after spending all that time last night moving everything that wasn’t stepped on off the roof, i woke up this morning to see that there were workmen stripping paint off our apartment building. old housepaint, right over where i had just moved every single one of my surviving plants. basically this is the end of my apartment gardening attempt for right now. i still have the community garden and i’m not giving up on that, but i just threw out basically 2 months worth of work in the course of less than a day and i’m feeling really discouraged. the landlord says it’s my fault and she doesn’t care. that’s cool.

edit: ok, i hate the way this sounds so here’s more detail. i have some sprouts inside (1 bean, 2 tomatoes, 2 each of 5 different lettuces) but all the nearly grown/fully grown vegetables (10?), 15 lobelias, 5 tomatoes, 2 cauliflowers, and about 40 lettuce sprouts are in the dumpster now. if i had planted that much in the garden i’d expect to lose about a third of it. ITS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD, BUCK UP MCGOWAN

ugh now i’m super pissed. i called the landlady to bitch about the cables and she turned it around on me saying i shouldn’t have been up there in the first place because the roof has, and i swear to god she said this, “structural integrity issues”. i guess that’s alright except she hasn’t told ANYONE HERE ABOUT THIS. one of my neighbors goes up there every sunday to read a book and nap on a lawn chair, and there’s also a picnic table and a patio swing up there that people like to sit in and watch the fireworks and city lights and things. the path up to the roof is completely unobstructed with not so much as a “WATCH OUT, THE ROOF IS ROTTEN AND SHITTY LIKE MY SLUMLORD HEART” post-it to let people know there’s issues.

wow, am i angry much? it just bugs me because we’ve been trying to get the laundry room and swimming pool and various lights and leaks and things fixed around here for YEARS. i’ve never even seen them paint. i have to wear knee-high rainboots every time i want to do a load of laundry because the drainage hoses are rotted through and she won’t replace them. (she comes here to empty the coin boxes for them and takes the DON’T USE THE RIGHT WASHER, IT WILL FLOOD signs out of the laundry room though) WHY ARE YOU GIVING ME CRAP ABOUT MY LETTUCES LADY WHEN YOU CANNOT EVEN FIX A LEAKY PIPE OR BROKEN LIGHT.

i moved everything off the roof and down by the pool tonight. i wasn’t originally intending on having more plants here at home, but the rooftop ones have actually been some of the best looking plants so far - you can control the conditions more than if they were buried in a garden, the cookie boxes they’re planted in are essentially mini-greenhouses when you have the lids snapped on so the sprouts won’t dry out or get blown over, and they were too high up for bugs or something because nothing up there ever had the slightest blemish on a leaf. except they did get torn up by the neighbor kids once, so i guess it wasn’t perfect. i’m a little worried they’ll all get eaten by bugs now, but that’s better than “crushed underneath the boot of the satellite guy”.

i’m looking for another space or some sort of wheeled greenhouse now, but there’s no such thing as a “u-gro-it” greenhouse rental space as far as i can tell. (it totally sounds like the most crunchy granola small business one could start though, next to like a holistic pet clinic or “macramaze! the macrame experience”, your source for knotted owl wall hangings and knotted owl doormats) the only thing i can think of is there’s like a million hydroponics shops within walking distance of here. maybe one of them wants someone to set up a window display with plants that aren’t weed? maybe?

who am i kidding, nobody ever wants to grow anything besides weed :(

i’m so glad it was dark out tonight when i went up to the roof to water my plants because i think i might have puked if i could see everything that happened up there. i guess the new neighbors are getting satellite tv put in, because there’s about 10 giant extension cables running off the roof that are plugged into the wall outside our door. i went upstairs to see what they were plugged into and to water my plants, and when i got up there i realized that THEY MOVED EVERYTHING AROUND ARGH. oh wait, they aren’t just moved around, they’re all knocked over and stepped on :( i lost like 5 lettuces, 2 tomato plants, a strawberry plant, and some marigolds. it’s nothing i can’t replace but the whole point of me being on the roof is that THEY ARE EASY TO MOVE, AND THEY ARE AWAY FROM WHERE PEOPLE WILL BOTHER THEM.

whoaskedforthis:

Xavier Jacob, 6 lb 9 oz, born March 10, 2010 (and Momma)

ah, so that’s what life doth

the garden, day 125! (march 6, 2010)

march 6, 2010

liezlwashere:

Clay of the Day | 03.08.10

Meen Bellpeppers the Carrot Farmer Edition

This is my clay tribute to my buddy, Ameen.
The man of a billion doppelgangers.
The lover of burritos.
The wearer of fez hats.

legend has it that where ameen steps, plants sprout. oh wait, that isn’t a legend, it really happened.

there’s a new social networking site just for gardeners. it also looks like everyone within 50 miles of me logged into this site once and never used it again, but hopefully i can use this to keep track of what i’m planting. the excel spreadsheets were abandoned months ago.