Every cat owner knows that when your cats are spending quality time together staring at something it means one of two things, a bug or a ghost! Much to my dismay, it’s just never a ghost.

So last night I noticed both kitties in a corner, staring. I ignored them until I saw it. “It” is probably too small a word for this thing and believe me, my years in Brooklyn were graced with the presence of some very large cockroaches. But this, this mutant was quite possibly the most horrifying insect I’ve seen outside of a Godzilla movie. I’m warning you, shield your eyes.

It was this…

via Wikipedia

Not scary enough? Here it is eating a honeybee!

via Wikipedia

It was gigantic! At first Google we determined it was a Japanese Hornet but since those don’t seem to exist outside of Japan (see, Godzilla!) we Googled further to determine it was most likely a European Hornet. Hey Europe, let’s keep your imports to Prosecco, Diptyque and macarons, k?

The European Hornet can decimate an entire honeybee hive. Horror! Its size can reach up to two inches long and its sting supposedly hurts like heckity heck. Thankfully none of us can attest to that, including kitties. The kitties just sat staring at it frozen with fear. And for extra fun, the nest of a European Hornet drips a foul smelling black liquid. Let’s hope we don’t find that anytime soon.

I had a request to show the full garden, so here are some shots pre-Irene.  Let’s hope she spares my unripe tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.  That empty spot in the back?  That’s where the vine borers had lunch.  I also rescued our first jalapeno.  Didn’t want to chance that one blowing away.  How else would we make hurricane nachos?

It’s harvest time in our new little garden and boy are we excited about this beet.  Such a pretty beet.  There are some beans in the background there too, not to mention two delicious cucumbers in our bellies.  So, all in all the garden has been somewhat of a success.

I say somewhat because of the next image.  The poor little pumpkin that will never be.  Frowny face.

That, sadly, was the only pumpkin we rescued from the vine before this happened:

The dreaded squash vine borer!  Those little buggers eat your poor plant from the inside out, and they killed all five of my pumpkin vines.  What I’ve heard is that they’ve probably laid their eggs in my soil as well so they can hang out until next year when I try again.  Grrr.  Anyone have any tips on how to destroy those suckers?  I tried putting aluminum foil under the plants as they formed and when they got large I figured we were in the clear.  I guess not.  I’m not exactly sure if that tiny pumpkin will survive and ripen to orange but I guess we’ll see.  It’s still cute.  In the meantime I’ll just ponder what to do with a single beet.

So yay! We got our first garden radish, an Organic Sparkler from Park Seed.  But Boooo! It was our only garden radish.  Of the approximately 32 radishes we planted we got one.  One sad, lonely little radish.  What went wrong?  After some garden googling my guess is either our soil is too high in nitrogen or there was too much rain early on when we planted them.  We were hit with some seriously stormy weather in the spring.  But all this is pretty new to me so maybe it’s something else?  Any seasoned gardeners reading this that can help me with this problem?  My worry is all the other lovely leafy plants I’ve got going on out there are going to give me just that, leaves.  Will I get any fruit or veggies?

In any case, that radish was pretty and delicious on our tacos last night.

Woot woot, little dance, little dance!  Oh yes, I’ve finally got my garden.  Or as I like to call it, Vegetable Fort Knox.  That actually may be giving it too much credit, and if groundhogs can read blogs it may just taunt them enough to break in.  So let me take that back. But hey, so far so good on the vegetable front.  They’re growing and despite a few little bug nibbles here and there, they’re looking pretty darn good.  Let’s talk about how it all came to be before the big reveal, shall we?

First things first, we had to pick a spot.  On the south side of our house there’s a little nook next to our driveway that gets great sun and had enough space for a 8′ x 7′ raised bed.  We had tried a vegetable garden in the ground there last year and if it weren’t for the Great Critter Buffet of 2010 we may have gotten some good veggies.  So we cleared the ground and tried to level it out as best as we could.

