Vampire Avoidance

I think it began a few years ago, when K's aunt gave me a copy of the book Garlic Is Life for Chrisyulenakkuh. I mean, I had always loved garlic, and cooked with it as much as humanly possible, and one of the ways that I knew that K. was the right woman for me was that she not only humored my interest in garlic, but actually seemed to enjoy it as well (although she doesn't like eating Habanero Pickled Garlic like candy the way I do). But when I read that book, I realized two things: first, I learned about the sheer number of varietals of garlic, and that even the best grocery stores in Philly seemed to only carry California White. And secondly, I started having dreams of becoming a garlic farmer.

I never wanted to do it professionally, except for a brief few weeks during which my dissertation was going particularly poorly and I wasn't getting called back for academic jobs, but K and I would often fantasize about having a garlic farm. Well, in our fantasies I compromised and allowed it to be a goat and garlic fram, and she compromised and allowed me to throw an annual Goat And Garlic Farm Folk Festival.

When we moved to Smallville, we decided to give up on the goats (yes, K., we did) and the folk festival, but we still wanted to plant garlic. And on Saturday we discovered a true garlic (among other things) farm at which we bought several different exciting varietals, and yesterday we at long last planted 16 square feet of garlic. Some Inchelium, some Music, some Ozark, and more. As long as we can stop ourselves from eating the garlic greens all winter -- the last time we planted garlic we couldn't resist temptation and ate them on salads which was very yummy but hurt their ability to grow -- we should end up with 70 or so heads of garlic. That might even last us a week.

This is where I would post pictures, but pictures of a planted bed are not that different from the pictures of the unplanted bed, so I won't waste you pixels.

That was probably the highlight of our weekend. More details to come.