How 'bout a garden update? Ok!
Yeaaah. Not so much feeling my creative self lately and the results of this are that outside of school my productivity is suffering. I'm not happy about it but I think it's the byproduct of the combination of these two elements: it's getting hotter here and I'm trying to stick to my budget. That means: no, I haven't gotten started on my kimono quilt, I haven't painted the trim in the bedroom (ok, mostly because I keep forgetting to go to the paint store on any day but Sunday when they're closed), and no, I can't really start anything new at the moment. I've been cleaning a lot. Boredom doesn't inspire me. I have nothing to tell you about. I'm focusing on the stars as they are endlessly fascinating and always guide me through weird times but I don't really feel like purging all that information here all the time.
So, the garden! The garden is strange. The cucumbers are growing like crazy and taking over. They're covering a row of broccoli and I'm wondering if that's good (shade?) or bad (no space). Their pretty little curly tentacle tendrils are reaching out and wrapping around the strawberry leaf stalks (the strawberries are also interesting, I had no idea they'd spread out so much!) and I'm wondering if everything in that bed will be overtaken and strangled by the cucumber plants.
Another thing I maybe didn't give enough thought to: bugs. First were the caterpillars (still signs that there are more around but I can't find the little bastards) and now there are aphids and some other bug that looks like aphids but are black and NOW.... I found these teensy little hard bugs that don't even look like bugs. They just look like tiny barnacles and they're on the cucumber leaves.
So I did a little research because the soapy water wasn't getting rid of the aphids and now I have a variety of pests to deal with, and I went by the nursery and asked what was good for all these guys (I mean bad). I thought I asked for something organic and natural -chemical free- or perhaps I just assumed everyone would want to go that way and it should be naturally implied. The guy gave me a pyrethrin spray and I recognized it as an insecticide made from ground up flowers. Super. Took it home and doused the whole bed.
This morning I spent some time reading my gardening book which warned that I should be sure that my spray not contain a particular chemical that is often combined with pyrethrin and is somewhat toxic. Crap. I checked the tiny print on the bottle. Crap. It's in there. Crap. And I'm mad at the nursery guy for not mentioning it when he offered it to me in place of the two options I asked about which both had ORGANIC all over their labels. How do you not get that I'm trying to grow organically? My own fault, really. But now I'm stuck with a bottle of chemicals that I can't use and can't throw away (right?) and I still need something I can use.