Some End-of-Summer Notes

I haven't been the most active here on the blog, you can always count on Thursdays of course, and you can count on Mondays and Fridays, ahem, mostly. I kid of course, and am more than delighted to have both Miller and Rucht on board. Because of them Mik's Minis is starting to become something a little bigger and a lot better, if you haven't checked out their weekly features, you should, links above.

The garden still grows. I got frustrated with the zucchini and removed it with extreme prejudice. Other than that, we are rolling along as you can see here.

Speaking of what you see here, as you can tell from my shoes and fancy moisture-wicking shirt, I am still playing tennis. I wish I could report a ton of wins, heh, but they seem to allude me. I am getting much needed exercise (which is my primary goal) and I am starting to feel myself get better at the game. It's been an interesting experience, and it has been a surprisingly mental exercise as well. Anytime you're playing strangers in direct head-to-head competition in a purely physical arena you're bound to learn all kinds of things about yourself. It truly becomes a 'make or break' situation.


We've been gaming too, but as I have mentioned many times in the past, we lack some focus. Hopefully Infinity will remedy that to an extent, but other great games seem to be hanging in the wind; such as the new Marvel RPG and a promising Legends of Anglerre campaign that never got off the launchpad. It's funny, with all the focus on minis (buying, painting, the like) it is these two roleplaying games that I miss the most.

On the other hand, lack of focus and not having a minis game prepped and ready to roll does mean that there has been a good deal of board-gaming going on. With all of the solid selections out there right now, this certainly can't be seen as a complaint. I've recently taken stock of my own boardgame collection and have been kicking around the thought of doing a new series where I learn/re-learn what I've got, play it with the group at least once, then review it here. I recently ordered the Gears of War boardgame, so that may be the first one I do if and when that happens.

Garden Greenery Abounds

Wow, I hadn't realized my last garden post back at the end of April was of cleaned-out and empty beds! Compared to those pics it has come a long way indeed. So without further preamble, here's this year's garden, I know y'all have been on bated breath for this.


You can tell from the title pic that the center section of the upper bed has been completely dominated by zucchini. I may have erred in putting two plants in as they are threatening to overtake each of their neighboring side beds.


Two eggplant, err, plants are doing okay, but only just. Unfortunately the zuchs have overshadowed the Tabasco pepper and the Park's Orangesicle. I don't know what the latter is but it sounded neat so I thought I'd try it out this year.


Here's some of the pepper plants literally living in the shadow of the zucchini. I've now spelled zucchini three times and still can't get it right! Honestly though, only one of these four plants seems to be doing all that great. These are chili and Thai peppers.


This is one of my favorite sights right now. This Thai chili pepper plant is bursting at the buds with what promises to be a bunch of spicy, tasty pods of deliciousness. My mouth just watered a little bit while thinking of it, but I avoided outright drooling.


Here are my two jalapeño plants. They look a little scrawny here but I've already 'harvested' about six medium to large sized peppers from the pair. They went into a large batch of chicken and shrimp jumbalaya. So in past years I planted too many of these so the sight of just a mere two is kind of weird, I'm hoping it will pan out in the long run.



The above two plants are doing great, they're a green and a red bell pepper respectively. Have you priced organic bell peppers lately? They're like a buck a pop! That's not why I'm growing them mind you, we use bell peppers in the kitchen a lot, so they're pretty handy to have around. Not to mention you can eat them like an apple too, which is tasty.


Last we have the tomato plants. They're tall and green with plenty of baby maters on the vine. I thought the one on the far left wasn't going to make it, but it came in well considering. Note I said "left", the tiny one on the right is a different story.


I thought I was getting a Roma plant but this obviously isn't a Roma tomato plant. It's a patio tomato plant, genegineered to be grown easily on an apartment balcony in a flower pot taking up little room. As you can see it looks to yield a lot of maters too, but they're freaking me out how closely they're all bunched together. Time will tell on this one, but I'm already skeptical, I wanted Romas darn it for sauces, salsas, and the like.


This is a good to close on, nice, normal tomatoes growing on the vine. I know the garden hasn't been featured as much this summer as summers past, so hopefully this pic heavy post will make up for that. More to come for sure, until then enjoy!

Prepping the 2012 Garden

Honestly, after looking back at my garden post-apoc post not too long ago I gotta say I'm slightly embarrassed. I knew I had let things go, but that was beyond the usual negligence. So I took this past weekend to make up for it and gave the garden a thorough de-weeding, cleaning, and maintenance. It's detritus free and ready for planting. Consider this a "before" post.

I built the above triangular box thinking I would put more veggies in it this year, however after the firstborn and I planted the mailbox and driveway flower gardens, we still had a lot leftover. This is what I get for letting her pick the flowers. We took the leftovers and put them in this newly built garden box, admittedly they're a nice addition.


