We've been dealing with a drought this summer, and not just in blogging (that's the one reference I'll make to the fact that I haven't posted in over two months). So I have a helpful tip for everyone who's also suffering through an extended dry spell: you can turn potatoes into water.
Apparently, all you have to do is buy a bag of potatoes - they're often on sale for a couple dollars - and put them on your basement stairs. Wait a few weeks - about three - and then voilà! Water.
I discovered this magic yesterday. Something foul was in the air. At first I blamed the cat, but his litter box was nice and tidy. Which left the potatoes. Mind you, I walk by the potatoes numerous times a day, you would think I'd have noticed that they were liquefying, but from a cursory glance, all that was visible was the presence of a few eyes, no big deal. Potatoes with eyes are still useful potatoes, so long as the eyes haven't taken over completely. But the smell did seem to be coming from the potatoes, so I decided they should go to the compost. I picked up the bag and water started pouring out of the holes.
It's a mystery to me why this is occurring - and also how the water stayed in the holey bag until I picked it up - but if you're in a severe enough drought, this seems like it could be useful.
Our drought isn't that severe, so the potatoes went in the trash.
The drought is severe enough that it almost killed our baby apple tree. Every single leaf dried up and fell off, and I was afraid that it was dead. But I lugged the bucket of water from our dehumidifier up out of the basement and dumped it on that baby tree for two weeks and it came back to life with even more leaves than before.
It failed to rain just about at all in July, so the plants are confused and blooming late. The morning glories and hostas are a month behind. Our pumpkin plants somehow miraculously survived but are also flowering late, so here we are in September with nary a pumpkin on the vines.
This after one cucumber plant came up out of the entire package (it fell victim to the drought), and two basil plants managed to come up out of two dozen seeds.
The dill was doing okay, but in the last two weeks it all shriveled up and died, I have no idea why. And that's how our first attempt at gardening has gone.
I would make a terrible farmer. Plants commit suicide when they find out I'll be taking care of them. Or, rather, failing to take care of them. The lady who owned the house before us cultivated beautiful gardens with carefully selected annuals that bloom in succession so that there are always flowers, from March through October. I've managed to kill a rose bush, a clematis, and for some reason none of the irises bloom anymore. We planted daffodils one year; none of them came up. We planted thrift; it died. I tried growing garlic and got the world's tiniest garlic ever.
It's been a bad year for indoor plants, as well. I somehow murdered my poinsettia plant, along with my last remaining Christmas cactus. The skeleton of the poinsettia is in my kitchen window, haunting me. I haven't thrown it out because I'm still hoping it comes back to life like the magical apple tree. The only plant you can trust me with is a spider plant. Those things could survive nuclear war.
Perhaps I need to try growing potatoes...
At any rate, it's a good thing we live within spitting distance of several grocery stores, because we'd all be starving if I had to grow our food. In that regard, I'm grateful to be a Modern-Day
-Real Housewife of the North Shore
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