foraging

Went back to the fruit trees over by the interior design parking lot. I'm thinking jam.

and another thing...

It occurred to me (as I was testing the new archive links and came across this post, and this, and this other one), that some of you have expressed dismay in the past about not getting us things in time to add them to the burninating of Zozobra.

Yes indeedy, summer is ending, chile roasting time is upon us, and soon it will be time to set a giant, groaning, 50-foot-tall puppet on fire. Anything you want us to add to the bonfire for you, get it in the mail asap!

dinking around in Blogger

Well, it's been over a year-and-a-half since Blogger finalized their new template customizing interface. Fortunately, it's still backwards compatible with everyone's personalized templates/CSS/HTML from the previous version. But I've been avoiding learning their new "widget" coding system; while the web-based interface for changing colors and fonts is much easier, the hard-core HTML code guts is more complicated. Plus, at first, you couldn't do some (I thought) pretty basic stuff, like f'rinstance using a graphic for your header, instead of text.

So tonight, I thought I'd try to see if I could customize one of the new Blogger templates to match the existing Going 2 NM layout. This is what I came up with, after an hour or so of dinking around (you may need to reload/refresh the page). But some stuff is different. The underlines for links aren't the same. The "Recent Posts" are now part of the Archives (mandatory). You'll note the blog "description" above the title is missing — couldn't replace just the title with the graphic, had to replace both the title and the description. >...sigh...< As a designer, it's the lack of control over details like that that bug me.

But I'll keep trying to get stuff back the way I'd like it (or decide to live with it this way). It's going to take more poking around in the HTML/widget code. Just not tonight.

garden update

Last I wrote, the veggie garden had just gone in:



It's been a few weeks now, and I: have applied another layer of straw; have to keep pulling up the bindweed that survived the solarization; have put in some marigolds to keep the tomatoes company. Some plants have done better than others.

Tomatoes: 0 for 3
Squashes: 50/50
Beans: woo hoo!



So, the tomato leaves slowly tuned brown + shriveled. I couln't figure out what (if any) disease they maybe had. Plants never got any bigger, never set flowers. I snapped off the brown stuff, but lately, two of them seem to be setting new leaves. Weird.



Next year we'll plant any tomatoes in the perennial bed, against a south-facing garden wall. I think it will help keep the plants warmer, radiating heat into the evenings — it still gets down in the 60s most nights. All of our friends who have successfully grown 'maters this summer seem to have done the wall thing.

Squash #1 (Delicata): Also failure to thrive, but not dying either. It's about the same size as when it was planted — just not spreading out or anything. Blooms a plenty, just all squinched up there in the middle.



Squash #2 (Acorn): Yay! Lookit it go! It's sprawling all over like a good squash plant should. (Those are the beans in the background.)



All kinds of baby squashes underneath. Biggest is about the size of a large orange.



The beans are the most heartening, seeing as how they were a package of seeds (beans) I poked into the ground the day I put all the other plants in, and they're really going — beans already! They're drying beans, though — I hope they'll have enough time to mature before it gets too cold.

Tannersitting

Tanner's going to be staying with us for a couple days while his people take a little vacation.