We started with building 3 separate raised beds out of cedar with the help of The Pioneer Woman’s tutorial that we fit together in a U shape.  We built two that were 6′ x 2′ and one that was 7′ x 2′.  This would leave us 3′ in the middle to move around and tend to all the vegetables.  We set them in place and lined them all with hardware cloth on the bottom to make sure no tricky critters would be able to dig underneath.

After we got them level, lined and in place we had to set the 4×4 cedar posts at the corners so that we’d have something to attach the fence to.  This is where we turned to QuietMan’s tutorial on the doityourself forums.  We really should have listened to him about notching out the wood to bolt in the posts but we didn’t and it caused some issues.  Eventually we got them upright but not without serious sweat.  Another thing we should have anticipated was that the stakes we attached the sides of the beds to would interfere with the posts.  It would have been easier if we kept them away from the corners.  Hindsight right?

Ok, moving on.  How the heck do you fill 3 large raised beds with soil?  I’ll tell you what you don’t do.  You don’t order 3 cubic feet of organic soil and have it dumped halfway up your driveway at 10am on a rainy Sunday.  You don’t let the truck driver take out a tree on the way into the driveway.  And you don’t order 3 cubic feet when your garden only holds 1.  Stupid minimums. So, who needs some soil?

After a full day of shoveling and hauling the beds were filled. We also put some gravel in the middle to keep weeds down and make it look all purty though you won’t see it in the next picture just yet.  I should also mention that under the gravel we laid down some chicken wire. Again, to keep out any little tunnel diggers.

The last step of the project was to add the fence.  Cue the tears and the cursing.  This might have been the most frustrating portion of the whole thing.  No matter how we measured or how many times we measured the boards just never seemed to line up.  So we’ve got some gaps that we need to attend to. We also plan to close off the vertical gap between the posts and the fence with some thin strips of wood to make it look a bit cleaner.  But for now, everything is standing and our veggies have been safe.  Woohoo!  It only took us about 3 months, countless trips to Home Depot, sore hands, bruised backs and tears to complete but boy are we happy it’s (almost) done.  Eric’s parents were seriously saints lending hands and tools whenever needed.   We’re kinda proud. It was our first really big DIY project and it doesn’t look half bad.  Right?

Who’s terrible at updating this blog?  Oops.
Sorry about that loyal readers (Mom), here’s a post for ya.

A couple of months ago Mr. Eric and I took a trip to LA and picked up this seriously dapper gentleman at Floral Art in Venice.  We love him lots but just don’t have a name for him.  He deserves one don’t you think?

We did give him some hair courtesy of a little donkey tail and now he’s looking a little Olympic.  So, what should we name him?

Oh, and the garden beds we were planning.  They’re about 85% done so pray for a sunny long weekend and perhaps I will reveal them next week!

It’s that time of year again.  Seeds are starting, raised beds are being planned.  Groundhogs are moving in.  Doh!  Seriously, my first day out in the yard getting things ready and a fat little Whistle Pig comes bouncing out from under our deck to say “hi!” and to ask me what types of tasty vegetables I’ll be planting this year.  Well little does he know we’ve got big plans.  Big plans like this critter proof garden!  Take that Whistle Pig! Yup, we are going to attempt to enclose some raised beds just like that, but a tad bit smaller.  And here’s another very helpful raised bed tutorial that we’ll be using as guidance.

As for what we’re planting, we like to call it the guacamole/taco garden.  Tomatoes, Jalapenos, White Onions and Radishes.  There are some other things as well that won’t end up in our bellies on taco night. Eggplant, Cucumbers, Kohlrabi, String Beans, Peas, Poblanos, Beets, Pumpkins and some Lettuce.  Hopefully some of them survive and we don’t have a repeat of last year’s total garden decimation.  So raccoons, chipmunks, groundhogs and squirrels consider this fair warning. We still think you’re cute, feel free to use the pond but stay far, far away from our garden!