Gardening
Life. It’s poppin’ up all over.
It’s been almost 6 months since my last post. Egads. But to be fair, I haven’t just withdrawn from my blog. I pretty much withdrew from everything over the winter and I’ve been a hermit for most of the last 4 months. There have been lots of major life changes over the last year: kids moved in, kids moved out, no work, too much work. Too many projects and not enough time. And of course the biggie – a grandbaby on the way.
It’s hard for me to even type that. Grand baby? I’m not even 40! I think I’m beyond the shock stage now and diving head first into excited panic. But I dunno, they’re very similar emotions I think. I can’t wait! I have so much to tell her, so much to share. I can’t wait to teach her to read! She’s expected to arrive on June 24th but I’m putting my money on July 2nd. Whenever it is, if I think too long about it, I pee myself from smiling so hard.
But spring is sprung. My funk has fanked. Veggies are sprouting, flowers are blooming…the ones I’ve started indoors, anyway. This year we have strawberries, asparagus, bush & pole green beans, romaine & butter lettuce, New Boy tomatoes, broccoli and a variety of herbs.
I’ve yet to see a leaf or even a bud on a tree, but I know it’s just around the corner and all of Alaska will turn green seemingly overnight. The last few days have been in the 50’s and 60’s, even creeping close to 70 with bright, sunny skies and the seedlings are lovin’ it almost as much as I am. Life. It’s back. And just in time.
August.
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It’s been a busy August. Lots of fishing, lots of work. It goes without saying that I’d rather be fishing. So I won’t say it.
We went on our 2nd annual halibut trip with Jimmy Swelltime out of Seward and it was even better than last year. Once again we got lucky and the guys we shared the charter with were pretty cool. There were 3 of them up from Minnesota on their annual fishing vacation – one being on his eighth year.
They all had terribly thick accents and as Wes said, it was like being trapped in a Fargo movie for 12 hours. I couldn’t help but laugh every time Hilly said, ‘Git ‘em, Jer-mee, you can doo et!’ and I wanted to ask Jeremy if he knew his name actually has three syllables, but he was the quieter of the two and I wasn’t sure how well he would take the ribbing. But they were wild guys, I’m sure he would have taken it just fine.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Hilly & Jeremy"]
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The first Busch got cracked open at 9:30 when we dropped anchor and flowed throughout the day. They brought 2 large coolers and only one had a little food in it. But they maintained and never crossed the asshole drunk line. And they didn’t even give me too much shit when I got sick.
Yeah, sick. I refuse to call it seasickness because it didn’t last. I think it was a bad combination of no sleep, lots of coffee, generic dramamine and a strange sausage biscuit thing I got from the bakery in Seward. But once I puked up the coffee and biscuit, had a couple hours of sleep curled up in the tiny booth in the cabin, I was good to go. Evidently I didn’t miss much and we changed fishing holes a couple of times while I was out, but I never woke up. I needed the sleep. We had stayed at Miller’s Landing, in one of their ‘backpacker’ rooms and they suck. SUCK. The mattress’s shouldn’t even be allowed to be called a mattress. So don’t do it. Do not stay in the backpacker rooms at Miller’s Landing. You’ve been warned.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Captain Jim bonks a Ling"]
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Anyway. Finally, about noon, I woke and we were at the Chicken hole. If you don’t know, a chicken hole is a known area where large schools of smaller halibut are known to be. I don’t mind the Chicken holes – they’re pretty much a sure thing, there’s not too much work in bringing the smaller halibut up and you usually get some bonus fish like cod, rockfish or quillback. Chicken sized halibut are also usually tastier than their larger, older fish.
Ling cod are my favorite to catch, though. They come up easy and they can be pretty big, bringing lots of meat for the freezer. And they sure are ugly. Almost as ugly as the halibut. That’s fine, I love them for what they are on the inside. It’s what is inside that counts, right?
So the fishing trip was a success and we ended up with about 60lbs of halibut and cod. That should make us plenty of fish & chips and halibut tacos to get us through the winter.