It's the planning stages, what to plant, what do we eat the most of, what do we buy at the store the most that we could easily just grow ourselves? All of those questions go into garden planning. One thing we do use a lot of are onions, and this garden's just not equipped for that endeavor, plus it's not the right time of year and they're cheap enough as is that it's not an issue.

The larger box here is going to be for bell peppers, probably a red and a yellow. You can see the lone Maple tree here as well, I didn't have the heart to remove it, but I may have to. It's roots are too deep in between boxes and I don't think I can remove it in one piece for a transplant. If I leave it, it will only end up as a garden-wrecker.


Top beds will be for eggplant, zucchini, and some hot peppers like cayenne and habañero. Zucchini is a new one this year and will hopefully fare better than cucumbers. Plus it's something we're always grilling anyway so it'd nice not to have to buy them. They do take up a lot of room unfortunately, but should be worth it.


These "steps" are a throwback of the previous owners and there's only half of them left after I took out the others. Which was a major pain. These get plenty of sun and have yet to disappoint in the area of jalapeño and banana peppers so I'm not going to change it now.


Last we end with the powerhouse of the garden, the 'mater beds. Just enough room for three solid plants and since I will NOT be planting Indian Super-gourds this year hopefully the tomatoes will do great. I know I'll be doing one cage of Romas, just for salsa and sauce application. As for the other two, I don't know yet, they'll probably be identical and something that will work sliced and on top of whatever I happen to pulling off the grill. I would make a "garden variety" joke but I don't even know if you've made it this far, haha. So there you have it, garden prep for the coming year. I hope to have some veggies in the ground by the weekend. Enjoy!

EDIT: Heh, I just noticed that my dog, Lily, performed a flawless photo-bomb above!

Garden Post-Apocalypse

These were the tomato beds!

The History Channel had a show, Life After People, that I loved. Well I've got my own little microcosm in the backyard, but mine is Garden After People. Twice in one week I reference my tennis injury, which happened in late summer.

Well I was crutches for a little while and this monstrous moon-boot after that. Needless to say making treks to the garden after that pretty much stopped and all of that post-growing season maintenance never took place. Hence this wreck.

My pepper beds now sport huge weeds and even a maple tree!

Obligatory dog pic in what were the Habañero plants

The upper beds

Sprouts gone wild

Whoa. Have you ever seen broccoli do this?

So my time very soon will be spent down in garden doing way more prep work than need be. Pulling weeds, turning the dirt, adding new dirt, and I'm thinking of adding a new bed too. I know what I won't be planting, and that's the mega-mutant squash! Seriously, that stuff took over and there was no letting up. Maybe that's why it's banned on the import list!

Winter Veggie Haul

Amidst the cold, amidst all of the sub-freezing nights and morning, and among all of the dried, dead husks of last year's garden I've got veggies. Part of the winter 'crop' I tried for the first time this past fall, unbelievably I'm pulling edible veggies out of the ground...at the end of January.


Mind you, the winters here in the south are mild compared to northern and mid-western winters, but below freezing is below freezing and as the huge flower of broccoli can attest to, this stuff is not just hanging on, but thriving.


My Brussels sprouts didn't take off quite like I had hoped. Part of this might be my severe lack of attendance over the last couple of months to the garden, but these still tasted great. I've just eaten them raw off the stalk, but they were pretty darn good.

So all of this began as a test crop really, planted in the same beds that my cucumbers and (horribly failed, eaten by rabbits) strawberries occupied over the summer. So as far as tests go, I'd say this has given me enough proof that next year I'll give this a go in earnest. Well, I think y'all are officially off the garden hook for a few months!

Winter Garden Signs of Life

So even though the gardening season is long dead, some of you may recall that I tried my hand at winter crops this year. Above you have the two groups I planted; broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and yes, "Brussels" is a proper name. I'm pretty excited because looking at them they seem to be doing exactly what they're supposed to even though we've had had multiple mornings with frost and a few nights with temperatures dropping below freezing.


Hey! It looks just like broccoli!


I know what a Brussel sprout looks like, and although these plants seem to be as healthy and vibrant as the broccoli, I've seen hide nor hair of the actual sprout. Too bad because I have a great recipe in mind for when they finally do get here.

Overall I've enjoyed tinkering around with these plants and it is kind of neat to keep the garden going after the 'big' garden has withered and died. Maybe next year I'll try potatoes or onions. Until then, enjoy!

Last of the 2011 Garden

It was a rather wet, rainy, and overall dreary mid-October day but I trudged down to the garden to see what I had in store. Since tearing my calf muscle, trips up and down the back stairs to the garden have been infrequent (though I'm healing just fine).

It's kind of a mess down there, no weeding has been done and I could tell far too much was left on the vine longer than it should've been. But just like in Jurassic Park, nature will find a way, and there was all kinds of good stuff waiting. Nothing like the photo above to remind you why you garden in the first place.


