Asparagus

I noticed the asparagus crowns Corinna had wrapped in a damp towel were growing right there in the dining room, so I figured I better hurry up and get the in the ground.



I looked up some YouTube videos to see how it's done, something we should have done before last year's attempt to start an asparagus bed. The trenches were already started, Corinna's research had shown we needed to dig deep and then bury them gradually as they grew.



That was what I found in my searching, too, but I found something else. That asparagus likes well drained, light soil, and if it's sandy soil all the better. And this is one of the few times where a fertilizer such as Miracle Grow is useful—and we had some of their transplant formula around for some reason, so I watered in with a little of that and threw some Tomato Tone in the trench for good measure (it has some slow-release fertilizer in it).



I knew those tubes of sand I bought for ballast in my xB last winter would come in handy somewhere in the garden. Corinna had already planted some crowns in one of the trenches, and two of them had sent up starts. The rest, not really. I think this is because the trench was essentially a clay pit, the dense, compacted dirt of the yard. I think what I did next was at least half right.



I put the crowns down and spread them so they sat upright. I spread sand on the bottom of the trenches, one QuikCrete tube of it, then barely covered it with light, fluffy compost. Then another tube of sand and another layer of compost, so the crowns were covered but barely. As they come up, the trench can be filled in with more sand and compost, but that's where I got to realizing after the fact that this might work but it would have been even better if I'd taken more advantage of the raised bed thing.



This trench is surrounded by one of our oak rails to make a raised bed. But I suspect the crowns are deeper than you'd want if you filled the bed to the brim—maybe not, but we'll probably end up filling the trench up to about ground level, maybe slightly higher. The smart thing would have been to dug out the same, filled the trench with sand and compost, then put the crowns at round level and built up from there to cover. That way the crown would start out above grade and ensure good drainage. But rather than further traumatize the things by digging it all up to start again, I figured I'd see how this does. If this year's bed doesn't take, I'll try doing one that starts out at or above grade and build it up next year.



What the hell, it's three to four years before we can harvest the stuff anyway. Once it gets going, we should have asparagus as long as we live here, though, and being that asparagus is one of my favorites, very worth the effort.

Spring Garden Tour

I got my early stuff in back at the beginning of March, so I guess I should be okay with it being mid-May before all my tomatoes (precious tomatoes, if I could grow only one thing, that'd be it) are in.



Last year, I probably could have put those maters out March 1 if I could have found transplantable tomato plants that early. But as freaky warm as last winter was, this one made up for it in the other direction with frost all the way past May 1, the usual tomato transplant green-light date here.



We're most of the way to our goal of an edible yard. We have four fruit trees and a spot designated for a fifth, maybe a fifth and sixth if I can find a way to get Kingston Black cider apple trees here. Plus we have something like 22 raised beds growing everything from asparagus to spinach to onions to tomatoes to grapes, blackberries, raspberries, rhubarb (my wife insists that stuff is edible), cucumbers, squash, and so on.



Assorted basils, even some ornamental flowers in the mix. When you have neighbors getting weird over growing edibles in the front yard, you have to do some defensive flower planting.



My idea is to make a pad of 'tickets' that look a lot like what you'd get from a code's department and start citing people for growing inedibles in their front yards. Here's a ticket for growing grass with no apparent ruminants, goats, sheep, etc., Without that livestock, grass is as useless as any noxious weed, at best holding the soil down.



Since I'm not really ready to add a ruminant to our stable of pets, I plan to replace as much of my lawn as possible with salad.



And I finally got my tomatoes treated with anti-fungal. I think I learned a valuable lesson about that, actually.



Last year I had terrible problems with disease in my tomatoes, and I first blamed a spotty treatment plan. I didn't hit the plants anywhere near every seven to ten days like I meant to. But looking at my dial & spray applicator this spring, I realized that I may not have applied any anti-fungal at all last year. I couldn't get the thing to flow at all and after trying to get it cleaned up enough to work (it had dried up Ortho in it), I bought a new one and couldn't believe the difference. You can actually see the stuff in the water when it's on the 1 tablespoon setting I use for the tomatoes.



So last year, when I thought I was treating with anti-fungal, I was probably just getting the leaves wet and creating a playground for the various blights that attack tomato plants.



