I'm Just a Girl - G. Stefani

Riddle:
Sometimes I want more of it, other times I complain there's too much of it. Sometimes I seek it, sometimes I look to fill it. Often, it's hard for me to share it. What is it? It's SPACE.

I'm a 21st century Urban Farm Girl, a modern Milly, an "I work hard for my money, I can buy my own drinks" girl. That being said, I'm clearly not opposed to someone getting me a drink as I have asked the hero boyfriend countless times to get me a glass of water when he's already half asleep in bed. As I constantly spew out diametrically opposed requests and make bizarre rules like "That 11.1 oz carton of coconut water isn't suppose to go down in one gulp," I have realized that I am all girl. Somewhere my inner feminist is being lectured by a couple of Gloria's. <--Steinem and Allred, I hear you and you have valid points.

Like hurricanes, girls will go by different names (hurricanes are also known as tropical cyclones), and can create that slippery slope effect in arguments (did you know, a hurricane can spawn that other natural phenomenon we call a tornado?) Gentlemen, remember this as your partner starts arguing things you didn't even know were up for grabs. Yes, hurricanes carry "heat energy" (whatever the hell that is) and I've been known to throw around some heat. But they also help to maintain equilibrium in the Earth's troposhpere. What am I saying? My hurricane tendencies offer the promise of balance. I'm a volatile act of nature and sometimes I am chaos and other times I succumb to it. This means that my idea and definition of space changes. I'm sorry. It's not cool, but it's real. Again, hero boyfriend, thank you for your endless patience. Thankfully, growing and nurturing a garden is a bit more black and white.

As you may know, the carrots were a gardening disaster. Upon further review, the hero boyfriend and I believe that I didn't give the seeds enough space to grow so they weren't able to reach their fullest potential. They were fighting it out so instead of having some excellent carrots we ended up with a bounty of beastly ones. Yes, the metaphor is now complete. This time for our most recent harvest, I carefully dropped seeds into pockets that were evenly spaced apart from one another. This is a much more measured strategy than the "throw a handful of seeds into the air and see where they land" one I implemented this spring. We'll see what happens but it feels pretty promising.

Below are some photo updates!





A life of miniatures...













Miniatures are real, too. The eggs are from our chickens and with a little Urban Farm Girl elbow grease this turned into a tasty egg scramble for two.













These tomatoes, once "vine ripened" could audition for Whole Foods.












Home of the next carrot crop













The newest lettuce patch

One Mile/Harvest at a Time

It's not your imagination, I really have been a bit neglectful of the blog garden lately. In an attempt to justify this (and let's collectively be glad that I don't currently have children or pets) my mind and energy have been focused on other things.

Flashback:
As a young Urban Farm Girl I spent much of my time in the gym. You know those girls you see cartwheeling around on front lawns and on the school yard? I was one of them. Anything that was close to being four inches wide I made into a balance beam. To this day I have broken ceiling fans (because who doesn't vault off of their parents' bed) but no bones. Sometime around the very beginning of high school I traded in my chalky hands for sneakers.

Present Day:
I have been known to do things on a whim, to turn a coincidence into a "sign." After coordinating with former college roommates to meet up in San Francisco (a city where none of us reside) I saw that the San Francisco half marathon was also taking place. I immediately thought, "No way! The same weekend?!?! This must be a sign. I should definitely sign up for it."
So I did. <--Who does that???

With little training, except for some after work jogs and a 10K two weeks before the race, I showed up yesterday to run my 13.1 miles. Here's what I already know about myself, I have the love of sport in me. Maybe it's the athlete inside that comes up for air every now and then (although it's buried pretty deep these days) or those Kaiser commercials that have brainwashed/convinced me to "Thrive," but either way I found my runners high somewhere between miles six and eight. By Mile 10 the sharp pain that had been searing through my legs disappeared and I thought to myself "Oh my God, I can't feel my hamstrings anymore."

Then, the people. The people, around every corner all along Haight Street, including that storied intersection where it meets Ashbury, with their home made signs "Keep Running!!!!", "You're Run-derful", "One Mile at a Time." There was that middle age man shouting, "Stay positive. This is what makes you better than the spectators!" He, of course, was himself a spectator. And that's what is so wonderful about Sport. Because they're cheering as hard as you're running and for all those miles we're on the same team, Team: Good, Team: Be Better, Team: Do something new, something you might fail at and go boldly. <--Congress, take note.

What does any of this have to do with gardening? Well, I fail a lot at it. My bell peppers never grew to more than three inches and were completely inedible and my second bok choy crop never materialized at all. But here's what my 13.1 mile journey did for me, besides restore some of my faith in humanity, it reminded me that it's fine to limp along (hello, precious moments trapped in Murphy's Law hell), but make sure to run across the finish line. It's like they say, and by "they" I mean the universal sports enthusiasts, finish strong. So clearly my garden is limping along right now, but I'm not done. That unconditionally supportive hero boyfriend might even say that I'm just beginning.

Lastly, go ahead and sign up to walk that 5K, run that 10K or go for that big, bad triathlon. Like the SF Marathon runner shirts this year read it's "worth the hurt." Also, I want to cheer for you.

You'll find that I've documented my gardening failures with the sad pictures below. Please note, the beastly carrots hurt the most.

You see that carrot, right? Fourth from the right? I don't even know...

The cherry tomatoes, which are doing quite well, are in the picture to put the bell pepper's petite-ness in perspective.

This was not edible.