Mystery Melon

When I planted cucumbers, only one came up, so when I found a similar looking volunteer sprouting in the compost I transplanted the little guy in there with what I thought was his big brother. However, the volunteer has now begun bearing fruit and they are most certainly not cucumbers. They look like some kind of melon - almost watermelon-ish. Anyone have any ideas?

Daiquiri

The weather is fine outside, so Kristal picked up this small table at Target so we can sit in the yard for the odd meal or afternoon beverage. I think she had intended for us to mainly use it in the back yard, but there is too much shade, and we are not shy people. So we sit out on the front lawn dining on clams and corn. Or in this case enjoying a frozen strawberry daiquiri! Good times!

Camping at Loft Mountain

The situation was so dire I was threatening to make us camp out in the back yard.


Normally by the time June rolls around Kristal and I have already taken at least one foolhardy camping trip. Just because the sun is shining on Friday afternoon doesn't mean that the water is warm or that the weekend won't be drenched in rain. But we both grew up with camping and its a therapeutic exercise of getting away from the stresses of everyday life. Life is far from everyday for us at the moment with our wedding day racing closer, so we just hadn't found the time to haul the tent out of the shed and take a trip. This weekend looked like it would also be consumed with wedding preparations, but at the last moment we got an invitation from Melissa and Joel to camp in Shenandoah, and we both thought it would be a great idea.


We set out on Saturday morning, stopping for lunch in Waynesboro. The town is tiny and we almost thought we wouldn't find a place to eat when we came upon and book and soup shop. Yes, you read that correctly! Someone had turned this gabled house into a bookshop that also served soups, salads and sandwiches. Kristal got the ham and brie ciabatta and I opted for a bean salad and they were both delicious and reasonable. We decided that we would move to Waynesboro, and soon had everything planned except for what we'd do for money...


Sadly leaving our imaginary future hometown we were soon on Skyline Drive winding our way towards the campsite. On our arrival we miraculously met up with Melissa and Joel without the aid of cell phones. We decided to ease ourselves in gently to the hiking and chose to stroll the Frazier Discovery Trail that gives some impressive views of the Shenandoah Valley to the North-West. The hills were a slight shock to the system but when we returned to the campsite we still had a couple hours until dinner, so we hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail as it sweeps around the campground. We found we had acclimatised quickly, which is to say we had learned to take more frequent rest breaks! While taking a quick breather I discovered that a tick was burrowing into my leg. Ticks are notorious for carried Limes Disease, so it is important to pull them out promptly, ensuring the the whole head comes out too. I admit I was a little scared when I first spotted it but the fear was soon replaced by the thrill of getting my first ever tick.


This time when we got back to camp we had definitely generated an appetite and so gorged on snacks while I got a fire going. We had to wait for the blaze to die down to some hot embers so we broke out the travel scrabble. I'm going to shamelessly brag here for a second, because I spent my childhood being the youngest in my family and thus roundly thrashed by ruthless and uber-literate relatives whenever we played scrabble. I had hoped that my years away from home would have leveled the playing field, but alas I was made fun of for taking too long on my turn and ended up making some hasty word choices that let to an all too familiar downfall. You can imagine my excitement then to actually win a game of scrabble, against worthy opponents, without even having to persuade them that any made-up words were British variations.Thankfully the fire was now ready for cooking so there could be no rematch to knock me off my pedestal (although I did have a few disastrous rounds of Hearts after dinner). We got to cooking meat and marshmallows and ate until we felt we had negated the days exercise. The sun began to set so us boys went off to point our SLRs at the sunset.



I had a fitful night's sleep, desperately wishing I could doze off long enough to dream about my pillowtop mattress back home. At around five in the morning I gave up and went for a dawn stroll around the campsite. Venus shone brightly as the sky began to light up and I tried to pick out birdsongs I recognized in the morning chorus. I ran into several rabbits and three deer hanging out at the dumpsters. I returned to the tent and got in a couple hours of good sleep to prepare for the hard day's hiking ahead. After a light breakfast we hiked down to Doyles River Falls. There had been a lot of rain during the week so an impressive amount of water was coming over them. We climbed around for a while finding good angles to take a photograph from, before tackling the grueling slog back up the hill. We estimated an elevation change of about 700-800 feet which translated to an average grade of about 10%. We then regretted having done our estimation. It turned out to go a lot quicker than we expected, as we'd spent a lot of time on the way down admiring the views, inspecting the insect life and carefully threading our way down slippery section which we traversed with far more confidence on the uphill return. We got back to the car in good time and went in search of a cheeseburger. Then it was time to head back to town. After a couple hours in the car, the toll on the legs became apparent as we groaned in agony trying to get out the door. Still, it was well worth it (especially as it was such a cheap deal) and I hope to make it back to the park for some more challenging hikes. Maybe someone will even get me to do an overnighter one of these days!

