The Five Kales Summoned

The Five Kales aligned.

It is written:

When the five great houses of kale

Are summoned from every corner of the garden

(And I guess one from the middle somewhere)

In the dead of night

In the Winter cold

Together upon a single altar

Then will the feast of five deliciousnesses begin

And confer to the faithful gardener

(whom many mocked for his steadfast pursuit of kalish perfection)

Fortune and immortality and yumminess.

Call forth the five kales!

'Tuscan Baby Leaf', O mighty dwarf! Say YUM!

'Scarlet x Lacinato', son of two ancient tribes! Say YUM!

'Wild Russian', untamed and unsurpassed! Say YUM!

'Tronchuda Beira', Portuguese behemoth! Say YUM!

'Cosmic', radiant sentinal! Say YUM!

And now, let the five great kales

Be simmered in juices savory

For an epoch

Or until tender and reduced to quintessence

Or about half an hour

And at long last let the gardener

Eat his weird meal

And it was so. And it was good.

Hay Hunt

Jump in! Mind the bricks, however.

All right, kiddos, it's ready! Fencebroke's traditional late harvest hay hunt is all spread and ready to dive in! Wooo! Sorry, I get so excited. These are the things that bring out the kid in me. Since the grown-up world has far fewer legitimate treasure hunts than I was led to expect as a child, it falls to me to create little ones wherever I can. It's pretty easy, really, you just have to periodically remind yourself that all of the stress-creased, frantic, sleep-deprived automatons chugging Starbucks all around you were once, not so long ago, wide-eyed children scrabbling for the wondrous caches of candy, coins, and little toys secreted by mysterious forces in stockings, pinatas, Easter eggs, hay piles, and arcades everywhere. The world was pregnant with loot.

Then they grew up and found in those hiding places only lint, runny yolks, and allergies.

So I think we all need a little treasure hunt now and then.

Sure, our tastes change as we grow up, which is why the treasure of the Fencebroke Hay Hunt consists largely of root vegetables and hardy winter greens. I've already found a rutabaga and two carrots! And not to spoil the surprise too much, but there's definitely some heirloom Scottish beet seeds down at the bottom somewhere. Oh, and the big fat earthworms are finders-keepers. But I've said too much.

Rest assured, anyway, there's something for everyone. My daughter loves Kix cereal, so maybe I scattered a box or five of Kix and maybe I didn't. (I did.) And sometimes grown-ups need a bit of incentive to break from their routine and get out there where the treasure is. So maybe I hid my wife's car keys. “Keep at it, baby, what's more important, getting to work on time, or rekindling your childish sense of wonder and adventure?”

Hey, look! Even crows like a good hay hunt. And, uh, squirrels. And raccoons and possums and seagulls and rats and—boy, kids, you better get out there before all the Kix are gone!

A couple ground rules before we get started: the hay itself is not part of the treasure, so no stealing it to mulch your own garden; there is a limit of 1 leek and 1 parsnip per person—those things take forever to grow; and finally, if you find a set of car keys, please return them post-haste to my wife, as I may have crossed a line somewhere in all this hay fever.

"Irrigation"

Does plumbing have a place in a garden blog?

How about if we call it “garden infrastructure improvements”? After all, it was the catastrophic failure of the existing pipes which led so some unanticipated, undesired, and all together unfortunate irrigation and … er … fertilization of the grounds. And the house itself, actually. But the plants! The plants don't need this kind of trauma, please think of the plants! Damn the expense, I'll not have pipes breaking willy-nilly and “watering” the garden and laundry room whenever they please. Only the best for my – wait a minute … is this the bill? Hold on, Mario, are those gold pipes you are putting in my backyard? Was the burst pipe radioactive, subsequently contaminating the entire property and requiring extensive environmental remediation? Have you had to do battle with hoards of crab-walking mushroom creatures in order to complete the work agreed to in our contract? NO? THEN HOW ELSE DO YOU JUSTIFY THE SIZE OF THIS BILL!?

I changed my mind, the garden can handle a little unforeseen irrigation. And Fencebroke has plenty of room for an outhouse right there next to the tool shed.

The One Fence In Fencebroke That Ain't Broke

May I present the first in a series of long-overdue Fencebroke fortifications.

I may? Oh, good. Here it is:

Glorious, is it not? All hail the beautiful, brilliant, and most fearsome Queen of Carpentry, the Duchess of Design, the Empress of Structural Engineering, the High Wizardess of Woodworking, the Baronness of … er, Board-Cutting. I can never remember all her titles. But I sure am glad I married her. (Which marriage, come to think of it, probably grants me the corresponding male titles for all those things. Awesome.)

Anyway, we now have a fully-functioning gate/arbor/portcullis to both ward off fearsome raiders from the South (always after our strawberries, livestock, and stores of grain) and hide the yard waste bin from view. Which is also important. And there will be grapes grown upon it. Although … now that I think about it, those grapes are going to look mighty tempting to all those raiders who have been foiled from entering the lands of Fencebroke proper. They may just satisfy themselves with pillaging the Great Grape Gate. We might need another gate to protect the Grape Gate from raiders. Ooh! That would give us somewhere to grow kiwis! But, then the raiders …

Well, I did say that this was the first in a series of fortifications. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to entreat that Queen of mine to whip up a few more gates.  

Fantasy Gardening League

Need I say more?

During this season of overlapping passions—the garden harvest frantic but winding down; the fantasy football season just kicked-off but already kicking my … anyway, it came to me, this vision. Like some beautiful chimera born of two affectionate but very confused muses, it's an idea so perfect it practically writes itself.

