Slapdash Manor: Reports of My Cucumbers' Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated
Isn't it wonderful that whatever happens, no matter how intolerable things may get, gardens keep growing?
I started Slapdash Manor in part because I felt so overwhelmed (and overstimulated and extremely anxious) about the state of the world. Like many of you, I've been in a continuous state of near-daily horror since January. Focusing on a smaller circle of existence felt like a healthy re-orientation. It still does. Age has a way of stretching one's perspective, and as I rapidly approach 50, I'm just as frightened and exhausted as I ever was, but I also have the context of prior experience to know that even the end of the world is never really the end of the world. Or maybe it's the end of a world, and maybe that world damn well needed to end, to make room for another, better world to come into being. But terrible things happen and plants still need watering. Pets still need caring for. Community still needs supporting. Relationships still need nurturing. Food still needs preparing and eating. Air needs breathing. So we go on and so we go on and we go on. I understand if my small household endeavors feel tone-deaf or irrelevant right now. But I need to keep living even amidst the horrors. I can't lose myself to despair, because then I've got nothing left to fight for.
So June is nearly over. The finch babies nesting in my front door wreath successfully fledged and flew away several weeks ago. (🥲) I am not sharing a bunch of photos of their later stages because, well, evidently a bird nest in use becomes a massive blob of bird shit. It went from beautiful swirling egg bowl to feces-encrusted trash pile seemingly overnight. It was revolting and I had to look at it and clean it up. I’m not making the rest of y’all experience it too.
I hacked the lilac bush to pieces, as I’d promised. The space is so much better now, with far more airflow (good considering the frequency with which my plants get powdery mildew) and it just feels less claustrophobic overall. You're not supposed to prune more than a third of the total bush at a time, according to the internet. I think I did a little more than that.
Elsewhere, my garden plot is in limbo. As I’ve mentioned, I have a plot in a nearby community garden, shared with a bunch of my neighbors. It’s about four blocks away. I haven’t shared any photos of it yet because, well, I haven’t been able to do anything there. I had a tray filled with plant starts ready to go in the ground, but a month ago I received an email saying that the continuing encroachment of the bamboo from the house next to the garden – a problem as long as I’ve been a member – has meant that two plots need to be dug up, the bamboo pulled out, a bamboo barrier built and installed, and then the plots rebuilt. One of these two plots is mine. Which is extra ironic considering I switched plots back in April – this new plot was supposedly an upgrade, much closer to the hose, and not directly underneath the massive mulberry tree that poops mulberries all over (NGL, I love that mulberry tree and every time I’m at the garden when it’s fruiting, I fill as many containers as I can with delicious mulberries – but it is ALSO one of the sloppiest trees I’ve ever met, and once the fallen berries start to ferment, it smells very bad).
Anyway. I should’ve kept my rank fruity plot, I guess, because right now I can’t plant anything, and I won’t be able to until they build the bamboo barrier, for which there is seemingly no timeline [update: I found out TODAY that there is a sort of timeline but it's far too late for me to plant now!].
This has put me in a frustrating position. The plant starts I had set aside for the community plot were starting to suffer in their tiny seedling pots. I spent a week internally debating if I should just plant them at home and call the garden plot a loss until I get confirmation that I can use it. I have several tomatoes and peppers that are not likely to thrive in my sunlight-limited yard, but ultimately I’d rather give them a chance than let them suffocate in too-small containers.
I had a trip to visit family coming up – I'm back now – and I was fairly certain that by the time I returned from my trip, the plants I had left would be either dead or so stressed as to be unsalvageable. Thus, in the literal hours before I left for the airport, I found homes for everything I had left. I guess having an absurd number of empty backup planters in the garage has finally paid off. Some of these plants are currently two to a pot, and will be undergoing a Mad-Max-style battle for survival – whichever plant is stronger in the coming weeks will win the space, and I'll pull the loser so the stronger guy has the best possible chance to thrive despite the not-great sunlight conditions.
In happier news, my potatoes are EXPLODING. I had always heard that potatoes were easy to grow, but they say that about lots of things! I've had to heap them with new potting mix three times and the grow bags are now full. Apparently my backyard is very potato-favorable. Now my worry is that I need to move them because they're shading out my beans in the raised bed (I thought the beans would grow higher before the potatoes, live and learn!).
Sadly, all the Hmong cucumbers I mentioned in my previous post have inexplicably died, except one that’s just clinging to life. This is bewildering because cucumbers are generally a thing I can grow well. In my panic over this, I over-aggressively planted a bunch of other cucumber seeds, and now I have seedlings going for two types of pickling cukes, Persian cukes, and three kinds of slicing cukes. SOME OF THEM ARE GOING TO LIVE. Actually I suspect the problem was the weather – we had a couple warm days and all the baby plants perked up considerably.
Also living, against all odds: my new fig tree. A few weeks ago I went outside and discovered that something had snapped my brand new fig tree (my one garden splurge this year!) in half. It could've been a critter who was too heavy for the branch. It could've been an errant ball thrown by the neighbor kids. It could've been a fallen branch from the oak tree above. I was devastated but I tried to be cool about it, especially since there was nothing I could do.
Which is exactly what I did. Nothing. I left the sad broken baby tree to sit and the broken top to wither and die, because I figured there was no harm in waiting to deal with it. Well. My experience growing actual trees is pretty limited, and I had no idea this guy might still be alive. After I returned from my trip, I was outside checking my plants, and I discovered something unexpected!
The remaining stick of fig has sprouted new leaves, y'all! I was sure the whole thing was dead and hopeless! But life finds a way! I feel like this is a metaphor I really need right now!
In other household news, the fridge broke. Yes, the nightmare scenario. It has since been replaced through an extreme act of generosity, but not before we lost a few hundred dollars’ worth of food. The fridge we had was secondhand, from the mom of one of my partners, and it was fancy. It had french doors and a bottom freezer drawer and a through-the-door water and ice dispenser! It was also ten years old, and was already repaired once two years ago, so its time was probably nigh. The new fridge is the most basic bitch of top-freezer no-frills action, and I'm fine with that because I just want it to keep things cold for a very long time.
There was a terrifying moment having it delivered, when the Lowe's guy, in the process of bringing it through the narrow 29-inch side door as the entire building emitted distressed creaks and groans, turned to me and said, flatly, “It doesn't fit.” I said something like “OH I MEASURED 57 TIMES, IT'LL FIT” as I visibly readied myself to shoulder the appliance through the door my own damn self. They saved me from taking action, however, and pushed it through, and I swear there was an audible POP when it cleared the agonized doorframe. I have no idea if this fridge can ever be removed from this house again, but that's a problem for Future Lesley.
Also broken: the bulky, electricity-gobbling living room air conditioning unit, which conveniently waited to make its status known until a heat wave settled over Rhode Island. It worked FINE all last year, and I've dismantled and cleaned every bit I could access, but while it enthusiastically blows air out, it still refuses to cool. Given the 100+F heat indexes we've had, this was replaced with a simple window unit, which honestly I probably should've done in the first place but I thought having a “portable” unit might be useful (it never left the living room because moving it is a huge pain). It's been a rough month for technology around here.
I'm going to wrap this installment up at this point, because I have a whole other bunch of writing about food to come shortly. I also want to thank those of you who have signed up for paid subscriptions, from the very bottom of my heart. I am overwhelmed with gratitude and humility every time someone pays for this newsletter, and I will continue to endeavor to share it more regularly, but as y'all know, right now life is complicated and we're all doing our best.
Thank you, all of you, for reading and being a part of my community. I remain certain that amidst everything, our human connections are what will get us through.
Lesley