Ms McKelvey at the table

Ms McKelvey at the table, originally uploaded by evens.john.

My cousin and her lover are in a band who are just starting to break into the gigging scene. Being the good cousin that I am I try to show up and support them from time to time. One of the main advantages is that we discover new bars and pubs in Richmond that we might otherwise never had heard of. First was Northside Grille which has become something of a regular haunt for us. Then it was Side Pocket, a pool hall not two minutes drive from where I work, but hidden behind a Holiday Inn so you'd never know it was there. Pitchers of Bud were $7 and we played three or four games of pool (at a very slow pace because we're out of practice) for about eleven bucks. You can't really beat that for a cheap night out.
The rules of American 8-ball (so called because there are 15 balls on the table) a similar to those of UK pub pool that I grew up on, except you never get two shots. Like pub pool, there are several situations where no-one is exactly sure what the rule is, and in the interests of having fun it's usually better to do whatever makes the game most exciting/last longer.
It was a Saturday night and we easily got a table at around 8.30, so I'm thinking we might be spending a little time at the Side Pocket in the near future...

Soon I will post about something other than gardening

But not this time. Now, I'm not trying to be competitive, I'm just very proud of how my garden, in both the American and English meanings of the word, are doing. My tomatoes are completely unrecognisable from the midgets I photographed for the previous post. Everything in the square gardens is a little stunted because the boxes aren't very deep. I lined the bottoms of them with that black roll to keep the weeds down and it definitely helped prevent the wiregrass from taking over. But now that I'm sure all the grass underneath the soil is long gone, I think the black stuff is holding back my vegetables. Consequently the plant flower when they are very small. I was picking off the flowers from the tomatoes until they got a bit bigger, and now I think they are a sufficient size to do their thing. We have tons of flowers; lets hope that converts into a good crop of fruit. The peas are producing well right now. I'm slightly embarrassed by my diminutive peas, having seen various people's pea plant in Mathews which reached a good two or three feet. Mine decided that eight inches was tall enough and started flowering. Tha'ts fine by me, since we are getting a decent number of peas. I think we'll have a few with dinner tonight.

Remember than small lonely potato plant peeking up through the leaf litter? Several of his friend decided to make an appearance, including some volunteers from the compost which I transplanted. Fortunes are varied for these guys. A few are doing really well, while others are having the living daylights eaten out of them by some agent unknown. I'm just going to see how it goes. To be honest if I get a single potato out of this endeavor I'll be rather happy.


Another plant that is doing well is my single pickling cucumber vine. As instructed by the seed packet, I planted a 'hill' of five or six seeds, expecting to thin the seedlings to the best two plants. But only one seed plucked up the courage to show itself above ground, so he was selected by default. I also scavenged a volunteer maybe-cucumber (its hard to positively identify from two leaves) and but him in the pot too. Clearly the extra depth for root growth is benefiting the resident cucumber, but the newcomer's life still hang precariously in the balance, and if he doesn't put on a growth spurt soon his bigger brother may well seal his fate.
Moving on to the other type of garden my rose bush, as predicted, exploded into a sea of red. However, these rose bushes are found all over the place in our locality, so they must be a hardy variety. I can take too much credit for its success. Other recent additions from the McKelvey's include a honeysuckle that we wrapped around the banister of our front stoop; several varieties of violet than went in the front bed and window box; a lily that I put in next to a stump at the end of the drive, and broke my gardening fork in the process! This further confirms my theory that someone is introducing cheese into the steel supply. I was levering softly against a stubborn root, and two prongs bent them snapped right off. Pathetic - and the second fork to meet it's demise at my hands at Fruehauf Rd. Maybe I'll add that to my wedding registry!

