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GARDENER ON THE ROOF

    The two most important things in making pesto are, get a food processor and don't get caught licking the bowl. I'm trying to take the high road here. You know the one about it's not what happens to you but your reaction that matters. It's been a hot and humid spring into summer and August is days away. I might go down hugging my air conditioner but damn it, I will adapt. I don't have to have the shower 1st thing in the morning. I can get up earlier and nibble at the garden work. And yeah, cutting and freezing onions and making pesto aren't technically garden work. They are however garden adjacent, do need to be done and importantly inside work. 

  Don't get me wrong. I am the luckiest man in the world and a piece of that is my garden. Even if I chose to move that garden a zone further south and a million percent higher humidity. I will adapt and acclimate. It just takes time. 'sides no matter where you live you're always making pesto in hot weather. And, and that humidity thing well that's 'cause it rains more and you don't have to water so often. Except for of course the summer. So glass half full - Right!

  All whining aside the garden has really leveled up this year. Many levels to go but with a good percentage of the raised beds built and the soil coming along a noticeable leap over last year. Kelly's potato onions gave me a great crop. Getting them to dry and cure for storage is giving me fits but no whining, great crop. The surprise winner this year has to be melons. 

  One aspect of companion planting is succession planting. Keeping "a root in the ground" by starting one plant so it will be needing space just as another is being harvested. I nailed it this year with the melons and squash following the potato onions perfectly. I had very little success with melons in the Colorado garden. Colorado might be home to Rocky Ford melons but my experience was always a few if any struggling to beat the 1st frost. The layout of the onions left room for trellised butternut squash and the Rampicante that I had such great success with last year. The melons were an add on, an afterthought. I had two spare spots in the onions and three types of pretty old melon seed that I didn't know if they would germinate. They all did, with the Canary and watermelon types earning the two spots for the vigor of the starts. The Ha'Ogen cantaloupe type was iffy and just tucked in where I could fit it. They all have done very well. Or at least I think so as the proof will be when I taste 'em!

  The Zucchino Rampicante and Butternut squashes I mentioned have done good and OK but have been something of a dance. The dance has been with bugs, squash bugs. My garden hasn't really yet balanced out both in the soil and the bug population. It will happen but for now I'm not seeing enough pollinators or good bugs. The Butternut was added this year to see if the resilience to Squash Borers (not squash bugs) extended along the family line of Cucurbita Moschata to which both belong. That seems to be the case. Squash bugs, which attack the leaves while the squash borers attack the main stems, have however exploded . Or at least I didn't notice them last year. This year, Oh yeah! Unlike the borers they don't seem to be the death of the plant, just a hindrance. Thus the dance. Removing them is tedious. (and did I mention it's hot!) So I have to decide how perfect a job I do each time I cull the adults and eggs. Gardening is always a dance.

  Eggplant and Okra were two dance steps I tried for the first time last year. They both loved the heat and earned places in this years summer garden. Deb doesn't like Okra but I do, so less this year. Eggplant we both like so I added a second variety and have been learning some new ways to fix it.

 I realize this has been a bit of gardenerding out but I've not much to say on politics. I feel like we are in something of a fog of major change. There is plenty going on I can hear the bullets of issues whizzing by my head but can only guess their meaning and outcome. I have plenty of hopes as to what I want the outcome to be but I don't actually run the world. Thus my posture remains head down in the foxhole and trying to be agile enough to be able to have a positive reaction to that which I don't control. I will however add that I think the battle between the banks and The President is more important than most realize. I could see it coming to a head as soon as August or October. The outcome? Heck throw some spaghetti against the wall and read that plot graph. Just make sure you put some homemade pesto on it.

Doug A.

P.S. I would be remiss and a bad son if I didn't mention today would have been my mother's 100th birthday. She was a gardener and no doubt my inspiration. My bit of her ashes are under a beautiful new grape vine. A bit of 'Catholic intercession' I figured she'd appreciate. I mentioned her birthday to my father who's ashes are under a big tomato plant. Yeah you should talk to your plant!

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