Gondules

Gondules or Pigeon Peas are considered the national dish of Puerto Rico. We've been harvesting a bunch recently, which are delicious raw or cooked.

Sam's Punkhouse Papaya

My friend Tai Chi Sam the Gardener has some pretty cool gardens going on at various people's houses around town. He's got one in the back of the punk house down the street and just got his first papaya:

weird mushrooms in the garden

Loofah and Papaya!

What looks like bird shit on the fruit above is actually Papain, a milky sap that is used medicinally to treat digestive disorders, tenderize meats, and remove tapeworms from the body. It also makes a great facial creme. The Thai folks make a mighty fine papaya salad with the unripe fruit but I mainly wait for them to get big and orange and juicy and make some kickin smoothies!

Gardening Update: 10.21.08

Well, it's been a hell of a month here in the gardening world. Here's what we got:

Yard Long Beans that we planted back in August mad produced. This is just a fraction of what we've been eating and giving to friends. We're on to the the second generation now.

The lovely Katie (before her departure to our colonized Pacific island paradise) models the beans here.

All the avacados trees in the hood have been kicking down some goodness:

This is a Stapelia gigantia. In bloom, it smells like rotting meat...

Garden Report: 9.22.008

Hello Garden Freaks! It's been a wonderful month in the world of gardening here in sunny hot nasty traffic-snarled red state hell idiot loving 21st century slavery having Floriduh! I'll tell ya, if I didnt have a garden to escape to once in a while, I'd be going completely berserk in this cess pool of blissful ignorance, blight, and moral decay. Luckily for me I do have a garden and here's what's new:

We picked the watermelons:
The first one was a Moon and Stars and was pretty juicy but not very sweet. The coolest part were the natural water movement spiral patterns similar to a hurricane or a galaxy that you can kind of see in the picture to the left. Very celestial. It took about a week to eat and I finally just ended up making some watermelon smoothie toward the end. We'll be eating the others this week. In some sad news, this watermelon just didn't have what it takes to make it in my yard. Shame...

Between working full time and getting beat up by the cops and thrown in jail in Minnesota, I did miss some crucial gardening time. Today marks the fall equinox and I was hoping to have some more stuff in the ground by now to kick in the fall growing season but, well-ya do what ya can...

The Asparagus beans are doing pretty good:

And the papayas are coming along. I've lost track of how many I've planted in the yard, but it's more than 20:

Also got some loofah climbing up the fence:

We also acquired a Meyer Lemon tree, several pineapples and some succulents recently but I didn't get around to taking pictures yet. I'm a lazy blogger. That's it for now, lots more exciting news from the garden later, including an interview with Sam: the guerrilla garden who maintains several gardens around central Tampa-all at other people's houses...