Livejournal feed for those who want to be kept updated on every Blathering.

The feed makes much more sense than my having to create the HTML link every time I update Blatherings.



Renovations continue. The little room you see to the right will turn into my walk-in closet (woohoo! the packrat in me rejoices!). The door on the left leads to our current bedroom, which is going to become Jeff's office. Jeff's office, meanwhile, will turn into our bedroom.



We're adding a window, taking out some wall and adding others. As you can imagine, it's a bit noisy and chaotic here in Ridpath-Ohi land, but it'll all be worth it in end.

Groundhogs are giant mutant squirrels

A couple of days ago, Jeff peered out his home office window and saw the groundhog nibbling on our deck plants. I ran down with my camera and only got one photo, and had to take the photo through the window screen.

He looks smaller in the photo above than I remember. Or maybe there's more than one groundhog feasting on our outdoor natural salad bar.

Gnomedude has suggested a spray mixture of hot oil plants like chili peppers, but warns that I'd need to keep re-applying. Or we could go with structural deterrents like mesh fencing or screen.



Peter Alway pointed out the following:

Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mamalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Sciuridae
Genus: Tamiasciurus
Species: Hudsonicus
Common Name: Red Squirrel, Pine Squirrel, Chickaree

Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mamalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Sciuridae
Genus: Marmota
Species: Monax
Common Name: Woodchuck, Groundhog

Peter says that taxonomically, Marmota Monax is, indeed, a giant mutant squirrel. :-)



Phillip2637 writes: "I used to work near Sheppard Ave., just east of where it crosses the Don Valley Parkway. Sometimes at lunch I'd walk across the bridge to Fairview Mall, visit some stores -- often a fruit and vegetable place -- and then walk back to work. In nice weather there was often a pair of groundhogs, sitting together as if they were an old couple, on one of the cement supports at the edge of the DVP. I enjoyed watching them just taking in all the activity, so I'd throw pieces of apple down to them or whatever I had.

Then there was the day that I couldn't get home because they'd eaten the entire overpass...but, hey, they were cute.

:-)"






Livejournal comments

Giant mutant evil squirrels

I was coming back from my daily power walk late yesterday afternoon when I saw something moving in front of the house. At first I thought it was a giant mutant squirrel but then I realized it was the groundhog our neighbours have been talking about.

It looked pretty healthy, with sleek shiny fur and lots of padding. Padding largely gleaned from eating my plants, I'm sure. Little bugger. When we came home from the cottage, one of our potted plants had nearly all the leaves and flowers chewed off, leaving only stems. Grr.



I chased the groundhog around the side of the house. Tried to get a photo of it with my iPhone, too, but the shutter was too slow and I only got a blurry shot of weeds instead.



Clearly, the neighbourhood squirrels have called in reinforcements. I couldn't help thinking of the Lord of the Rings movie when the goblins in the Mines of Moria call in the big Cave Troll to attack the good guys.

Well, I refuse to be intimidated. The groundhog has already made several attempts to infiltrate my basement office via tunnels beneath our house, razed my lettuce, attacked the mailman...but the war is not yet over. All right, I was kidding about the mailman, but it's only a matter of time, really.

Any tips on how to discourage groundhogs from vandalizing our garden would be much appreciated.



Speaking of Evil Creatures, I just received a package in the mail from my friend Seanan McGuire:



How can something so evil be so cute? Seanan's reply: "He brings evil under the guise of ADORABLE, that you might not suspect the depths to which he is capable of sinking!" :-)

Speaking of cute/evil packages in the mail, I'm excited to announce that I'm now the proud owner of a Nerd Ninja Doll! Photos/details in the next Blathering.

The squirrel in the photo is standing on a book I'm currently reading, The Princess and the Hound by Mette Ivie Harrison, which my niece was kind enough to lend me. It's SOOOOO GOOOOD! I'm about halfway through and am finding myself slowing down so it will last longer.




Livejournal comments

Kittens, Kaleidoscope Spaghetti and recipes from friends

I've always been fascinated by cats. Their psychology seems more complex than a dog's, with an odd sort of love-disdain relationship with humans. My friends Allison and John acquired a kitten recently; Jodi and I went to visit them (and the kitten) last week.



Kara was a ball of energy, jumping from one activity to another for a while: nibbling on toes, leaping on furniture, eating, batting at hanging string, eating, chewing on the heads of hapless cat toys, eating ... and then abruptly falling asleep on the couch beside Allison.



Yesterday, my sister and her family came over to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. In honour of the event, I made several desserts I've been wanting to try, including a chocolate cake recipe from The Green & Black chocolate cookbook given to me by some of my British friends Mich, Marilisa and Simon:



Photo by Allison

and a plate of Melted Moments cookies from a recipe given to me by Rand's mom:



The photo above is from the wedding. I forgot to take photos of my cookies and besides, mine didn't turn out nearly as nice-looking (but tasted the same, which is what counts, right??). I made extra for Parki and Kim, who are coming over tonight.

Speaking of the wedding, don't forget to check out Walter's Flickr page, where he continues to upload some great photos from the wedding.



Photo by Walter.<

Over-Achiever O' The Month

My friend Chris Conway, who is releasing six CDs this month (!).

Video O' The Day

Thanks to Jeff for pointing me to this "Making Spaghetti" video:






Livejournal comments