So then, the following Saturday was the Alaska State Fair and rodeo.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Flag girl at the Alaska State Rodeo, 2008"]
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It was fun. The rodeo was kinda small, it rained, the PA system sucked and the roping was really bad, but it was fun. And bull riding is always fun, no matter how good or bad the riders might be. And some were actually pretty good. I finally had a chance to check how fast my new camera is and I got a few decent shots, except that I’ve only got a 28mm lens! There’s a few more photos here, in the gallery.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Get that ribbon!"]
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The highlight of the event had to be when they turned 60+ kids lose on a calf to retrieve the ribbon tied to his tail. That poor calf sauntered out into that ring and was quite immediately descended upon by a screaming, racing mob of children. He made a valiant effort but got cornered in a round arena and an 11 yr old girl won the contest. I lol’d. There’s a few photos of that in the gallery as well.
After the rodeo we walked through the farm & animal exhibits, grabbed a funnel cake and headed home. By that time, people were shoulder to shoulder everywhere you went and they squeezed us right out to the parking lot.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Baahhh!"]
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Tomorrow we’re headed back down to the Kenai and Uncle Jim’s cabin. Hopefully we’ll hunt down some nice silvers for smoking. It’s the last big meet-up of the summer and all the friends, family and neighbors from the cul-de-sac will gather for an end of the season bar-b-que and campfire bullshit session to rehash fish stories from the summer and tease Jim about how many times we’ve all heard his stories. It will be awesome.
And finally, there’s a nice tide so we’ll be hunting down razor clams, and then back home again on Sunday to process fish and clams. We could save so much money in gas and time in driving if we could just move.
Move.
Soon, we must move to the peninsula.
For now, I will continue to tend to my micro garden of tomatoes that has taken over my entire living room picture window. And boy oh boy, do we have tomatoes. I’ll have to post photos when my new lens arrives next week. Yay! A new lens! Actually two new lenses! I can’t wait! A Canon 28-90MM F/4-5.6 and a Tamron 75-300mm. Woot!
Yeah!
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We have sunshine for 2 days running! Yay! All the quail have new homes and it’s just me and Dan again. Yay! I got 2 new long-term design gigs today! Yay! All PFD recipients will be getting an additional $1200 energy rebate this year! Yay! Wes will be home this weekend! Yay! It’s a good day. Yay.
But yeah, I sold all the quail except Dan. They were awesome and I’ll definitely have them again in the future, but I just don’t have the space now. And to have more than one or two, you really want them to be outside. Crowing at 3am in the living room is ridiculous. And anything beyond a single bird, you’re going to have a smell. I don’t do smells. But it was a fun experiment and I’ve got a really cool bird friend now. The one I started with. Here’s a short video clip I did of the quail rooster crow. I think you’ll get my drift quite quickly.
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The plants are getting some much needed sunshine. Hopefully there will be a growth spurt. I’m worried about my carrots. They were planted late anyway, but with the lack of sun, they’ve hardly grown at all. The beans just aren’t going to happen. The strawberry plant looks nice but it’s a June bearing, so there will be no damn berries. Gah!
The cabbage is pretty, though I see no cabbage ball forming. I’ve already resolved to accepting a barren garden this year but they’re pretty plants so I keep them around. And keep hoping.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Pretty purple cabbage - sans cabbage balls."]
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Oh! Almost forgot. The broccoli was spectacular. Beautiful and yummy. I do believe that once it was steamed, it was the greenest broccoli I have ever seen. Even topping that $8 plate I got from Sullivan’s a few years back. There are still some side shoots growing that can be harvested soon; I’ll try and remember to get a photo before I eat it. I’m not sure your monitor could handle the green though. Might just blow out your pixels. Heh.
Something else of note – with the warmer weather we got a thunderstorm yesterday. It was pretty darn cool. Skiala called and told me there was heavy hail in her part of town. Sadly, we didn’t get that on the East side. There have been a few more rumbles this afternoon and all the neighborhood dogs are barking. Not sure if that’s connected, but, well. Yeah. Barking dogs suck.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Mystery peppers!"]
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And on that note, I leave with peppers. Wes calls these Talkeetna peppers, but I can’t find any reference to a Talkeetna pepper on the web. If someone stumbles across this and happens to know what kind of pepper this is, I’d appreciate a comment.
