Sculpin

“The forcipules… of Lithobius centipedes are too small and weak to penetrate human skin.” You know, I always thought that too. But it turns out that if a good-sized one nails you right in the relatively delicate skin near your fingernail, it can draw blood. And then the itch comes. I’m not quite as pro-centipede as I was yesterday.

Josh and I adopted a P-Patch plot in Picardo Farm. I wanted to have somewhere to garden while we slowly rearrange our own garden beds, and I thought it’d be a good way to meet more of our neighbors, get good gardening advice, and perhaps apprentice to one of the beekeepers. In a fit of ambition, I reserved one of the year-round plots, and it turned out to be a pretty good mess. The guy who used to have the plot was pretty old and perhaps not particularly vigorous — certainly not particularly tidy. I think he just plain gave up sometime last summer. Quackgrass is everywhere, in thick stands, and there’s a ton of morning glory with big, juicy-looking roots. Out of a 10×20 space, Josh and I took out a full garbage bag of plastic trash and a bag and a half of the really nasty weeds. I don’t know how many bins of non-noxious weeds we’ve taken out to the compost there. And don’t get me started on the rotting wood. We put in several hours this weekend, and there’s still plenty of quackgrass to root out of there.

But there are also raspberries (lots of raspberries), blueberries, some huge rhubarb plants, and tulips. The light is great, and the soil’s fantastic.

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