So Priscilla and I have this house we bought.  We are on our way to being completely domesticated.  And on our journey, we decided to build a garden in our new backyard.  There is a small area between our lawn and our house located on the back wall that stretches about 20 feet across.  It gets direct sun about half the day, so we decided this was the best spot to start our little experiment.  Now, growing things is pretty foreign to Priscilla and I so we asked my parents to help out with some gardening knowledge to get us started in the right direction.  When they came to visit in May for my birthday, they were ready to get dirty.

My mom suggested that we plant the following:  2 Tomato plants, 1 yellow bell pepper plant, 1 jalapeno plant, 1 zucchini plant and 2 yellow squash plants.  It seemed like the perfect plan, so we bought our seedlings and our seeds and started digging.  The first thing we discovered was that our perfect little spot was covered with rocks and full of this red clay dirt that was incredibly hard.  So we had our hands full right off the bat.  We picked so many rocks our we were able to create a stone border around our plants.   It actually looked pretty awesome.

After the preparation was done, we dug our holes and planted our garden.  It was pretty impressive.  With no surprise it didn’t do much for the first couple of weeks.  Eventually we saw the squash and zucchini sprout out of the ground and makes it’s way upward.  The tomatoes, jalapenos, and bell peppers  were seedlings when we started so we knew they would make it without much work, but it gives you a strange kind of accomplishment when you grow things from seeds.  We watered every other day if it didn’t rain as it does so often in the Southern Summers.  We kept an eye on them until all of a sudden we had a garden.

The tomatoes shot into the air engulfing the wire cage we gave them for support.  The zucchini and squash slowly creeped into leafy bushes with bright yellow flowers.  The jalapenos and bell peppers grew to about 3 feet before they started growing small white and yellow flowers followed by small vegetables.  Yep, I said vegetables.

The tomatoes started and never stopped.  We have more now then we will ever need.  The jalapenos kept coming too.  I never have wanted more uses for jalaponeos then right now.  We put them in everything and they are hot.  Really hot.

But, the bell pepers never really did much.  We started to see flowers and then we saw a small pepper starting to grow.  That was over a month ago now.  It has materialized a little, and has recently strated to turnh yellow (they are yellow bell peppers) but not much else has happened.  A small second pepper has started to grow, but that is it.  As pathetic as the peppers have been, the Summer Squash and the Zuchini have done much worse.

LKike I said before, the plants grew.  They grew into large vines with think leaves and giant yellow flowers, but thats when it got strange.  They got a fungus called Powdery Mildew.  It created a lite white powder that covered all the leaves and eventually killed them.  At first I had no idea what it was so I just strated chopping the infected leaves away.  When I was done there wasn’t much left.  I read later in a book Priscilla gave me for our one year aniverary, that all we needed was some spray I could buy at Target.  I bought some and sprayed it on the leaves that were still standing and all of a sudden I felt like an ideot.  The plants tried to come back.  They really did.  But ever time a fruit would strat to grow, it would die.  Eventually, it was littered with white flies and roating veggies.  Last night, I cut them all down.

But at least we still have our tomatoes and our jalaopenos.  They are striving.  And our peppers are trying to produce they just aren’t doing that well at it.  Maybe a few more months.  They better hurry up though cause its only getting colder from here on out.  But so far it has all been a great learning experience.  Even with our plants still producing I am excited about next year.  I think I might try out some of the same stuff and maybe some new things too.  And next time I will take care of that Powdery Mildew before it starts.

This was a project that turned into a mess really fast. It took months to complete, but after the work was done I had learned a whole lot about html coding and different ways to build a website. The outcome was great and I am now able to modify it without a problem. I think that the design still holds up today and is still pretty impressive as far as My Space pages go.

www.myspace.com/davecaselli

I love to smoke. Well I don’t love it anymore. No I still love it. No I don’t. Maybe I do. Honestly, it has been so long now that I’m not sure I do anymore. I had my last cigarette May 24th 2009. I was really drunk and it was my one and only relapse since I have quit. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, I’m just laying out the facts. I started smoking when I was about 18 years old. So I was a smoker for about 11 years. Wow, 11 years. It’s hard to fathom that long of career of smoking. But like I said, I love to smoke.

Now I know that 4 months isn’t that long. I guess it just seems like a long time. I remember I quit once before for about 4 months before I had a relapse and started smoking Black and Milds before I went back to my favorite Marlboro Ultra Lights. For some reason that seemed like it was a lot shorter of a time to quit back then. I remember I wanted to cheat so bad. It was unbearable. But the truth was that just that I really didn’t want to quit. I think that is the biggest difference between then and now. Even after four months of wanting a cigarette and watching other people light up right in front of me, I still want to be a non-smoker. And after 4 months it still sucks balls.

I labeled this blog: “The Beginning of the End” because I know it’s not over yet. Actually I doubt it will ever be over. I will always want to cheat one way or another. I have recently smoked a few Black and Mild cigars while I was drinking and around smokers. I am in no way addicted to Black and Milds but I do have to stop smoking them. They help me keep myself occupied without actually smoking. I am making excuses now. Black and Milds have nicotine. I am addicted to nicotine thus I am addicted to Black and Milds. I know they are bad, I just find a way to convince myself they are ok. I am not going to let this detour me though. I am not going to let this bring me down. I will not quit quitting.

The next step is getting past the urge when I am drinking. I always knew it was the hardest, but I have been strong enough to not smoke a Marlboro so far so that’s a step. I quit drinking for a month to help and that kept my motivation up. I am not scared and am very confident this will be that last time I have to quit. I just have to keep on keeping on and I will.