The Spiteful Chef

I was at the gym yesterday, hammering away at a tractor tire with a mjolnir…er…sledgehammer, when a pompous-looking management type waddled out onto the turf field and told my boot camp class that there was a tornado warning in effect, and we all needed to cram into the locker rooms until it was safe.  That was at 6:45 pm.

My immediate response was “Look, dude.  If I’m going to die tonight, it’s not going to be surrounded by 200 sweaty vaginas.  I’ll be in the mens’ locker room if you need me.”  That didn’t fly well, so I ended up in the womens’ locker room.  Fun times.  The first three bays smelled like B.O., so I huddled in the back trying to keep the stink as far away from my person as humanly possible.  It’s called deodorant, and it’s not expensive.  Seriously.

I texted Chris and asked if he and E were okay, and he responded “Oh we’re fine!  I was hoping you wouldn’t notice so you wouldn’t get scared.  E and I are in a mobile home in a Wal-Mart parking lot waiting it out.  Should be great!”  He’s an ass.  Really, he and E were at home in the basement eating delicious cereal and playing video games on cozy furniture.

Apparently the men at the gym were agitated at being locked in, so several of them just left, including my trainer.  He’ll be getting written up today, I’m almost certain.  But mostly I was just mad at him because I know he keeps a secret stash of food at the gym, and I wanted some RIGHTNOWOMG!

When I finally sprinted through the lighting, flash floods, and touched down tornadoes to my car, my next thought was “I wonder if my tomato plants are going to be okay…”  Our garden has really expanded this year, and I’m hoping it’ll provide enough produce that I only have to pick up the occasional odds and ends at the farmer’s market.  That, and the meat in our freezer, should hopefully be plenty to get us through summer and I can use the extra grocery money to buy wine or clothes or whatever.  I farm therefore I shop.

After I got home, I put a frozen Evol burrito in the microwave and ate about 6 cups of dry cereal while it microwaved for 5 minutes.  I was SO HUNGRY.  Then video games, then bed.  Fascinating stuff.  Really riveting.

This morning, though, when the sun peeped through the skies and I came downstairs, I feared for the worst.  We had 6 tornadoes touch down in a reasonable radius of our house.  We had hail the size of ping pong balls, coming in wave after wave.  Then the flash floods began in earnest.  Throughout the night, heavy winds, fierce lightning, monsoon-like rains, and intermittent bursts of hail pummeled the area.  I knew I’d find destruction throughout the yard, and God only knows what happened to my car.

Dill is flowering and going crazy. I'm going to be able to make SO MUCH DILL DOUGH

Tenacious little pepper? Unharmed.

The baby inspecting the rosebushes. I think those are rosebushes. If you want actual gardening expertise, go see Katina at http://gardeninginaustin.blogspot.com/

Victory garden is victorious, duh

The beans have gone straight-up pole dancer on the trellises. Trelli. Whatever.

Red Robin cherry tomatoes are all tiny and mostly bush. HAHAHA! My mom will love that joke. Her name is Robin.

But lo!  The yard, the garden, my car…all basically untouched.  How is that possible?  Trees were being uprooted, but my tiny little plants didn’t give two shits.  It’s CRAZEBALLS that this wasn’t all destroyed.  Everyone around us got so screwed, and what I’m hearing is that we may be the only garden we know that didn’t lose everything. So here, in all its glory, is a pictorial tour of the post-apocalyptic garden:

Part of tomato and pepper alley. This used to be all rock and a buried sprinkler head. Trying to turn it into usable space.

I knocked those onion tops down about 2 weeks ago so they'd start working on forming larger bulbs. The hand is mightier than the storm. And the cat licking his own junk is mightier than even the hand.

Lost some leaves, but didn't lose any lives. No man left behind.

Garlic and basil are happily growing and getting ready to be pesto or garnish a caprese salad.

A friend of ours cleaning up any aphids who might dare to besmirch my parsley. Chimichurri is all the win.

This cabbage is nice. The other cabbage looks a little bit like it was rode hard and put away wet.

Like little yellow 'red rockets', bursting forth with glory.

The weird incesty tomato didn't even stop conjoining itself to its fetus for the event.

The first blushing beauty of the year remains unsullied and pink around the bottom.

Standing water next to the tomatillos

A blown over chair, a shovel, a piece of trash, and the rest of our meager yard, which is almost all getting turned into food production, slowly but surely.