About Beth
I am a freelance writer, based in Pittsburgh, PA, specializing in science and technical topics. Yes, I am available for new writing projects! Nature kicks my ass
I planted most of my seedlings today. (yeah, yeah, it's late in the season, you got a problem with that?) I had four varieties of tomato growing on my living room windowsill: Brandywine, a big pink Amish tomato; Red Pear, a pear-shaped cherry tomato; Scotia, a determinate Canadian tomato bred for short seasons, and Cosmonaut Volkov, a Russian tomato bred for cold weather (the Cornell Cooperative Extension recommends it as a good tomato to grow around here). I have some itty-bitty eggplant sprouts that took for-freaking-ever to germinate (left those on the windowsill for another week or two), some lemon cucumbers and yellow crookneck squash that have stems almost a foot long already, and a few assorted other plants.
Lesson from today: If you haven't thinned the seedlings yet, do that after you rattle their box around and break some of the stems. Poor lil guys, I killed a bunch.
I was actually going to do the planting early this morning, but I was so sore from my last couple days at the gym that when I woke up I had the sense to go back to sleep.
Let's take a moment here to review the Beth Exercise Plan (I've completed the first three days so far).
Day 1: Go to gym, overtrain legs. bike home.
Day 2: Realize that overtraining legs is a bad idea. Go to gym, overtrain arms. bike home. Try not to fall off bike.
Day 3: Wake up in pain. Declare today a rest day. Spend two hours digging in garden.
Day 4: Realize that digging in garden isn't "rest". Declare today a rest day instead. Play softball.
Day 5: ???
Day 6: Profit.
I'd waited long enough to plant the garden, so it was going to have to be today, even if I had to do it in the rain. (The forecast said rain starting at 6pm. It was 7ish and still dry. Ha!) I packed up and headed for the garden. I figured I'd stop when it got dark. So what if it rains? I brought a towel.
I arrived at the garden with a lot of seedlings, a lot of seeds, and a couple bags of sand and mulch that had to be distributed. Oh, and there were a lot of weeds in the plot. Oddly enough, most of my weeds look and smell like this. The others are probably also other people's garden leftovers. I wonder if they sell field guides of edible plants.
When I was partway done with my tomato/zucchini bed, I made the mistake of looking into the distance. The sky had that "I'm gonna rain on you, mothafucka!" kind of look. I made a mental note not to look at the sky anymore.
I hit the end of that bed - so now half a bed planted with tomatoes and zucchini - and decided to put the rest elsewhere. If disease or pests wiped out a whole bed of tomatoes, I would have another half-dozen plants on the other side of the plot.
I took a break from tomatoes to plant my puny little green onion seedlings in a block next to the salad greens.
It was darker now, and I felt a raindrop on my arm. I took my box of seedlings to another bed, and started planting them indiscriminately. Brandywine tomato? Sure! Lemon cucumber? Why not! Somewhere it occured to me that the forecast was not for rain, but for thunderstorms, and that I was standing in the middle of an open field. I stabbed at the ground with a shovel, hoping that was good enough to loosen the soil a bit, and planted faster. Yellow squash, eggplant - I thought I left the eggplants at home! Oh well.
Just yesterday I'd been reading about a man who was struck by lightning. It shattered his teeth. (The photo with that article shows his tattoo, of a man being struck by lightning.) In my haste, I snapped the stem of every cucumber I tried to remove from its plastic cup, so I stopped planting the ones in plastic cups. If there was time, I would plant them at the end.
Of course there would be time! I'm not lugging the boxes of seedlings back home just to set them on the windowsills and have to pack them back up tomorrow. The rain was still really light, and there were lots of people on the other side of the field that are taller than me. They'd make much better targets, I'm sure. If I got hit by lightning and survived, I'd make sure to get a lightning-bolt tattoo. But it would have to be positioned so my wedding gown's straps don't cover it. That's a tattoo I'd have to show off. It would even be more badass than my bad-ass mo-fo tattoo.