My other garden is a vineyard

In my dreams I am a rich landowner, living in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and I spend my days tending to my vines and making world famous wines. To feed this fantasy, it is occasionally necessary to visit the vineyards of the real rich snobs and sip their wine imagining it to be my own. Our plans this weekend changed at the last moment and presented an ideal opportunity to visit Shenandoah National Park and fit in a couple wine tours.


We left with a picnic lunch packed an no particular plan in mind. We figured on reaching Skyline Drive and seeing what hiking spots presented themselves. There are so many trails it can be a bit overwhelming, but we picked one that looked like it went somewhere, and did a short loop that took us to a rocky outcrop with a breathtaking view. To the West of the ridge the weather was fine and sunny, but as we carried on up Skyline drive we crossed over to the Eastern side of the mountains and became enveloped in low misty cloud. Another glance at the map revealed an obvious path home along Rt 33, which would fortuitously take us past the Barboursville and Horton Wineries.


Barboursville was bustling with students who had recently completed their semester at UVA, so we stayed long enough only to decide that the recent crop of wines there was nothing special. We did take the opportunity to visit the ruins of a house designed by Thomas Jeffeson for the local governor, which had unfortunately burned down one Christmas Day. Moving down the road to Horton, we arrived just ahead of a Coach-load of wine-tourers, but had time to enjoy our tasting in peace before they burst into the main hall. The wines at Horton were much more to our liking, and we enjoyed the Stonecastle White (a blend of Viognier and Chardonnay) so much that we bought a case for the wedding. They also have a selection of fruit wines that are very sweet but like nothing else you'll ever taste. I tried the cranberry variety, and will remember it for next Thanksgiving.

Latest Garden News

Apparently I've had a request from a very dear reader of JB USA for some pictures of Kristal's and my Garden, so here they are. In the fist plot we have the spinach that I painstakingly nurtured through the late snowfall we had here on the East Coast. It was all worth it as we had a bumper crop and it keeps coming. Its really the first thing that we've successfully harvested from out gardening efforts. Last year we got a cucumber or two, some inedible tomatoes and about three peas. Talking of peas, we have about a dozen or twenty pea plants climbing up the netting. One has started flowering, and I might be to do some manual pollination to ensure we get some peas from them. In between we have some lettuce from Joyce, which finally looks like its all well established so we might be able to pick a few leaves soon. In the other spaces I put in a couple mounds of Crook-neck Squash seeds. Four have come up, but I'll need to do some thinning so we might end up with three plants. I also put in some pickling cucumber seeds but only one showed up, and he's in a big pot all to himself so I'm expecting great things!


In the second plot we have our herbs (or at least those that made it through the winter - the others are DEAD. No, really...they are completely DEAD). I think we have Sage, Thyme, some kind of Garlic and the Chocolate Mint Tea. When we were last in Mathews a guy was selling tomato starters in his front yard, so I put those in and they're doing well. Kristal started some Cilantro in some little pots and it was doing really well until today in the heat. We put in in the ground and watered it a bunch so hopefully it will make a comeback! Finally we have our Potato plot to the side of the house. I was worried that I had planted the potatoes too deep, but I just noticed that three have poked their heads above ground, and maybe more will follow. I don't know much about growing potatoes, but that patch of ground in the riches soil we have as it's always covered in clover, so it'll be interesting to see if it produces any spuds worth eating. Other small successes around the yard include the Rose bush and Hydrangea that I pruned. Too early for flowers yet, but I was just excited that they survived the process. We also have a pair of shrubs in the front bed that looked completely dead, but a few twigs put out leaves. I cut away all the dead wood, and they turned out looking really pretty. I think they are Pink Cloud bushes, Kolkwitzia amabilis.

I'm getting married in three months!

In exactly three months tomorrow I will be uttering very serious words of commitment to my fabulous fiancee. For those of you who like numbers and dates, tomorrow will also mark exactly 13 weeks until our wedding. We mark the anniversary of our first date on October 13th, so this month we celebrated two-and-a-half years together.
There is, of course, a website you can visit, although certain areas are password protected for invited guests only: you can't be too careful on the internet these days. However, if you really must cyber-stalk us, then I suggest you visit the blog which will have a blow-by-blow account of the planning process!