Gardening Update: Everything is Terrible

How the mighty have fallen.

When we last checked in, I was riding high on fresh air, smugness and self satisfaction. But as everyone knows -- as even I know -- mixing "I'm invincible" with "screw you" is a recipe for inevitable disaster. And that brings me to today's update.

I don't even know where to begin. I guess we'll start with the tomatoes.

Things were looking good for a while there. The plants were lush and covered in plump green tomatoes that, in my opinion, seemed to be taking forever to ripen. But I was willing to wait. Then, one evening as I was doing my daily check-in, I spotted something that looked sort of like spider webs stretching across some of the leaves. Unsure what to make of it, I didn't give it much thought. In fact, I think I figured it was most likely an actual spider web as my entire yard is overrun with spiders anyway. Over the next few evenings, it seemed like the webs were growing. By the weekend, the plant looked sickly and the webs had gotten out of hand. I looked closer and closer and finally spotted the cause of the problem: teeny little red bugs.

I turned to Google, which auto filled "tomato plants red bugs" pretty readily, then turned up search results for "spider mites." One gardening site described them as "microscopic, spider-like red or brown bugs that form webs on plants, commonly tomatoes." This seemed about right, except for the microscopic part. So either the author of that piece was being hyperbolic or I have incredible eyesight. Either way, I could most definitely spy with my little eye the critters that were ruining my life.

Though, I think if viewed under a microscope they would look something like this.

I took comfort in reading that there was little I could've done to prevent this plague. Although apparently it doesn't help matters when the plant is too dry. I had felt like it was looking dry, but every experienced gardener kept insisting that tomatoes don't want to be watered every day, so I kept trying to not water them every day. Now I feel like it's a conspiracy to keep would-be superior gardeners like myself from ever achieving full potential.

At any rate, I fought back against the bugs by spraying them with neem oil (a natural pesticide), and also tried to help the plants out by giving them a bit more water. For a couple of weeks I'd use the hose to rinse off all the webs, then spray the neem oil. Then I'd come back a few days later to repeat the treatment, and be discouraged to see all the bugs and webs had returned, completely undeterred.

Meanwhile, my tomatoes were finally starting to turn red. But just as they were about to be the useful, delicious fruits I'd envisioned when I planted their seeds months earlier, little brown cracks appeared. They started at the stem and stretched down in vertical stripes like a beach ball. This really pissed me off.

Back to Google. This time I learned that tomatoes crack because they receive uneven amounts of water, causing them to grow at uneven rates. The inside starts to suddenly grow rapidly, but the outer skin might not be able to contain it all. And congrats: cracks. So let's say some common-sense, well-meaning, beautiful gardener notices her tomato plants look a bit dry. To help them out, she begins giving them a little more water. It seems like the right thing to do, doesn't it? Instead, she's actually ensuring their destruction.

Whereas the bugs felt random, this felt plain unfair.

Between spider mites and cracks, my tomato plants seemed to be doomed, but that didn't stop me from fighting the good fight for a little while. Then one morning, I had to admit defeat. The spider mites had completely taken over and compromised the leaves.

The cracked tomatoes were an invitation to even more bugs, not to mention pretty unappetizing.

The whole scene was just a nightmare and in a fit of rage I ripped both plants out of the ground and threw them out. Forget it. Just forget it.

Trying to stay positive, I turned my energy to my thriving pumpkin patch.

 With enormous green leaves and delightful blossoms.

I'd put my tomato murdering days behind me and focused instead on the crop of wonderful pumpkins I could harvest just in time for my favorite holiday, Halloween.

Then, over the weekend, I discovered my perfect pumpkins had pesky problems.

The leaves were turning white. Some just had white spots, while others were entirely white. Some actually were turning yellow underneath and wilting. As I stood, hands on hips, pondering the white dusting, my neighbor showed up and distracted me, informing me that he tried one of my jalapeños and it wasn't spicy at all. So there's also that.