The sky lit up in front of me, really bright. I don't remember if I saw the bolt itself. I grabbed my shovel (hey, it's borrowed!) and RAN. The thunderclap came right away, a quarter of a mile maybe . My plot is really far from the parking. I ran. Wait, is it silly to pick up and run like that? Are the other gardeners looking at me like I'm an idiot? What if the lightning strikes me as I run? Man, that would SUCK.
Well, I made it home alive and unsinged. I wonder if I left anything there that shouldn't get wet.
Lesson from today: If you haven't thinned the seedlings yet, do that after you rattle their box around and break some of the stems. Poor lil guys, I killed a bunch.
I was actually going to do the planting early this morning, but I was so sore from my last couple days at the gym that when I woke up I had the sense to go back to sleep.
Let's take a moment here to review the Beth Exercise Plan (I've completed the first three days so far).
Day 1: Go to gym, overtrain legs. bike home.
Day 2: Realize that overtraining legs is a bad idea. Go to gym, overtrain arms. bike home. Try not to fall off bike.
Day 3: Wake up in pain. Declare today a rest day. Spend two hours digging in garden.
Day 4: Realize that digging in garden isn't "rest". Declare today a rest day instead. Play softball.
Day 5: ???
Day 6: Profit.
I'd waited long enough to plant the garden, so it was going to have to be today, even if I had to do it in the rain. (The forecast said rain starting at 6pm. It was 7ish and still dry. Ha!) I packed up and headed for the garden. I figured I'd stop when it got dark. So what if it rains? I brought a towel.
I arrived at the garden with a lot of seedlings, a lot of seeds, and a couple bags of sand and mulch that had to be distributed. Oh, and there were a lot of weeds in the plot. Oddly enough, most of my weeds look and smell like this. The others are probably also other people's garden leftovers. I wonder if they sell field guides of edible plants.
When I was partway done with my tomato/zucchini bed, I made the mistake of looking into the distance. The sky had that "I'm gonna rain on you, mothafucka!" kind of look. I made a mental note not to look at the sky anymore.
I hit the end of that bed - so now half a bed planted with tomatoes and zucchini - and decided to put the rest elsewhere. If disease or pests wiped out a whole bed of tomatoes, I would have another half-dozen plants on the other side of the plot.
I took a break from tomatoes to plant my puny little green onion seedlings in a block next to the salad greens.
It was darker now, and I felt a raindrop on my arm. I took my box of seedlings to another bed, and started planting them indiscriminately. Brandywine tomato? Sure! Lemon cucumber? Why not! Somewhere it occured to me that the forecast was not for rain, but for thunderstorms, and that I was standing in the middle of an open field. I stabbed at the ground with a shovel, hoping that was good enough to loosen the soil a bit, and planted faster. Yellow squash, eggplant - I thought I left the eggplants at home! Oh well.
Just yesterday I'd been reading about a man who was struck by lightning. It shattered his teeth. (The photo with that article shows his tattoo, of a man being struck by lightning.) In my haste, I snapped the stem of every cucumber I tried to remove from its plastic cup, so I stopped planting the ones in plastic cups. If there was time, I would plant them at the end.
Of course there would be time! I'm not lugging the boxes of seedlings back home just to set them on the windowsills and have to pack them back up tomorrow. The rain was still really light, and there were lots of people on the other side of the field that are taller than me. They'd make much better targets, I'm sure. If I got hit by lightning and survived, I'd make sure to get a lightning-bolt tattoo. But it would have to be positioned so my wedding gown's straps don't cover it. That's a tattoo I'd have to show off. It would even be more badass than my bad-ass mo-fo tattoo.
The sky lit up in front of me, really bright. I don't remember if I saw the bolt itself. I grabbed my shovel (hey, it's borrowed!) and RAN. The thunderclap came right away, a quarter of a mile maybe . My plot is really far from the parking. I ran. Wait, is it silly to pick up and run like that? Are the other gardeners looking at me like I'm an idiot? What if the lightning strikes me as I run? Man, that would SUCK.
Well, I made it home alive and unsinged. I wonder if I left anything there that shouldn't get wet.