Kakahead

Everybody ready for the 28^th Annual Mulch Run?!?!?  I’m pretty excited.  Gonna get my refreshments (fill my water bottle), hop into the Chrysler Towne & Country Racing Van, grab a seat, hook up the trailer and GO!!!

And I always win.

Aaaahhhh summer time.  The garden is exploding, and the weeds are doing really well. Seems like the seeds I actually planted just got going, and all the weeds I didn’t plant (not intentionally anyway) are growing so fast I can barely tell the beets from the purslane.  Sure you can eat purslane, and I have.  Pretty good in salads and even cooked in Chicken Cockamamie.  But it volunteers itself all over the place along with lamb’s quarters and lots of other weedy greens; and if left unchecked the seeds I bought and spent so much time planting will be overrun.

Normal garden process at my house is:

1)  Pull up the garden waste from last year in late fall or early spring.  OK… usually early spring.

G)  Till the garden as soon as the mud from the snow melt is dried a bit.

27)  Let the ground dry a bit and also allow weeds to germinate.

*x)  Till again, then

4L)  Carefully plant the tomato, pepper, eggplant and marigold plants I adopted from the greenhouse; and finally

M#)  Make the rows and beds and plant, plant, plant the seeds.

I’ve learned the hard way that if I mulch too soon, the slugs stampede (albeit very slowly) into the garden and chow down at night and hide under the mulch during the day.  Not very funny.

So, I wait… then of course the weeds go nuts because hey, I work for a living and can’t always get motivated to put my hiney in the garden after a long day.  That, of course,  means I do “catch up” weeding and mulch as I go.

Last year I used hay for mulch.  Seemed to work pretty well but it was a bit expensive and I have this silly suspicion that’s what gave me all my wonderful weeds this year.  Straw works but it tends to rob nitrogen from the soil… not a good thing if you’re an old organic hippie like me who refuses to buy chemical fertilizer.  Hay actually adds some nitrogen, but again, there’s that weed thing.

So it’s back to basics this year.  For 28 years I’ve been gardening here… and have managed to turn sand into pretty nice soil.  Primary reason:  mulch runs.  I had a truck for awhile but switched to a trailer many moons ago and that will probably be what I use until I can’t chew my milkweed anymore.  Or something.

I cruise around the ‘burbs and “steal” their bags of grass clippings and leaves right out from under the suburbanite’s noses.  Most are very grateful I’m taking the stuff away from the curb.  Last year though, I had a strange encounter when I pulled up to a house that seemed to have the mother lode of leaves.  A grumpy old man came out to his porch and barked at me,

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!?”

“I’m stealing your leaves,” I replied in an impish tone.

“WHAT’RE YOU GONNA DO WITH THEM??!!??”

“Well I’m gonna use them in my garden, which means I’ll be eating them eventually.”

“OH, alright…”  he snorted.  He lowered the volume on the last retort as I found my head spinning with ideas on how a person could get into mischief with stolen leaves.

“I’m sorry to alarm you,” I said in a more apologetic tone.  “You want me to put them back?”

“No it’s OK,” he said as he went back inside.

Well, the first day of the 28^th Annual Mulch Run was this past Tuesday, and sure enough Mr. LeafGrouch had a nice pile of grass clippings all bagged up.  This time, I went up to the porch and rang the doorbell.

“Hey I was here last year… do you mind if I take your grass clippings?”  I smiled politely and tried not to snicker at his god awful black shorts with neon flowers all over them.

He was much more reserved this time… almost obliging.  “Yeah sure, I’ll have more on Friday.”

I took Friday off this week.  The 28^th Annual Mulch Run of 2010 continues.

And now for something completely different… my brother was sad there was no video this week, so I actually learned how to stream one from my very own collection!! Enjoy!!