To be honest, I forgot about the white leaves for the rest of the night. I woke up Monday morning at 6, unintentionally, but was wide awake. My mind wandered to the pumpkin plants and I began to research what was going on. The answer was crystal clear. Powdery Mildew. A fungus.

Just terrific.

I quickly tried to read up on some cures, but it turns out the best solution is to prevent the fungus from forming in the first place. Is that some bullshit or what?

Once again I was forced to acknowledge the ways I'd failed as a result of my own ignorance. Apparently pumpkins shouldn't be watered at night. Oops. Especially not in hot climates. Double oops. Well, wait, does it count as a hot climate if the average afternoon temperature is 101 degrees? It does? Oh, then yeah double oops.

How was I to know there were all these gremlin-like rules for pumpkin care? Fungus forms in humid conditions, and the hot night air mixed with freshly watered soil makes for a fungus fiesta.

Now, the most I could do was chop off the affected leaves and try to stop the fungus from spreading. I could also apply a fungicide spray, but wouldn't you know it,  even that's said to work best when used before any signs of fungus appear. WHY IS EVERYTHING LIKE THIS?

And that's how I began the work week; outside at 6:15, still wearing pajamas and hacking away at my precious pumpkin patch. By the time I'd removed all of the bad leaves, and two whole plants that were beyond hope, the garden was decidedly lame. The plants all cascaded out in one direction like a side ponytail.

Making matters worse, the fungus spores had drifted over to the main garden, clinging on to some of my squash plant and, even more heartbreakingly, my cucumber plants. After such a rough start it was miraculous I even had cucumber plants, let alone flowering ones. But now we'll have to see if they survive this fungus.

By the time I got home form work, I noticed that many of the leaves on the remaining pumpkin plants were withering and sinking to the ground. I can't make sense of this other than to assume I must've misunderstood the tangled mass of vines and accidentally severed some vital artery. I still can't actually see where I went wrong. But I guess that's why I'm not a surgeon. No other reason. Just that one. Otherwise I possess all surgeon-like qualities. Patience. Focus. Refusal to give up and half ass things.

In the coming days, I'll sadly observe the pumpkin plants to see if they are able to recover from the fungus outbreak. Though I have to admit the withering leaves are typically not a good sign.

Hell Kitchen: Part Three

First things first. I have been breaking this post into parts for ease of reading and writing, not because I am attempting to build anticipation. I just had to clarify that because, based on some of your feedback, I'm afraid you are all going to be really disappointed when you see how not different the kitchen looks. There really isn't much I can do with it until I have the resources to turn it into this:

I'm working on it.

But back to the current kitch sitch. Once I'd evicted the wallpaper chefs, removed and repainted the cabinet, and given the surfaces a thorough cleaning, it was time to get painting!

Just kidding. During the second consecutive weekend of the kitchen project, on the morning of what I had nominated as "Seriously Actually Painting Day," I started out, as usual, by spackling. As I zeroed in on a hole left behind by one of the shelf's support screws, I noticed the paint was chipping a bit. So I picked off a tiny little chip. Then it gave way to a little bit more. Then more. Then this happened.

Now, of course, I was going to need to get rid of all the paint below the chair rail. I soon discovered that, in fact, all of the pieces that were going to come right off had already come right off; what remained would give me a six-hour long chipping and scraping ordeal. It all concluded with me doing something I never had in the plans: using my eyebrow tweezers to remove paint chips from the tiles along the bottom.

Once THAT was over with, it was the night of Seriously Actually Painting Day. With what little energy I had left, I started repainting the ceiling.

If you'd asked me what color the ceiling was, I would've told you off-white. But as I began rolling on the new white paint, and saw it contrasted against the old, I'm thinking it was probably named something like... Sewer Fog?

Then, the next day, it was time to paint the walls. And now for the moment I never intended for you all to be waiting for: the color reveal!

White Clay!

 

Womp womp.

Right now you're probably saying, "Your last three projects have just been painting things white. I thought you were supposed to be creative."

I know. But in my defense, this time the paint isn't White. It's White Clay. Which is like white but with...clay. It's actually the same color as our living room (why am I telling you this I'm just making it worse), because I wanted to keep a flow going from room to room.

