Razortooth Elf to read more about him.
We may try to revive this blog. A lot of things have happened at GrowDammit, including a move to a smaller headquarters. Which means we need to find new and inventive ways to grow stuff.
Happy 14th Birthday Rufus Dragon!
Too bad you screwed the pooch and got into the trash. No birthday ham for you.
Who Me?
We are not just being mean. If we feed him after he’s been in the trash, we are pretty much guaranteed to wake up the next morning and find out he’s either vomited or worse all over the house in the middle of the night. So, hopefully he got something good out of his little bout with the garbage because…no dinner tonight.
We haven’t really written about the Dragon lately because all he does for the most part is eat and sleep. We are fairly suspicious that his eyesight is going. Maybe his hearing too. It’s hell getting old.
Anyway, here are links to some of the Rufus Chronicles just in case you missed any of his antics before.
Filed under growdammit, Rufus Dragon
GrowDammit Tomatoes are Poppin’
We are starting to harvest some cherry and pear. What have we been doing with them?
Grilling them for fajitas.
And putting them in a BLT salad.
And in the case of the lonely yellow zebra tomato, slicing it up and stuffing it in our pieholes.
The yellow zebra was interesting, sweet with just a hint of tart. It would make a nice fried tomato – not as tangy as a plain green one.
Stay tuned for more heirloom news from GrowDammit Central.
Filed under Actually About The Garden, food porn, garden, gardening, growdammit, organic
Growdammit Central hits the biggish time.
I guess this makes us an unofficial locally sourced suburban farm…
3 more pints of black raspberries sold to Farmer Ted’s restaurant, bringing the total to 6!
Next up – heirloom tomatoes and peppers.
Filed under Actually About The Garden, garden, gardening, growdammit, organic, Random
It turns out that we are condiment whores.
We had burger sliders for supper tonight, and I pulled out a bunch of different condiments and fixin’s so that everyone could mix and match. When I went to put everything away, I realized we have a bit of a problem.
An entire shelf of the refrigerator dedicated to condiments.
A whole shelf! Full of mostly homemade (some store bought) jams, jellies, spreads, dipping sauces, bbq sauces and pickled stuff. This is in addition to…
The entire refrigerator door.
There are no less than seven different types of mustard here and two different Sriracha. There are steak sauces and salad dressings, as well as all manner of Asian sauces with a healthy dose of Mexican. Does anyone else have a fridge where almost half of it is dominated by stuff to dip and/or cover other stuff in?
I’m kind of scared to show you our pantry at this point. We also have a bit of a spice habit.
Filed under food porn, growdammit, hummingbird
Rufus Dragon is Passive Aggressive
And, he’s increasingly becoming a real pain in the ass about it. I Googled passive aggressive behavior in dogs. He exhibits all of the classic signs:
- Nudging and whining to get attention – This is what we call “herding.” He jumps on our legs and pushes us in the direction of where he wants us to go. If we remain unmoved, stare at him and say “What?” he whines. His whining makes him sound like a Wookie (May the Fourth Be With You btw).
- Refusing to walk with a leash – The Dragon doesn’t exactly refuse to walk on a leash, but it clearly confuses him. If there is a post, pole, other human around to get tangled with…he will. I’m not entirely convinced that it it’s the leash that stresses him out, more than likely it’s the exercise or being outside of his kingdom or being in a crowd.
- Hiding or running away when you get home – This actually happens when he has done something he knows he shouldn’t have…getting in the trash being the biggest offense. It might also have been because he has tried to steal your spiral ham or your parmesan cheese.
- Selective deafness – He has discovered that the electric fence is no longer in operation and has been enjoying his freedom. The jackass has mastered the art of staring off in the opposite direction when caught moving too far outside of his boundaries. If we have to go and chase him down because he won’t come when called, he actually skirts us and hauls ass back into the house…then does the hiding thing under the bed in the guestroom. Funny, he can hear the treat jar being opened over a mile away.
Lately, he’s been trying to dictate suppertime. His most recent annoying habit is to paw at his bowl if we are in the kitchen making supper. I look at him and tell him to stop it, which he does and then he does this…
I am wasting away into nothing.
Filed under Rufus Dragon
The Great Wall of Pine-A
We have had a brutal winter up here in Yankee-land. Something like a bazillion inches of snow, but the worst offender was the ice storm. People were out of power for weeks with downed trees and power lines. We weren’t that affected and only lost power for a day and a half, but Mother Nature wasn’t about to leave us unscathed. Ice + 3 humongous white pines =
Limbs down.
Today was absolutely beautiful, and a nice break from the freaking cold. A balmy 60 degrees here at GrowDammit Central, so what did we do?
Take a roadtrip? Nope.
Go to Longwood Gardens for a little taste of Spring? Nope.
Walk into town for some nosh and a pitcher of beer? Nope.