I'm trying something new this year. I had mentioned it earlier but here are the first pics of the winter crop; broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I don't know if its the same rabbits who ate my strawberries eating these, or the leaves just fell off, but I'm not holding my breath to see how they'll turn out. Hopefully they too will find a way, we'll see.


Finally are those dang mutated, illegally-smuggled squash plants. These four are the last of their kind, most of the others were given away. I stuck my foot in there for scale.

Well, as the title suggests, this is probably the last of the garden posting this year. This could change depending on the winter stuff, but the days grow short and the night cold so juicy tomatoes and peppers are coming to an end.

Some Peppers...

Not a whole lot to report on the gardening front, here's a handful of peppers I picked the other day. Things aren't really cooling off even in mid-October, so my "fall crops" (broccoli and Brussels sprouts) are doing well and there's still tons of everything else which I don't see going anywhere until we get a few good morning of frost.

Mutant Squash Attacks House

A few weeks ago I posted on these wacky giant squash(es?) that have been out of control. Well it's officially reached new heights of zaniness. As you can see here a good quarter of my deck is now covered with the creeping, squash-birthing vine.


You also have to remember that the squash plant itself is ten plus feet below the deck, down in the garden itself! From far below you can also see one of the body-snatching pods, I mean squash, growing to epic proportions. It's hard to believe this is all coming from a stalk no bigger than about an inch in diameter.


This is one of the ones growing on top of the deck. I don't even have to go down the stairs to harvest them, they've come to me! I've used both my foot and my dog for scale points of reference.

That's about all I've got in the garden department, although I did plant a few "fall crops" for the first time, but more on those later.

July Veggie Haul

Following up on my mutant squash post the other day I thought I'd post a little inventory of the latest haul out of this year's garden. My tomatoes aren't doing very well, I've been having some trouble with my cages.

One of those mutant squashes broke free of its moorings up near the top of the deck. It crashed down, eight pounds times ten feet of falling damage and literally took out one cage, knocking it over and uprooting the tomato plant within.

Everything else is coming along quite well though, I've got plans for the poblano peppers, and it seems that once my 'maters come in (if they do) I've got more than enough for a few more rounds of Mount Doom salsa!


It was a nice feeling when my kitchen sink was filled to the brim with stuff I grew myself. This is really why I garden, I get to try new things, and I get to eat a lot of stuff I didn't have to buy at the store. Look at those bell peppers, they're huge!

If you've been around, you know this isn't just a gaming blog. Having said that I'll see if I can cross the streams however. I've had an idea of taking some of my produce and making some tabletop terrain out of it. Hmm, I don't know if it'll work.

Massive Mutant Squash

I had no idea what I had when I planted this stuff in the ground. Apparently it wasn't just a squash, but a giant Indian variety of squash from the Kerala region. This plant is probably not even properly registered with customs. You can't make this stuff up.


It's no gourd, that's a lot of edible veggies in there. That's my coffee maker in the background, and you can see the diameter of the squash itself is about that of the bottom of a pot of coffee. The largest of the two had to have weighed at least fifteen pounds. Maybe I just solved world hunger.

I cooked it, ate it raw, fried it, and pretty much whatever else you do with squash. It was decently good, I mean it was squash after all, when the last time you were excited about squash? I was happy with the growing process though, this thing really took off from day one. Here firstborn struggles to heft the mighty squash!

Garden Update: Mid-June

Heya, it's Father's Day as I type this, though it's not going to post 'til about week later. That's the way I roll, I queue up posts and stuff yo. Anyway I was poking around in the garden today, keeping everything in order and had to snap some pics.

The garden's doing great, everything has not only bounced back since the hailstorm in April, but most of it is growing with a vengeance! There are a couple of plants that haven't really taken off, but everyone else is making up for it.

Strawberries are blooming...

First cucumber sighting...

Cayenne peppers are coming in...

Jalapeños, regular variety...

Jalapeño Gigantes, and they are already living up to their name...


I have good-sized hands, I can palm a regulation basketball (not bad for a short guy) and as you can see here, these are some seriously stout jalapeños. These are the gigante variety, and frankly I could've left them on the plant for a bit longer, but we're cooking burgers tonight and it would be nice to slice these up as toppings. First harvest of the season!

Hot Banana Peppers...

Red Bell Pepper (left) and Pablano Pepper (right)

My two tomato plants and squash on the far right...

My squash is freaking out of control! I have a high back deck too...

In fact, this is it growing through the underside of the deck!


These are my two "accidental" heirloom tomato plants. Last year I had 'maters growing up until November, most were scrawny by then and I just let them go. They fell to the dirt, rotted, and dried up, but they left their seeds behind and just like in Jurassic Park, life finds a way.

Here you can see last year's 'maters growing through the slats

The view of the garden from the top of the deck...