More importantly, this house just won't support crazy color schemes. I've always believed that a bold color choice is the backbone of any room revamp. See? See? See? But the main living area-- the living room, ModLodge, and kitchen-- have so much woodwork that I need to keep the paint colors clean or I run the risk of the whole space looking dated. You believe me, right?

Speaking of woodwork, the one portion of the kitchen job that gave me pause was the chair rail. It had either been sanded down or all of the varnish had worn off. Originally, my plan was to apply a fresh coat of stain to fix it up.

But the more time I spent looking at it, and I got a lot of face time during all the paint chipping, the more I realized it may have been a lost cause. It looked so worn out and dirty, and it had a few different colors of paint splattered in various places. And the fixture only exists in this one corner. Really, the best course of action would be to cover it all up.

No regrets.

The cabinet is a different story. I don't know what to do about it. As soon as I slid it back into place my reaction was, "No."

It'll have to stay there until I figure out a replacement. It's definitely better than red.

All in all, I can't say that the kitchen is noticeably different to the occasional visitor. I didn't even bother trying to take pictures from other angles because it doesn't look like anything. But it's bright, clean, and rid of the grime and curious decorating choices we inherited.

Before

After

*By the way, I noticed in the "before," there is an empty laundry basket on the dining room table in the background and a few shirts draped over a chair. And in the "after" there is an overflowing basket of laundry to be folded. Let this serve as proof that I am somehow always always doing laundry.

Hell Kitchen: Part Two

So the chefs may have been gone, but there was still plenty of prep work to do in this corner of the kitchen. Let's turn our attention to the red cabinet. 

During escrow, our home's previous owner tried to sell me every piece of furniture she owned even though I kept insisting modern Southwest wasn't really my thing. When we arrived at this cabinet, instead of offering it for a fair price, she offered to have her husband remove it altogether. Built from scrap wood and a re-purposed corner entertainment console, I guess it was only ever meant as a temporary fix for holding the extra crap that tends to accumulate in a kitchen.

I didn't love it either, but I also knew better than to part ways with a storage option, so it stayed. And as you can see, it became the home of our pet food, fruit, the busted Keurig, cook books, dog ear medicine, and the extra toaster.

For the purposes of painting, though, it was going to need to get out of the way. This meant unscrewing it from the wall. And that meant I finally learned what a socket wrench is.

A positive side effect of home improvement projects is learning the tools that belong to names you've heard thrown around your whole life. Now I know what a socket wrench actually looks like, what it's used for, and that we didn't own one and had to pick one up at the store while we grabbed our wallpaper removing supplies.

With the cabinet out of the way, I enjoyed my new found open space. Dirty, paint splattered open space.

This will one day be the ideal spot for a breakfast nook. Something with custom built benches. That day is not today.

In order to clear the cabinet I first had to rid it of its contents. Once I'd thrown away the excess and found new homes for the good stuff, it wasn't lost on me that I'd essentially proven the cabinet to be useless.  Should I just get rid of it?

As a compromise I elected not to reinstall the shelf, but to keep the cabinet because, for now, at least it filled the empty space. And I needed a place to keep pet supplies and the rotting oranges I will inevitably possess in the near future because I never learn we are incapable of finishing a bag of oranges.

The cabinet appeared to be unfinished wood that was spray painted red.

Red matches zero furnishings in my home, so this would need to change.

Luckily, I am always looking for a good reason to spray paint something, and I was thrilled that this was such a substantial target. So it went from apple red to mocha brown. And this sucker took nearly two full cans of paint to cover. And they were double coat cans so that's like four coats, if I did the math right.

Now I had a new and improved cabinet I wasn't entirely sure I wanted. Perfect!

But back to the kitchen. There was still more work to be done before I could actually shlap on a fresh coat of paint.

And here's where it gets embarrassing. My kitchen was disgusting.

