July/August Garden Update

I kind of fell off the gardening update bandwagon and didn't even realize it until I sat down to write a different blog post. Sorry. I'll allow that other to further ferment and do my best to catch you up on what happened in the garden the last two months.

High summer never did arrive...or if it did it was only for two weeks at the very end of August...and the garden certainly felt it. Certain plants just never thrived the way they should have, :(. But all-in-all I am pretty happy with this, my second year gardening. I definitely learned some things to implement next year. We will take the tour round, bed by bed.

Bed 1, which housed my "spring produce" of lettuce, spinach, and peas died out in mid July. They all three produced amazingly well.

8 lettuce heads and 2 spinach heads, re-planted as they are pulled, was the perfect amount for our family. A steady and manageable over-flow. I was particularly pleased with the lettuce, as last year I found it kind of bitter and soft. Thru experimentation I found that a good watering right before harvest made my lettuce crisp and wonderful. Also, I think the cooler weather this spring helped :)

The peas we could have used more of. We harvested a small bowl nearly every morning and yet we could have used more. What can I say? My kids enjoy peas more then anything else out of the garden. Oh, yes, I had mentioned that I planted 30 peas at the beginning of April, and 30 at the end. In all honestly, it seemed like they produced equal amounts and at the same time. In the future I will probably just plant them all at once- at the end. Germination rates were much better with that planting, and it gives me more time to get all the beds in order.

I had planned on doing an August re-planting (for fall harvest) of all three, but alas never got around to it. Dare I admit the weather and limited success of the year has gotten me down? Instead I planted a ground cover and let the bed rest.

Bed 2 housed my green beans. I planted both bush and pole beans, and surprisingly (to me) the bush beans produced a lot better. I planted bush beans last year as well, and after being talked into it by many, many people decided to try pole as well...and I've got to admit that next year I'm going back to bush only :)

early July.

Some of that, I will admit, is just that I hate climbing plants...I can never find a cheap/easy to install/low maintanance/well functioning trellis system. Dangling yarn worked great for the peas...not so well for the beans (which are much heavier plants).

I was doubtful about fitting 9 bush bean plants per square foot (ala square foot gardening method) but I didn't notice the plants suffering any...although finding the beans was a bit of a jungle!

Bed 3 belonged to my corn.

Poor, poor corn. It looks very pretty but I'm not sure it will produce anything. We will see. Either way I think this will end my corn adventures. Its too cheap, too hard to get a harvest, and takes up too much space! I'm going to use this bed for potatoes next year. My current potato bed (as we will later discuss) is too shady.

Bed four is where I kept my tomato and carrots. The bad news is, while the cherry tomatoes are doing wonderfully (not that I've enjoyed many or even really had much of an idea of how many there are- the kids keep eating them!) my full tomato plants only have 1-2 small tomatoes per plant. Grr!! Tomatoes are Josh's fav garden food and after the wild success I had last year, this is really disheartening! I'm blaming the weather. My tomatoes got really really damaged from the cold early on and I dont think they ever recovered.

Next year I'm going to re purpose the green bean trellis into a makeshift hotbed (adding some clear plastic). No cold tomato plants allowed!!

The good news is the carrots did amazing!! All 120 of them ;) We've been picking a few for snack or dinner every few days since mid July and we've really just made a dent. They are good now, but after the first frost of the year they will be even better (if there are any left!)

Bed 5, the last but not least of the raised beds was the squash bed. 2 Zuchinni and 3 Winter Squash varieties. The zuchinni did ok...just ok, and its zuchinni! Like the easiest thing ever to grow!

The winter squash is a pretty utter failure. We have 1 between the 3 plants. Part of the problem was a major bug attack early in the summer...and this is the area where my green beans were kept last year (which where also attacked by bugs!!). Not sure what to do about that. The other part was the cold weather, I suspect. The kept growing huge gorgeous flowers that fell off :(

Oh well. I will try again next year, and probably squish a few more plants in. They are pretty spaced out and I realized that if they get too crowded I could always let the vines grow "out of the box" as it were. I want at least 3 zuchinni I think, and 4 winter squash...maybe 6...

In the fruit bed I had strawberries which produced pounds, and pounds, and pounds of neverending fruit. Honestly I got sick of strawberries and had to start giving them away because the yard smelled of jam from all the rotting berries left on the plant. My children wont even look a strawberry in the face, and its been a month. So yeah, that was successful.

spent strawberries

The raspberries were in their first year so no fruit, but the look like they are doing well. We will see what happens next year. They still seem rather teeny to me.

The potato/onion bed was a last minute addition. And poorly chosen, because it only gets about 5 hours of sun a day. The onion never did survive that hail storm in June, they slowly died after that. The problem is that our roof dumped the hail right onto them :(

The potatoes look like they are doing well, above ground. They sprouted the most lovely little purple flowers. We will see soon how well they did below-ground. Hopefully well, because I want to see some purple pototoes!! Either way Im going to move them into a raised bed next year where the will get more sun.