Think about it. You like the capricious experimentation of the annual harvest; you like tearing your hair out over meaningless statistics; you love the artificial confidence and superiority that comes from besting others in a competition of more-or-less random events (and willfully ignore the self-loathing that is the flip side of the coin) … well then why not combine them all into one mixed-playdough lump of bewildering (but entertaining!) awesomeness?

Take a small group of competent, versatile gardeners, get 24/7 media coverage of the crops and varieties they are growing for the upcoming season, and then let millions of rabid spectators join in the action by choosing which crops from which gardeners will produce particularly high yields in a given week. Imagine the draft strategies, the conniving trades, the trash talking! Brandywine tomatoes from Farmer John on a week where rain was forecast!? Hey rookie, I've seen better tomatoes in a fast-food salad.

Look, I'll lay out a team format for you all to follow. By next March, I expect leagues to be formed and mock drafts in full swing. Here's what your team lineup should consist of:

• (1) Legume
• (1) Stone Fruit
• (1) Soft Fruit
• (1) Pepper
• (1) Brassica (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Kale, etc.)
• (1) Cucurbit (Squash, Melon, Cucumber, etc.)
• (2) Root Vegetables
• (2) Tomatoes
• (1) Flex Crop (basically a wild-card)
• Team Salad (all the salad greens from a given gardener's field)

This is just a template, of course. Within your own league, your commissioner will be free to tweak the numbers and scoring system to better suit your growing region/league members.

Pretty sweet, right? I know. So what are you waiting for? Go on, you've got research to do; only six more months until next year's fantasy gardening season kicks off!

Now, I'm off to scour the planet for the three or four other people whose interests are so abyssaly disparate as to understand all the terms used in this post. Maybe they'll join my league.

A Man Can Dream

Pretend you never saw this.

These are Mexican Sour Gherkins! AKA cucamelons. They're all the rage this year in veggie gardening. I mean, as much as anything can be the rage in veggie gardening … which is not a lot, if I'm honest. Sure, there's often a bit of Tomatomania in May, but that's about it. Maybe the occasional hubbub. Purple carrots have been known to cause a hubbub. Oh—and there was that time a few years back when I witnessed a tizzy over beans. No rages, though. (I do wonder how you'd characterize the whole Hatch pepper phenomenon. A movement, perhaps? A falderal? A hullabaloo?)

But back to the gherkins. They're incredible! They're the kumquats of the cucurbits! You grow 'em up a trellis, pick a handful, and pop 'em in your mouth. They taste just like the tiny little, sweet, refreshing watermelons they so clearly resemble and what's more—

—oh, who am I kidding?

They don't taste like watermelons. They're just little cucumbers. Tasty, sure, with a bit of a lemony zing, but it doesn't matter how great a cucumber they are because whenever I pick one my mouth starts chanting, “Watermelon, watermelon, teeny tiny watermelon.” and then practically chokes when it gets cucumber instead. Which would be fine if it just happened the first time and then my brain actually bothered to link the visual cue that whispers “Wee watermelon” to the sense memory that screams “CUCUMBER YOU IDIOT”. But instead my mind just redacts the experience altogether so that I am fooled Every. Single. Time. I eat one.

Like Charlie Brown blinded to Lucy's timeless treachery by the imagined bliss of actually putting foot to ball, I walk past the stripy little impostors and stop in my tracks. What's this? Minimelons!? Don't mind if I do …

And then I bite down, my tongue's feet go flying out from under it yet again, and we're talking a different sort of rage.

Success!

There's a reason you never hear of any unhappy writers. The fame, the money, the lifestyle—it just comes so easy for them. I mean, for us. I always heard that writing books was a surefire path to celebrity and fortune, but even I never dreamed, when I first sat down at my Great Grandfather's writing desk twenty years ago, that it could happen to me. All I had to do was actually finish a book. That was the catch. I've got the bones of half-a-dozen different manuscripts littered around the office, all of which showed promise and momentum in their day, none of which came close to completion. But then—Bang! This Twenty Reasons Not To Garden thing came to fruition and a couple weeks after its release, my life is changed.

That's right, it is with excitement, humility, gratitude, and a little … je ne sais quoi that I announce—due to the overwhelming success of my book—my decision to temporarily retire from all current endeavors and occupations in order to more obscenely bask in the rich rewards of my achievement.

After consulting with my accountant (yeah, I've got one of those now), the to-date and projected book sales should easily fund a lengthy sabbatical. He figures I've got a good hour/hour-and-a-half's worth of revelry in which to pursue my life's dreams. But, you know what? You only live once so I'm taking a full two hours.

What'll I fill the time with? I'm glad you asked.

First off I plan to see the world. Scotland, Patagonia, Southwest China, Fiji, Delaware—all the places on my bucket list. Then of course we'll take the kiddos to Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, the Pyramids, Antarctica to see penguins, underwater to see the Octonauts, and wherever else their little hearts desire. Then my wife and I will hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Yes, the whole thing. After that, I'm sorry to say, I'll probably just blow a good portion of my windfall at the casino. Maybe Monte Carlo, maybe Emerald Queen—doesn't really matter, I've just always wanted to say “Double Down”. Ooh—and “Let it ride”. I'll drink dirty martinis, scotch, and whatever that interesting fella from Dos Equis is drinking … as long as it's not Dos Equis, I mean. Double down.

And just to show I have not forgotten my gardening roots which thrust me atop this new promontory, I plan on devoting a full ten minutes towards getting my community-gardening-for-the-homeless charity up and running.

And after that, well, I'll probably just spend the duration of my leave swimming in the ol' money vault à la Scrooge McDuck. Which reminds me—anyone know a good contractor with vault experience?

I thank you all for your faithful readership, and though it will pain me to be away, I promise I will return to regale you once more with tales and musings from the annals of Fencebroke. Someday.

… We'll say noonish.

Now, where's that martini?