Happy Fourth of July.

What’s that about afflicting the comfortable? Yeah, that’s our job. Let’s do it.

The not so distant future.

I’ve been too busy this week to stop by the garden, but today I made the effort and was surprised by how much everything’s grown in a matter of days.

All of my peppers– Serrano, Jalapeno, Ghost, Thai Chili, Banana and Bell — are fruiting now, and none was last week. The husk cherry tomatoes I planted a few weeks ago are producing fruit like crazy, and both the squash and zucchini will have fruit in a week or less.

This is one of the best times of the growing season, when the plants first start producing and all of the hard work starts to pay off.

I can taste the salsa now.

Yesterday was Bloomsday, or the 106th anniversary of the day on which the events of Ulysses, James Joyce’s seminal piece of literature, took place. The holiday has since become a celebration of all things Joyce, particularly in Dublin, where the 1922 novel was set.

Frankie and I just missed Bloomsday when we were in Dublin in 2007, but we did make it to the James Joyce museum. If you’re ever in Dublin, I highly recommend a visit to 35 North Great Georges Street, where you’ll see aged photographs, original hand-written manuscripts  and even a few pair of Joyce’s trademark glasses.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user maxf

One month later

Garden layout: First bed at the front of the image, left to right – Mesclun, buttercrunch lettuce, spinach, green beans, onions, two types of tomato (black cherry and big beef, I believe) zucchini.

Second bed, left to right – potted herbs (basil, sage, cilantro), four varieties of tomatoes (better boy, valencia, striped something something, and another I forget), jalapenos, habaneros, green and red chiles, yellow bell peppers, ghost peppers, and one more variety I can’t recall (I really, really like peppers), and broccoli.

It’s been a month or so since I planted the first wave of seeds and transplants in the micro-garden beds I’ve built at my Mom’s house here in Wilmington. A couple early observations: broccoli grows faster than anything I’ve ever seen, save maybe for zucchini and cucumbers; the spinach and buttercrunch lettuce are growing well, the mesclun, not as much; I lost two squash seedlings to a late frost while we were away on vacation, so I ripped them up and planted tomatoes in their place. Instead, I pulled out one of my zucchini seedlings and I’ll plant a new squash plant in its place. One of each plant should be more than enough, given how much fruit they produce and how fast they produce it.

I also planted a row of Mammoth Sunflowers yesterday along the fenceline bordering the far garden bed. I was so envious last Summer when all of my friends had beautiful, 8 to 10 feet tall sunflowers (or larger. See: Annen Stuckert) growing in their garden, and I had none. Hopefully this variety will get that big. Now that the sticky hot weather has arrived, the rest of the garden should pick up the pace; I’m dying for that first batch of peppers.

It’s been a week since we flew back to Ohio from the Southwest, where we spent 10 days camping in some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I thought about writing a detailed trip report, a travelogue of the stops, people and places we encountered, but I realized when we got back to Ohio that words (and even photos, really, some 1100 of them) don’t do justice to the places we saw. But it’s worth trying. After all, I wouldn’t have been curious about those places — Death Valley, the Grand Canyon. The desert in general — were it not for pictures or essays written by some of my favorite authors.

It’s hard to sift through 1,000 pictures of anything, let alone shots from 11 different states and as many landscapes. I’m in the process of editing the best ones, which I’ll upload to Flickr before too long. The rest can be found in a Facebook album here. Give ‘em a look.

In the meantime, here are some of my favorites:

Click to view slideshow.

As I mentioned above, the rest of the trip photos can be viewed at my Facebook page, if you’re so inclined.

And how about that last shot, eh? What can I say — it was a perfect setting. I’m just glad she didn’t pass out and roll over the edge.

We may have had more than we could eat last summer, but still I couldn’t resist the lure of the vast expanse of useless sod, fencepost to fencepost, that lines the yards in Mom’s neighborhood.  So when I asked her this year if she would mind if we added another plot, I was happy to here her say: “Why not. The grass isn’t good for anything.”

So on Sunday I was able to hollow out a few hours in my evening (something increasingly difficult these days) to devote to garden preparations. I started the tedious task of flipping the sod in an 8′x3′ rectangle adjacent to last  year’s plot.

As you can see, the old plot was in pretty rough shape after a long winter of neglect. So when the sod was freshly flipped, I pulled up three grocery bags full of weeds, raked some of the hay that I used for a cover crop into the soil, and added some compost that was left over from last fall.

About a week later, after the flipped grass had had enough time to decompose, I bought the necessary lumber to build a raised-bed, as well as some peat moss, some composted manure, a bag of vermiculite and some standard top soil. I also bought a few broccoli starts, so I have something to look at in the garden while I wait for seeds to sprout and the tomato and pepper weather to come.

I’ll probably plant some direct seeds this week. I’ll start with onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach and cabbage. I need to sit down and map out the garden in earnest, so I make the most of the small space I  have (no more watermelon or pumpkin this year— they take up too much space and aren’t productive enough.)

This time of year, garden updates tend to dominate my posts so I apologize in advance while I turn into a middle aged woman. It’s that time of year.

Some friends of mine and I are about to head west, on a car camping trip to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley and the Petrified Forest, among other stops. We’re staying with friends in St. Louis and Tulsa, and then roughing it the rest of the trip. (I say roughing it, but a Toyota Sienna is a pretty nice ride for 2,563 miles. We’ll be camping, regardless.) After 10 days, we’ll end in Vegas, where we’ll spend two days before flying back to Ohio.

I’m excited. I’ve never driven further than Colorado (though I’ve spent time in California– I flew there, cheating), and I’ve never been to the southwest at all. I’ve got visions inspired by Edward Abbey and Barbara Kingsolver swirling around in my head, which makes me think “Desert Solitaire” will almost certainly be re-read along the way.

We leave on May 7, and return on May 15.

Click the map if you want to see our exact route. Any suggestions for stops?