That's not even the worst example of the grease and dust built up everywhere. But it's the worst example I am willing to show you. While I swear to you that I frequently scrub down all cooking surfaces and counters, I think no one had cleaned the walls possibly ever. It may have been even grottier than a truck stop diner that only narrowly passed health inspection thanks to a certain flirtatious waitress. But I didn't have a flirtatious waitress; all I had was a bucket of soapy water and some rags.

Cleaning off the walls was easy and immensely gratifying. But then came the ceiling. Its ornate pattern of dark grease swirls indicated that someone may have tried to clean it at some point using one paper towel and splash of tap water.  Clearly I'd need a different approach. Preferably one that didn't involve back bends at the top of a step ladder while dripping dirty water in my face.

This is when I remembered a conversation I had with my cleaning lady, Maria. One morning as I scurried around getting ready for work she asked me where I kept my Swiffer Sweeper. All of the others homes she serviced had one and they were her preferred device for cleaning floors. I confessed that I did not have one, though I didn't consider it an oversight as much as a hateful, intentional choice.

I'd previously purchased a Sweeper quite quickly after seeing a commercial that convinced me someone had finally improved upon the broom. Of course in this day and age there had to be a better way! Hooray for modern technology. Hooray for American ingenuity.

I'm not sure what was the more shameful judgement call on my part: blindly believing what advertisers told me, or thinking that shoving a tissue around the hardwoods would magically eradicate the human/pet hair tumbleweeds. Turns out (surprise, surprise) Sweepers don't stand a chance against the chaos that builds up on my floors during the average five minute time span.

(BTW I take no issue with the Swiffer Wet Jet. That's my jam.)

So I'd long ago gotten rid of the sweeper. But I went out and bought a new one for Maria because she didn't use it for its original purpose. Rather, she liked to attach wet rags and swap them out as needed to better scrub the floors.

And THAT, my dear readers, is the solution for cleaning a ceiling. A bucket of soapy water, a lot of rags, and the Sweeper. No back bends or step ladders necessary.

Hell Kitchen: Part One

Welcome to my humble kitchen.

It's nothing fabulous, but at least it's functional. Sometimes. The oven currently doesn't work. There was a three month dishwasher repair saga. The freezer isn't wide enough to store a frozen pizza.

At some point, I'd of course like to redo the kitchen and turn it into my dream kitchen, which is a vision I have yet to even conjure because it seems so far fetched. The kitchen remodel is on the 5-10 year to-do list, right up there with replacing the fence, converting the garage into an apartment, and achieving world peace.

This, by the way, leads me to ask myself, if we ever have the means to fix everything we wanted to fix in the house... wouldn't that suggest we have the means to get a newer, better house? So wouldn't we just say fuck it and move out?

But back to the matter at hand. What can I do to fix the kitchen for now? The short term solve: new paint.

Oddly, of all the painting I've done over the years, I've never actually had to paint a kitchen. There have been times I wanted to, but it always struck me as the worst room to paint. So many tiny hard to reach spaces, so much to cover with drop cloths and blue tape. Boy was I right. It's the worst! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

To begin at the beginning, let's talk about chefs, baby.

These are my wallpaper border chefs. They came with the house. They are fat and stupid and have stuck around for too long. I realize that's a really great set up to a joke. Probably politically motivated. But I don't have time to go there right now because I have work to do. 

I'd never worked with wallpaper before, mostly because I'd never had to. But also, it scared me. I'd never heard anyone relate a positive experience with wallpaper. When I finally I got up the courage and the energy to deal with mine, I had to stock up on some new devices, like a wallpaper scorer. 

Its little underbelly contains two rotating pokey blades. The idea is to rub it all over the wallpaper in circular motions, suffer the god awful squeaking sound it makes, and then apply wallpaper removing solution. The solution will seep into the little holes the scorer made and help the paper scrape off better.

So yeah that's the idea. In practice, the result was this:

The top layer (I didn't really think there were layers but it turned into that somehow) all but threw itself off the wall. But the bottom, the adhesive, the part that really mattered, hung on tightly.

I gave it another round of spray, waited twenty minutes, and then magic.