I did make a super effort to clean the applicator this evening. I'm not sure I ever did with my old one, and I got it at least four years ago.



I hit the hops and grapes with it, too, better safe than sorry. Those are both crops, the hops for sure, that are highly vulnerable. I wouldn't think spraying the stuff on mushroom crops would be wise, but other than that, this far from harvest, why not?



I found I was out of bug spray, something I only grudgingly started to use last year after losing a second entire crop of cucumbers to gray beetles and the diseases they carry. I have several varieties of cukes planted this year, I need to get something to protect them from the six-legged beasts.



Don't get me wrong, I'm all for 'organic' gardening, and my general attitude is to plant enough to take care of the pests along with yourself, but when you get an entire crop wiped out fast, it just sucks.



Plus, at least I know what I have treated things with and when, that's not really something you know when you buy produce. Even that 'organic' stuff, who knows that cheats may have been resorted to?

Cookies

Em asked for a dessert to take her her thespian banquet. I told her to make one herself, she's seventeen after all.



She did chocolate chip cookies, and the only complaint I really have is that I was only allowed on of them. Damn fine cookies.

Pedal Pub

I don't know if this is one of Al Boyce's franchises or not. Al's a fine BJCP beer judge and guru I see once or twice a year when I'm judging. I know he sets these things up, but last I heard he had trouble getting them in the Kansas City area because of our bizarre and puritanical liquor laws. It's not Salt Lake City, but we have more than our share of silly rules.



So naturally I perked up when I saw this bachelorette party pedaling up the street as I was riding home from work the other day. I didn't see any evidence of a keg of beer on tap, but the ladies were all having a great time.

Skinny

Jello has always been the skinny cat, at least compared to Zippy. But lately, damn.



We've had him to the vet several times this past couple of weeks, first diagnosed with parasites from being a mighty hunter, then with constipation issues. Not sure if the constipation problems are from the parasites, the parasite treatment or what, but he doesn't want to eat when he can't poop.



I'm more than a little worried about him.

Crackhead Duck

This duck was spotted sitting on eggs in front of Heartland, right where zillions of people pass by. Someone said, 'What sort of crackhead duck nests in a place like that?'



Well, the zillions of people are really mainly on Sunday, so for probably a week before this, it seemed like a pretty quite location. Plus, the bird figured out where to get kids to drop Goldfish crackers on the ground for it to snack on.

Sunday Odyssey

I was late for church. I had the hardest time getting started and Corinna had already left so there was nobody to point out to me when I got trapped near the Inner Circle of Fault.



I actually had an agenda for the day that involved kegging a pyment and a beer, making a fresh keg of club soda and cleaning a bunch of carboys that are way overdue for it.



I left the house knowing church would be half over by the time I got there if I rode, but I rode anyway. For reasons I won't go into here, I'll say the message was on topic for me. It's a funny thing, my 'belief' falters often, but there are those moments where it's like someone's reading my mail.



Anyway, afterward me and Corinna and Brian Gallmeyer set out to have an adventure. I kind of didn't want to, I thought I'd ride straight home and get to work in the brewery, especially since the brewery chores are compromising my bicycle parking situation in the basement.



But it was my bachelor weekend, and the weather was indecently nice.



We ended up on the Indian Creek Trail, which doesn't really go anywhere we needed to be but it is pretty and fun. And, they told me, there was good reason to visit its end, an end that is much further east than it was last I rode it.



At one of the places where you have to ride up onto a bridge and around to continue the trail, at Pflumn specifically, we spotted a concrete outcropping for a manhole that looked good for jumping off.



Corinna did it, Brian did it, and it looked like fun. I jumped way bigger things on my BMX as a kid and I'm sure I fell sometimes but I don't remember a single spill. Only the glory of being airborne, landing and holding on. I took my panniers off and went up to the top. It looked way scarier from above, but I figured it was really just a big bump.



When I pulled up on my handlebars nothing happened. They're already wheelie high, so go figure. I probably wasn't going fast enough anyway, but landing front-wheel first is a bad idea on any jump. My foot slipped off the pedal and the pedal went into my calf and drove me down. I heard the pop that tells me it's time for another $40 helmet, and I was inexplicably pinned by my bike, which somehow managed to be between my legs and on top of me all at once.



