Pumpkin Progress

I tried my hand at growing pumpkins in my backyard this summer in hopes to harvest the fruit and use in a batch of home brewed pumpkin ale this fall. I'm worried, though, about the plant actually bearing fruit. We're half way through August, have been getting some beautiful flower action, but no fruit yet. After WebMD-ing the state of my pumpkins in various pumpkin grower forums, it seems from the similar experience of others, lots of flower blooms, no big orange fruit, the soil may have too much nitrogen! There goes my thoughts of letting the luscious plants decompose right in the same spot to fertilize the soil for next year's go around. Because compost creates a nice quantity of nitrogen, I believe. I have a lot to learn and research about micro, urban gardening. 

It also seems my pumpkins may be suffering from what's called "powdery mildew" as it looks like the leaves have been dusted with baking soda. I can expect the leaves to start dying soon. Next door, on the other side of the fence, our neighbors have a little circular pool. Not a kiddie, wading pool, but not a big, big pool. But it's a pool, and I assume some chlorine. I wonder if some pool splashes seeped through the wooden fence gaps and coated the leaves, making them susceptible to some fungus spreading. But, before I go blaming neighbors for my pumpkin's disease, I learned in the forums that I should not have been watering the leaves themselves. And all through the summer I'd give them good splashes from the hose, thinking I was cooling them down, since they were sitting out in the hot sun burning like fair skinned Irish kids. But their outdoor activities caught them a variable case of athlete's foot that no fungus cream can treat. 

If I don't get any fruit, I can rest knowing that my plants probably created a smidgen of oxygen for our fine atmosphere. I learned that the average plant leaf creates approximately 5 mL of oxygen for every hour it is photosynthesizing. I counted about 100 leaves on my pumpkin vines which have taken over a stretch of my backyard. And let's say they're in the sun for maybe 8 hours a day? 11-7 at its angle. A good eight hour workday. 100 x 5mL x 8 =  4000 mL, or 4 liters! If my calculations are correct, my pumpkins are creating about two 2 liter bottles of oxygen a day. 

Next time you breathe, you could be sucking in a bit of my pumpkin's progress.

Blood Blister Be-Gone

Today I finally got rid of a blood blister/scab I've had for about two weeks. I got it from home brewing. There was this bottle from my last batch I hadn't fully cleaned out, at least not very well. Caked mold remained at the bottom from the remaining mash dregs. Thus I soaked it in hot soapy water for hours and then proceeded to thrash more hot liquid around to really break it up. I succeeded. But it resulted in the aforementioned blood blister between my thumb and forefinger. I was beginning to worry about my body's ability to heal it was taking so long. It looked almost like a mole. I was starting to get used to it. I secretly referred to it as my power mole. 

It went down the shower drain. A beetle can maybe play hockey with it. 


I don't think my brain synapses function correctly first thing in the morning. I kept getting weird phrases in my head while doing my morning, get-ready-for-the-day rituals, like "animal cat punches" and "sudden fritter freeze." And they kept looping in my mind like a scratched to hell piece of vinyl spinning. 


And then I'd picture the blood blister dissolving slowly. 


On my train commute to work I overheard two older, white men. Wearing nice suits. Both balding. One was skinny, with tight cheek bones, the other was fat and pouty. The fat, pouty one kept muttering "stupid democrats, goddamn liberals, god I hate them." Whenever the skinny one would respond to his droopy grievances the train would rattle loudly and I couldn't hear the specifics. I imagined the pouty guy calling me a young stupid punk and then imagined myself shouting back "you don't know me, what makes you think you know me! I just have a stupid grin on my face because my blood blister finally healed! Cannot I not feel jacked about small victories!"

Trece de Viernes

I made beer battered onion rings and mushrooms for dinner. Cutting the onions was much fiercer a battle than expected. I teared up like a tragic player, and the old eyes stung sharply! At one point I had to close my eyes and had difficulty opening them. They were stung shut! I went on cutting in blindness. I can feel my way around. Kinesthetically, I'm astute. I had to take a break, splash my eyes with cool water, which almost worsened it momentarily. Then I pulled out an old pair of swimming goggles from under the bathroom sink and resumed chopping that fat, organic white onion. I'm a culinary pansy.

These were delicious. I popped open a Labatt's Blue this morning and let it sit out all day to flatten. It served its purpose well.

As a prelude into Friday the 13th I had a wicked dream which combined two of my favorite interests; ghosts and brewing. I dreamt I owned a lot of land in the woods in which I set out to till the soil and grow barley and hops. Soon I learned this land was haunted. I forget the cerebral flicker of details but I learned the history of the accumulation of ghosts through old maps of a failed, small town bus system. An old man, not quite a shaman, or perhaps a shaman well hidden in modern garb, introduced me to a thick mud out in the woods. There was a spread of white fungus, doing its thing within the dark brown, thickened soil. He taught me to eat it. It tasted like a brownie! It had hallucinogenic properties which were supposed to heighten my awareness of these bus inflicted ghosts. Unfortunately it didn't do the trick for me. The old man told me I needed to eat more. So I did. I only felt full. Then I was suddenly on a business trip in the Wisconsin Dells and drove past outdoor hotel pools, shallow ones for the kids. Little babies were swimming around with baby dolphins under fountains. It was more like wiggling and worming than swimming. It looked a bit grotesque.

This morning on my way to work I crossed the path of a penny on the ground, heads side up! I reckoned this should be good luck on this Friday the 13th of May! Yet when I got to work I found both toilets in the men's to not have been flushed the previous evening. I did a good deed and flushed both. But the bowl was stained so I went up to the fifth floor bathroom and there was a gross something floating in the bowl there too. And cocky was I from the weather this week that I wore a short sleeved polo shirt and no coat. When I stepped out for lunch, a cold front had swept in and dropped the air temperature about twenty degrees. I think that penny is laughing at me. Day was redeemed when beer battered onion rings and mushrooms entered my belly. Now I'm going to ring in the "holiday" watching Kubrick's The Shining with my cat. On Halloween after drinking it up with pumpkin ale I wound the night down with The Shining. My cat watched it intently! His eyes were glued! He wants to see it again!

Porter Hut

Quite exhausted today. Many vivid dreams. One involved being on a documentary film crew and trouncing across snow covered golf courses and finding a hut where a coffee infused porter was being brewed. When I woke up my body felt as though I had drunk a lot of it.

New Stab at Trailer and smell of Cooking Wort