Call me Planty McPlantpants.

This is my wild-card seed drop:
   Still haven't made it back to Ma's.  What    a            jerk.
   Work's been unexpectedly slow recently, but i've been keeping myself busy.

• the Workshop is essentially functional.  Some organization is required, but it's the kind that organically organizes itself, seemingly spontaneously, as various projects are undertaken in the space. 
• Rainwater collection has begun!  i went out and paid too much for a 275gallon tote and rigged it up at the potting shed before the runoff from tropical storm Lee hit us.  That thing was halfway full by the time we saw sunshine again:)
• my first bamboo project is nearly complete.  As part of a general push in the direction of building things instead of buying crap, i built a toilet paper . . . (rack?stand?dispenser?_ _ _) . . . thing for our bathroom with Joe-Knee playing resident 3-D consultant.  I have a little bit of finishing work to do on it, but it's functional now.  Should be done by the time we get a camera, then i can show you.

• A windfall salvage day fell into my lap.  One day brought me 5 buckets from grocery-chain bakeries; 2 metal trash cans, a wedging table (for pottery) and two wooden pallets from the dumpster of the local university; and around 300 decent bricks and a dozen or so cinder blocks from a house that got demolished in the neighborhood.  While i may have tendencies leaning towards hoarder-hood, i will put all of this to work soon. 

  A couple days ago i planted out some fairly old snap pea seeds.  There's 8 in containers and a random sowing around the mail box and along a low brick wall near the honeysuckle bush.  In our porch container, i cleaned out the sad little tomato and basil, added some more soil (because my filler materials are composting down) and planted dill, cilantro,  bibb and butterking lettuce... and left a small spot open for a succession.
  Today i went over to my neigbor's house to help plant the bed he keeps in the front yard behind his pitcher plants (awesome, right?).  Earlier in the week we pulled up a bunch of turnips he grew this year, so today we cleaned up the bed a bit and planted some seeds i bought during the garden-supply store mid-summer lull.  I was a little concerned about not amending the soil prior to planting, but i'm also concerned about planting too late.  Maybe I'll top-dress with compost when the seedlings start coming up.  We split his bed (maybe 3'x18') into 6 roughly equal sections (measured by stride length) and planted:

• Beets, Tall Top Early Wonder
• Radish, Cherry Belle
• Cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield
• Kale, Red Russian
• Broccoli, Waltham
• Georgia Collards
• Pak Choi
• Mesclun Salad Mix

  The radish is sown among the beets, so we'll get a small crop of them in October, then the beets can fill in.  These are mostly cold or frost tolerant varieties once they're established.  My thinking is that should we get some frosts before they can reasonably handle it, we can just coddle them a bit with some plastic protection.  We're planning on just splitting the harvest and sharing surplus with other neighbors.
   My mama says that food gifts go a long way for the suburban grower (whose compost may smell for a day or two before it heats up, or grows food instead of grass, or might want some outlaw laying hens and wants prior consent of potential tattle-tells) and, after knowing her my whole life, i'm inclined to believe her.

P.S. After some research, i've amended my hypothesis about our unripened figs. While i still believe that they're not getting enough sun, i think the hot, dry weather this summer probably stunted their fruiting cycle.  There's not much i can do about it now, but i can direct more rainwater to their root systems during the dry spell next summer.

taking stock

first thing second: taking stock of our current resources....
   The house we moved into is awesome.  A 3 bedroom ranch affair with a fireplace, great insulation and two outbuildings, one an insulated shed with a covered porch that we've designated as our workshop and the other an open air shed that will be our potting and pottery shed, both with power and gutters.
  The front yard gets plenty of sun which is surprising considering the abundance of oaks in the neighborhood and the fact that it's on the north side of the house.
  The backyard harbors 4 fig trees, muscadine vines on a trellis attached to the open-air shed and a little circle of 2 maybe 3 small blueberry plants and another plant that might be some kind of raspberry.   Unfortunately the back only gets a little sun in the day which made me curious about the well-established figs and grapes.  Our next door neighbor grew up in the house and said they used to have a full-fledged garden back there when she was growing up, so my hypothesis is that the oaks in both backyards adjacent to ours have filled in in the intervening years and affected the fruit set (very few grapes and lots of figs that won't ripen).
   Which brings me to my next diatribe: the importance of neighborly relations.  I've lived in many places in suburbia and for some reason have never made the effort to really get to know most of my neighbors.  This is something I've resolved to rectify.  By talking to my next door neighbors and neighbors across the street I've learned about drainage patterns in the neighborhood, gotten permission to prune and take down trees to allow sun into the backyard, and been allowed to harvest an immense supply of rampant bamboo.  Holy crow, we've only been here a couple weeks.  It's time to integrate with our community, and I'm not talking about a community of like-minded individuals, I'm talking about embracing those who are geographically close regardless of ideology in an effort reclaim what it means to be human... working together not just to survive but to thrive.  Doing so will surely be beneficial.