You're a Tree By the Way

J-Live, notoriously ridiculously good MC, has a song off his last full length album called Do My Thing. The first time I heard it, in my infinite wisdom, I was pretty sure the hook was "You're a tree, by the way, I do my thing. By the way, I do my thing." I just assumed a tree was new slang, and the hook writer was very casual, yet matter of fact, in informing me that he does his thing. The actual line is of course "intrigued by the way I do my thing."

However, this was a great segue into me planting a tree in my backyard! I won't profess to being an expert gardener; most of what I'm doing is trial and error with a little help from the world wide webs and advice I give myself. I saw the dwarf Blenheim apricot tree while shopping for soil and decided I needed to have it. Planting it felt like quite an accomplishment, and not only has it not yet died, but it seems to have tiny green fruit that hopefully will turn into actual tasty apricots. This was followed by two highbush blueberry plants, which also now appear to be fruiting. Check out photos below, and note my excellent mulching technique.

All this gardening has excited many people, including the building's possibly vampire super who has decided he will have the pickles and potatoes I'm growing in my vegetable bed (I'm growing neither pickles, which are delivered by a stork anyway, nor potatoes). I'm also convinced he wants access to my vegetables for his own nefarious purposes. What I'm actually growing is red leaf lettuce, sugar snap peas, eggplant, dragon carrots, zucchini, a potimarron squash and roma, sungold cherry, brandywine, sweet pea currant, brown berry and costaluto genovese tomatoes. In case they ever develop cars that run on fairly obscure tomatoes mixed with common tomatoes, I'll be in the money. Till then, it's salsa sandwiches with V8 for meals.

In other backyard news, James Cash and I named the ridiculously bright red cardinal that visits our backyard Benedict. Thankfully, despite being highly territorial, Benedict has not yet attacked his own image in my window or his mirror he uses for preening. His song sounds like this: "bright bright bright, cheer cheer cheer." And no, learning that from the Field Guide to Birds of North America that I own doesn't make me feel like a dork.