Isn't that the most satisfying piece of video you've seen in ages?

Goodbye, chefs. It's been real.

Mini Projects: Refreshing The Linen Closet

While massive undertakings in home renovation are always massively satisfying, there's also something to be said for the joy of tackling the little things. Case in point: the hallway linen closet.

Okay, I know it looks harmless enough from a distance, but up close this sucker suffers from the same gross old cabinet disease as every cabinet in every place I've ever lived. The yellowing, way-too-glossy paint. The years of gray globby build-up around the handles. The dreadful contact paper lining the shelves. And, most disturbingly, the distinct yet untraceable smell of old-ness. It's just not the sort of environment that screams, "I'm a great place for storing your pillow cases, toilet paper, freshly-laundered towels and other items bound for close contact with your person!"

Let's go in for a closer look.

Yellowing, way-too-glossy paint?

Check.

Gray globby build-up around the handles?

Check. And while we're on the topic of handles... bleck. I know, I always replace handles in every single project. It's sort of my go-to fix. But these ones were really asking for it.

Anyway, on with the tour. Dreadful contact paper lining the shelves?

Check. Layer after stinking layer. Actually, if it weren't so filthy that bottom layer could almost pass for fun and retro.

With every project I start, it's only once I get up close that I really understand the level of neglect. Like, that the paint on the bottom never actually made it all the way to the floor.

And that inside, there was only ever one layer of paint and so the knots in the wood showed through and looked, at first, like gross stains.

I tasked myself with this mini project over 4th of July weekend. Coincidentally, the weekend marked the first anniversary of living in our house, so it seemed only fitting to celebrate with some DIY.

I've dubbed this a "mini" project because the scope of it is small. It probably could've taken about 3 hours. In actuality, it spread out over a full week. This is because during the weekend of its inception I had more social engagements than I normally have in a month. So I had to complete the work in small chunks. Then, it spilled over into the work week, which is bad timing for any project, but this work week was a particularly brutal one. Then, the following weekend I got sidetracked with another project (details to come!). And I finally wrapped it all up by Sunday afternoon.

So I guess my point is that I could've just told you I did this in 3 hours.

The other reason this project felt mini is because there wasn't much to do in the way of prep work. I already had all of the supplies, even the paint! Remember all those gross miscalculations during the fireplace project? I had more than a half gallon of Snowfall White just burning a hole in my work bench. All I needed was some new cabinet hardware so I picked up a value pack of 10 brushed nickel knobs at the store.

Beyond that, I didn't do any hard labor getting ready to repaint.

First, I removed the ceramic knobs. I paused for a moment before tossing them in the trash, wondering if there was any chance they were antique and of value. Particularly the one with the rose design. Then I thought, nah forget it. Yo homes, to Bel Air!

Then I went over the surface with a Magic Eraser to get rid of the grime. [By the way, Magic Eraser, if you're reading this and looking for a blog to sponsor, I promise you'll get your money's worth with mine.]

Finally, I set about removing the contact paper. The top layer gave up really easily. The bottom held on for dear life and, in full disclosure, I gave up in a few places and just covered with new paper.

But look, you can't tell!

 

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to alternate patterns other than I had two different rolls of paper sitting around so I figured I may as well. Perhaps I hoped the variety would help take the edge off. I'm not sure if I've told you how much I hate laying down contact paper, but it's really terrible. And it never seems to matter how much time I take with it, or what techniques I try, because it always winds up looking like it was handled by someone who doesn't have full control of her faculties.

Fortunately, you can't tell from a distance. And you really can't tell once the paper is covered up with all the crap that's going back on the shelves afterward.

The second most challenging part of the project was painting the insides of the cabinets, just because I had to lean in at odd angles and my pregnant belly got in the way.

And then of course painting the face of the cabinets was a breeze. And now look, it's crisp, and clean and flat and it smells like paint and not old-ness.

So that's it. The before and after isn't particularly dramatic.

Up close, you can better see the improvement.

But I swear, in person it makes all the difference in the world. I've actually paused to admire it a few times while passing by.