Category Archives: Uncategorized

I have been trying to write this post off and on all day. That shouldn't surprise me; I've been trying to write it off and on for months. If there's a good way to write about my father's stroke, I haven't found it. So I've given up on doing it “well;” I'll just do it.

It's ten o'clock in the evening, and four hours of resetting the paved path next door have pretty much done me in. The students who rent the house let me traipse in and out of their yard, for the sake of an occasional strawberry or bunch of lettuce or potatoes. I'm putting weed-cloth under the paving stones because getting control of the weeds (especially the bindweed) running rampant under that path is essential to getting control of the weeds in the garden. This was a rare, sunny day–the first in weeks, so naturally I spent hours gardening errands that could have been done in the rain, but by late afternoon I was digging in the dirt.

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Soil blocks, compressed soil for seedlings, come recommended by almost everyone who tries them, as long as they can get the things to hang together. The web is full of grumbling from people whose blocks disintegrated when moved, planted, or breathed on, and accolades from those who changed their soil mix and found success. The word is out: don't skimp here, and for once I decided to take that advice. Sort of.

So a couple of Fridays back I headed for Planet Natural* for my soil block ingredients: coconut coir, perlite, and greensand. We had barely time to unload the car and wash up before joining husband Steve for a soup dinner benefiting a local artist's studio group and then a local production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Abdoulaye came along for all of it, so he got to meet Eric at PN, have a tomato soup that couldn't be beat, and then see a show that really has no equivalent in Mali.**

Over the weekend a friend and I hauled everything outside and prepared the mix. Here's the recipe I got on-line at Jason Beam's site, where I ordered my molds:

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I just picked these greens — or at least, I had just picked them when I started this post last night, but then I had to make the dinner for which they were destined, and seeing as how it was Abdoulaye's birthday and he's never seen The Sting, well, there went the evening, and the post languished, neglected. (Abdoulaye, our visiting potato specialist from Mali, has a terrific sense of humor and excellent taste in movies, as witnessed by the fact that he likes all our favorites. When I mentioned recently that his English comprehension is excellent–much better than it was when he first lived with us back in the fall of 2005–he credited the movies I gave him for a going-away present back in 2007; especially, he said, My Cousin Vinny.)

To get back to the greens, the subject of this interrupted post: the harvest pictured above is the second picking from a tiny basement garden I planted in January, which grows under a cheap florescent light in a room which averages about 55-60 degrees.  

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The Manic has come for more than its share of praise recently.

Last November, distracted by surgery and by a family emergency, I entirely failed to mention (or even to notice, till someone pointed it out) that Horticulture Magazine had incuded the Manic in its list of 20 — well, most grateful recipients have called it Horticulture's “favorite” or “top” garden blogs, but interestingly, the title actually used is a far more even-handed, non-committal one: “Visit the not-so-secret gardens of on-line writers.” (Click here for pdf.) But you know what? Buried in the URL, one can find the words “topgardeningblogs.” So I’m chuffed.

Just yesterday I learned that the blogmeisters at Dobbies (a string of garden centers in the UK) have named the Manic Garden Blog of the Week. They e-mailed me a while ago to say I’d made their short-list of 37 favorite gardening blogs; did I mind being included? That was a tough one, since I had to suppress the confession that I’d willingly sell my soul for less. (I love it that they name 37; they seem not to feel constrained to reach a round number.)

Thank you both.

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This title will at least ring bells if you've read either of my previous posts (Nov. '08, yesterday) about our friend Abdoulaye, just returned from Mali for a new stint of study at MSU.

It
was fairly early in Abdoulaye’s first weeks with us, in the fall of
’05, when he told us that in Mali a man may have up to four wives, but
that he has to declare, when he marries the first one, whether he plans
to be monogamous or polygamous. No springing surprises on the first
wife when things go sour.

“And what do you want to do, Abdoulaye?” my husband asked. “How many wives do you want?”

Abdoulaye rolled his eyes. “One is enough, I think.”

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