I Failed. A Maybe Not-So-Triumphant Return & My Jungle Exploded Down There

But lemme explain why I failed.

Blogging tends to suck me in. It tends to take up a lot of my time between thinking/writing up posts, keeping up with all readers & other blogs, finding & getting sucked into new ones, etc... It sucks me into this never ending online web. I've yet to find my perfect balance. Maybe it's this ADHD, and always being onto some new project.

This summer's line up of events has been non-stop, on top of the fact that when this season hits, I go into another mode entirely. I just couldn't keep up with it all at once, esp. the sitting at the computer so much with so many beautiful days to enjoy. I had to put something down for a while. Unfortunately, that something had to be the blogging.

The chain of events has been non-stop - Lung Surgery Recovery > Florida > Sister's Bridal Shower & Wedding Preparation > Music Festival > Best Friend Visiting from England > Wedding Coming Up > Birthday Coming Up, and still possibly yet another music festival followed by yet another Florida vacation, so even though I've made a pact to myself to return to blogging, there still may be no end in sight to this streak of events that's added to keeping me off the internets so much.

I know that doesn't seem like much to hold me back or keep me busy, but there's plenty going on in between all that as well, trust me.

So, I took a summer vacation. I had to.

In fact, I don't even know where to begin here, which stories of my triumphs, trials, and tribulations to even share first, so I guess I'll bore you right now by starting with the bridal shower & the garden of roid raged doom.

My sister is marrying Bozo the clown this weekend.

Actual picture of what I predict on the wedding day.

I have to stop myself from making a speech at this wedding similar to Steve Buscemi's in The Wedding Singer, and I know in my already anticipating the drunkenness heart, that is going to be an impossibility because I am a goddamn bastard.

And there's surely some good goddamn comedy behind this whole scenario, but like lots of things brought up here, that's another story for another time.

I can't write a novel here. You'd all be throwing tomatoes at your monitors, and that's a damn bad waste of good tomato sauce.

In this chain of events my sister decided she wanted me to make her a cupcake tower for her bridal shower, and I was up for 4 days straight making 3 different kinds of cakes, chocolate hearts covered in edible glitter, and running a bakery out of my goddamn house.

Is this all hypnotizing you? Cupcakes make you happy in the pants, don't they?

Well, don't get too excited. There's broccoli involved in this post.

Master professional-like baker? You bet your ass.

("The Mad Baker" is the name)

Yet another story for another time? You bet your ass, but it's coming soon with the holiday season ahead.

Let's move onto some news about this jungle in my pants, shall we?

Sorry, I mean, my garden. Yard. Fuck, whatever!

(Martha Stewart will never have the class I can possess.)

The Power of Shit

Cow shit that is.

We're going to go through a series of photos here taking a look at the progression, but keep in mind, it's going to get pretty fucked up at some point here. I seemed to have misjudged spacing just a bit this year. 

*Bites tongue*

Now.....

Do you see it? The perfect formation, perfect spacing?

Now....Listen to me. Listen good.

Do not put tomato plants in your garden, esp. when you have every space filled in with something else you had mapped & planned perfectly, and also in soil filled with a high-strength fertilizer.

There are 5 separate boxed off lil gardens & 3 of them are now 1. They've merged, kind of like Trapper Keeper 5,000.

Somehow....

Everything is still growing under all this, from the watermelons to the cauliflower, butternut squash, pickling cucumbers, beans & pea pods. Every single thing, and without a mark or bite on it from the Super Seven.

(Get your hands on some of that shiz. Not one pest issue all season.)

After it was weeded. Clearly fishing for the fruited vegetables is a delicate get your face bitten off situation.

(Lil mosquitos & bees, sure, but mind you, there could be sharks in there. I thought I saw a bear all lost in there once, and we all know, where there are bears there are sharks.)

After the hurricane, unfortunately. Blown over squash stems & a few snapped zucchini stems, but sure enough this jacked up, roid enraged garden survived.

Hell yeah, I grew my own lettuce. But that garden is a lil too sad looking & picked over right now to see.

How about one of my cow shit zucchinis over a store bought zucchini...

Invest in cow shit, people!!

Can't go on forever here can I?

Also, I had to start somewhere.

We'll just have to see how I keep up.

Epic Fail On the Consistency

I have failed miserably at being around & posting more & visiting blogs more, but it's not without good reason.

Ya see, my lovelies...... I spent over 5 years living day & night on a forum of seriously geeky folks who wanted to be hippies, though real hippies are quite different from what they were, and they did NOTHING, day in, day out, and when they finally did get together at a festival or whatever, it was so boring & messed up weird, you just wanted to shoot yourself in a state of "Is this really my life?" and it was for a long time, and I did NOTHING too.

This was conformity. at. its. absolute. worst and most stupid.
(And I know Kelly will be hanging his head in shame, but at least now he has an idea on why I'm even more of a radical than I ever was. In the end I would not conform to the corrupt & ridiculous conformity of lame assness. It took a long time to fully realize WTF I had been doing for all those years of my life. I live my life on my terms & morals, and I wasn't even living, at all.)