We commenced the Great Storm Clean-Up of 2014. We cut up 10 tons of branches and limbs that fell from those white pines during the ice storm. PSA…NEVER EVER PLANT WHITE PINES ON YOUR PROPERTY! They are really week trees, and extremely messy. Never mind a storm, they drop their needles not only in the Fall but during anytime of stress. Like a drought. Or, a monsoon. If anyone wants to send me $3K to take them down, feel free.
We worked tirelessly throughout the day to create this…
It’s as tall as I am.
Now that we’ve gotten the chaos under control, what to do with it? That’s a good question. We’ve had the helpful suggestion of burning it. Brilliant. Except for the fact that the same Township Supervisors who thought this method of traffic control in my neighborhood was a good idea are paddling the douchecanoe, and have banned controlled burns. So instead of disposing of it for free, I get to either bag it and wait a month for the next debris pick-up or pay somebody a few hundred bucks to haul it away. Bureaucracy at its finest! My back is going to thank you in the morning.
Filed under growdammit, Random
Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
Dear Soon to Be Ex-Neighbor,
I’ve lived across the street from you for over 13 years, and never realized what a T-Total Bitch you are. Granted I didn’t know you all that well, since you rarely ever left your house. Frankly, at one point I thought you were a vampire. Now I know you are a just a passive aggressive twat.
Yes, it is true that in the past few weeks we have been using the driveway of your home that has stood vacant for over a year. With 3 drivers and 2 feet of snow on the ground, it’s been a total lesson in playing musical cars for us. It’s also true that if it weren’t for the kindness of neighbors, your driveway would be under about 2 feet of snow right now. Since you couldn’t be bothered to have someone come care for your property in the past year, neighbors have been blowing the snow and cutting the grass and getting rid of the leaves.
Let’s get the facts straight right off the rip. The eldest spawn parked his car at the bottom of your drive, that WE and your other neighbor had cleaned the bottom of after having 16 inches of snow dumped on us the night before. When someone, who was not you, came and asked us to move it, we did immediately Then later someone, still not you, came and blew the rest of the snow off of the top of the drive. Here’s the problem, they didn’t shovel the inch of slush left from the blower and it froze overnight. THAT is why your driveway is a sheet of ice and you had to cancel the last minute garage sale that you apparently planned overnight for this morning – when we were expecting another round of ice and snow.
This sign you put up this morning was completely unnecessary.
Boohoo
The fine print explaining that is is my fault that your driveway is a sheet of ice.
The fine print says …
Sorry about all the ice. We have the neighbor across the street to blame for all this ice. The neighbor parked his car at the end of my driveway and blocked my driveway so the plow could not get in. His mother would not allow her own child to park in their own driveway park behind her car because she didn’t want to be blocked in. Consequently, the jerk parked his car in my the driveway.
Lets get a few things straight “Blondie”:
A. You didn’t send a plow. You sent an old man with a rinky-dink snow blower who did a half-assed job.
B. I’m not sure how you would know what I will and will not allow my spawn to do because not only have you not been around for a year, but you only left the house about once a month when you did live here.
C. My car wasn’t even here to be blocked in because it was at work with me. I understand work is a foreign concept to you, since from what I can tell you never did any of it.
D. The minute the jerk was asked to move the car, he did.
E. You are going to be very sorry you called my spawn a jerk tomorrow when you show up for said garage sale, if you bother to show up, because Ted is good and pissed and has a thing or two to say to you. I’ve asked him not to say anything about the extracurricular activities you participated in when you were still married.
F. You might want to check your grammar the next time you want to leave a nasty gram. It’s embarrassing. Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of freelance writer? From the looks of it, you probably aren’t very successful.
Sayonara Bitch. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out of the neighborhood. You won’t be missed.
Signed,
The Jerk’s Mother
Filed under growdammit, Spawn
I’m going to take this as an omen for good things in 2014.
I walked past a nun shopping in the lingerie department of Boscov’s yesterday afternoon.
Farmer Ted wants to know what the deal is with me and nuns. It isn’t that I’ve really had that many interactions with them, but when I do they are kind of weird. If you didn’t read our blog post about the time I peed with a couple of nuns in a WaWa and they inadvertently clued me into the fact that the super powerful hand dryer would take your sin off, click here. If you have such a need and access to a WaWa, you can thank me later for passing this tidbit along.
I shouldn’t even have been in the mall. I was returning something and thought the store I was looking for was in the mall, when actually it was across the street in one of those Main Street complexes. Anyway, it was odd and unexpected and fantastic. Surely it has to mean something, and I’m choosing to believe it means that 2014 will be a banner year at GrowDammit Central. Or, it could just mean that the nun needed some new skivvies. Whatever. The Hoppin’ John and collard greens are rollin’ as a backup measure, and soon we will be oozing with good luck and wealth.
Happy New Year from the Wannabe Farmers!
Filed under growdammit, Random, Yes, We Went There
GrowDammit! 