From there, we picked up my bike and did some quick field repairs/adjustments, then decided to drop in on my brother. He lives right off the trail, really, and we'd missed him at church. And my nephew is such a gas, how could we not ring that bell?



We stopped at Original Pizza on Antioch, one of my favorite places since way back in high school. Real hand-thrown New York pizza, crunchy yet chewy crust, not the cheapest eats you can get but probably the best bang for the buck. If it's not the best pizza in the K.C. Metro, it's top three at least.



Anyway, from there we picked up the trail again where it goes through Corporate Woods.



Well, after some thrift shopping at the new City Thrift down there on Antioch. I have mixed feelings about them, they run a really clean, well-organized thrift store, but the prices reflect the effort that takes. I think I generally prefer a junky, fire-hazard type thrift store where you never can tell where anything is but when you find what you want, it's practically free.





We passed this well ont he trail, Brian and Corinna wanted me to 'go in' it. Yeah. And me without my hip waders.



By now I guess we'd left Johnson County. The trail extends into Kansas City, Missouri and I have to say they've done marvels improving and extending it, including using concrete instead of asphalt.



The problem with asphalt bike trails is bikes and pedestrians don't provide enough compression to hold the stuff together. Concrete has it all over asphalt: I'm sure it's more expensive on the front end, and not invulnerable to tree roots and such, but since bike paths don't get salted in the winter, the lifespan of a concrete path is probably five times that of asphalt.



But as a bike commuter, I have to say Johnson county is bewildering. With obvious glitches where you'd want to cross major highways and the occasional terribly planned bridge like 87th Street over I-35, JoCo has the best bike infrastructure this side of Columbia (a tiny college town, but one that boasts more bike-friendly amenities than the whole Kansas City metro). JoCo has more streets wide enough for common use lanes, lots of marked bike lanes, some of the more developed streamway trails, and there's hardly any broken glass or bent nails strewn across any of this. There's a 'bike lane' on Beardsly on my commute that you have to watch out you don't roll over a shattered whiskey bottle and a case of roofing nails.



Yet almost all the bike traffic in Johnson County is strictly non-transportational. I get the value of a workout, the sheer joy of a ride, and I don't have to have somewhere to go to get on my bike. But it's weird to go riding on a Sunday afternoon and see virtually nobody using a bike to get to and from even the nearest, lightest errands.



Supposedly if you build it they will come, but maybe you have to tell them you built it, too.



Anyway, lest you think these awesome tag photos were taken in Johnson County, rest assured, the golden ghetto is safe and secure, protected by the most adamant gray paint Gestapo around.



These were mostly under a bridge on the Missouri side right before Blue River Parkway.



I was excited to see 'Boom' and 'Naik' — I'm sure it's the same tagger for both, though I'm not sure what the two words signify. The exact same combination is painted under the bridge me and Corinna got married on a good fifteen miles away.



That's quite a range, really, for a tagger.

Most of this bridge underpass has a funereal element to it, it's a remembrance mural, really. I don't know who these people were, but they are memorialized illicitly in this semi-hidden sanctuary.



Then there was the Jesus tag—which made me wonder. We were in the neighborhood of the infamous IHOP cult. When we saw a tree full of shoes, we wondered if that was an IHOP thing, too.

Arrows Out

The sermon at Heartland last Sunday had to do with this idea of sending out, of not looking inward. It used, as its graphic, a piece of graffiti that was on the building when the church bought it. They gave us all post-it notes and asked us to write down the name(s) of who we were praying for, of who we were sending our arrows out to.



I never did get why they didn't preserve the original tag. The photographed it of course, reproduced it here, but I would have left it on the concrete. Of course I would, I'm a nut for tag art.

Storm on the Boulevard

I was taking the long way home, where I'd come from I should have climbed 34th Street from Nigro's, I'd have saved three or four miles.



But it was such a beautiful evening, I didn't want the ride to end. And while I would have had a pure tailwind going up 34th, I had a vague one plus a slight downhill taking the Boulevard over by the brewery and then through the West Bottoms by Kemper.



And if I'd taken the efficient way, I would have missed these beautiful tags at a now-defunct car wash. Not sure when it went out, I think it was a going concern in the past year or two.