DO NOT DRINK THE KOOL-AID!

(That's not acid in there either!)

Now that I've gotten out of the trap, my senses go nuts over things; the smell of summer in the air, all the different things I can do in a day, all the different places I can go. I appreciate every little thing about life in ways that I could never see before.

You lose perspective of life. You lose YOURSELF, and you lose your life itself in that situation.

So, me and hanging out online too much have our issues.

I now love to travel to Florida on a whim. I love to garden all day & go out & about to fun & interesting places, and I love keeping myself busy, productive & happy. Before that trap I had an INCREDIBLE life, and I've been living to get that all back these days.

Moving on from that bullshit that's too lame to even continue mentioning, let me explain what the hell has been going on on my suburban FARM, so you can get some ideas on why the hell I haven't been blogging much.

Last year I spent weeks digging myself up gardens & experimenting with vegetables.

This is just one of my 5 vegetable boxes.

Squash, Zucchinis, and my plethora of Peas.

Turnips & Carrots fresh from the ground.

Black Beauty & mini Gretel Eggplants.

Trellaces of snap peas.

Carrots in abundance.

I also have 10 + giant pots on my deck in which I grow all my tomatoes,  bell peppers, jalapenos, strawberries, and herbs.

C'mon, I'm Italian. What do you expect? We're serious about our gardens, vegetables, and particularly our tomatoes.

I hold my beautiful Jalapenos just as dear. You wouldn't believe how many these pots grow.

I even grew corn, people! Fucking corn! This isn't Nebraska, or wherethefuckever!

Let me give you the list for this year of what the hell I've been working on planting & tilling & preparing.

• Zucchinis
• Black Beauty Eggplants (Aubergines & Courgettes according got Mr. B. ;~) You have to admit how much cooler those names are.
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower (both new additions this year)
• Snap Peas, Snow Peas, and Shelling Peas
• Garden Bush Beans
• Squash
• Corn
• Watermelons galore
• Canteloupes
• Butter Lettuce and Black Seeded Lettuce
• Asparagus
• Carrots
• Scallions
• Strawberries
• Cherry, Roma, Grape, Early Girl, and Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Green Bell, Yellow Bell, Red Bell, Jalapeno, Serano, and Pepperoncini Peppers
• Dill, Cilantro, Chives, Oregano, Basil, Parsley, Mint

This isn't even including my flowers & I left out Onions this year. I may start some Potatoes as well. 

So, you can see how busy I'm keeping myself just with that alone, not to even mention all the other things I've been doing, places I've been going, etc.

There is one thing about this year's gardens that separate it from the last.

That's right, pure cow shit. YUM!

NOW we're talking attack of the mutated, possibly homicidal vegetables. When they grow giant brains & start conspiring against me, I will let you know! When they break into my house & start drinking my tequila, the fucking war is ON!

Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the particular downfalls of gardening, but there's a general rule & that is "If you can grow it, some lil mutant shit insect can kill it in a day." I learned that the hard way. My two gigantic, fruiting Zucchini plants were wiped out in 24 hours by Squash Vine Borers, which dig their way into the the main stalk of the plant & eat it from the inside out, but if you think that's bad, meet my arch nemesis from Mars, the Tomato Horned Worm...

I'm not sure you can see the lil horn on its back, but these are the biggest, ugliest, nastiest things you'll ever lay your eyes on, and they disguise themselves as plant foliage, so they can devour entire tomato plants & strip them bare in just a few days. 

Moths come & lay eggs on the underside of the leaves & these creatures hatch from them & live on the plants. Then wasps come & infest the worms with their eggs & lil baby wasps hatch from their backs, killing the worms. Are you throwing up yet? Not yet? What if I told you these things move their mouths at you while they make some ungodly sound from outer space? And you have to dispose of them properly because if they get thrown into the soil, they overwinter in it & come back infesting everything.

So, as much as I wanted to continue going organic this year, I got me a big old bottle of Super Seven insecticide & there won't be shit eating my plants this year!

So, clearly I've been super busy and am trying to keep up with other blogs as much as possible & best as I can as well, but I think it's gonna take me some time to adjust & incorporate frequent blogging into my agenda. Nevertheless, I will get there. I love blogging way too much to just abandon it. Some seasons & some phases of life are just more busy than others.

But not only do I have all this being busy to focus on.....Now I have this shit to worry about too.
AGAIN, in case you don't remember the whole killer vegetables ordeal from a previous post.
The point is, now I have to worry about mutated vegetables uprooting in the middle of the night & possibly breaking into the house to kill me.

Shouldn't this be a survival guide?

Not a usual post from me, but more of a brief update. I have another post in the works to update you on other rather freaking humorous goings on in my life lately and that should be up soon.

For now, I hope you're all enjoying this wonderful summer so far!