And I think this previously-known-as-the-potato-and-onion bed will become a flower bed. There are plenty of partial sun flowers I can plant in there and Zeke's flower garden was a complete and total fail. I need to just accept the fact that that particular section of our yard is the "dirt box". I planted squash in it last year...which got trampled by a digging boy. And this year I planted flowers...which got trampled by 2 digging boys. They never stood a chance. If I want a cutting garden, its going to have to be on "my" territory.

As far as my corner herbs go, I hate to admit it but I almost never used them! Oops. I made pesto once with the basil, and salsa with fresh cilantro once, and fish with fresh dill once. I'm just not in the habit of having them I suppose...

They did look really pretty when I let them all flower :)

June Garden Update

Updating a bit early, because we are going out of town for the rest of June.

This month was kind of like the 10 plagues of Egypt. Except there were not quite 10 of them...also my backyard isn't in Egypt.

There was hail however, which decimated my lettuce and onion patches, the lettuce I was able to replant but half of my 12 onions are just gone. And I found dozens (dozens!) of slugs in the potatoes, while something we never quite found or labeled ate 4 of my squash seedlings, maybe birds?

During these many setbacks I threw many tantrums kept up a good attitude.

Gardening is good practice for accepting that which you cannot control. Like endless rain. And slugs.

Luckily lettuce grows back quickly, and by replanting every time I pull a head I've been harvesting a head or two of lettuce every week this month, with nary an empty spot left in the row.

The peas are doing great as well and hopefully as they grow taller they will give the delicate lettuce enough shade to protect them from the heat of high summer- that is if high summer ever arrives.

I could get used to the steady supply of lettuce.

As for the slugs, I spread egg shells to deter them (they are too sharp for soft slug bellies) and laid and old board every evening next to my plants. When the sun came up the next day the slugs hid underneath, and then it was just a matter of murdering the ugly suckers. After 4 nights of this I stopped finding slugs. I know everyone says "beer traps" but I've never had much luck with them, and since we dont drink beer this was more convenient.

It seemed to work and the potatoes were saved.

In the end 6 potato plants came up. I think its hilarious that they were all planted the same day and yet I have 3 distinct stages of growth. As you can see the top 2 left ones have been hilled a few times already but the bottom 2 right ones are still in their holes, and the other two are barely germinated, so teeny tiny you cant even really see them.

As for the squash and it's attacker... well I ended up buying 2 more starts to make up for my losses :( But I found great ones at the public market for 50cents a pop so alls well that ends well?

The green beans are doing great.

And the raspberries are even putting out shoots at last!

My tomatoes may never forgive me for the weather, though.

If they don't rally soon I might just pull them. The carrots in the back look nice. They are sooo tiny and grow grow soooo slow though, and take forever to germinate. I did my second planting 2 weeks ago and nary a sprout. So far carrots just arent that satisfying. I'm sure I'll sing another tune when its pulling time :)

We are very near picking time for strawberries. There are literal pounds of green strawberries out there. I have a feeling they will all redden up while we are gone and we will have quite a feast to greet us back home next week.

And hopefully more corn germinates as well.

We have 5 or 6 but I planted more like 25 or 30. Hopefully the rest pop up, if not I may be setting this bed to cover crop sooner then expected.

Here's hoping for more sun and less plagues this month!!

Planting (226-240)

It is at once a very brave, and a very simple thing- entrusting a seed into the earth.

It feels strangely removed from the stack of gardening books on my desk, each waxing intricate about companionate planting, crop rotations, double digging, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, annual last frost dates, and vermicomposting. It's as if all of that book learning doesn't belong near the soil at all.

When you strip away all of the techniques and tips- the best ways to stake a tomato, the

flowers guaranteed to detract slugs and aphids, the organic materials that will ensure your beans

flourish, the correct way to manually pollinate corn, and the pros and cons of chitting potato seed- when you set all of that aside and get down to the actual business of being outside...

Well, then it gets a whole lot simpler.

Turn the earth.

Dig a hole.

Place a seed.

Add water.

Trust.

A 3 year old could explain it. Hell, a three year old did explain it to me, adding the sage advice that "it helps if you pull the weeds."

And I wonder, now that I'm pretty well finished with the process of planting, why I have to complicate it. Why we all have to complicate it. Why can't any of us just trust?

It really is ridiculously simple. Nature does all the work.

I love the planning. Don't get me wrong. I love the research, and it's not going to stop any time soon. Not until I get a major personality change, and while I'm not sure how those are running right now I'm fairly certain it's more then I can afford.

But I think the part I love best is when the research all falls away, and I get to finally get my hands dirty (literally).

What I love best is the simplicity of it.

And I think the part that's hardest for me, is the bravery of it.

The trust.

And #240...it has to be Trust.

------

# 226. Zoo's

#227. A child's wonder in the simplest things.

#228. Baths.

#229. Icecream.

#230. Weather finally catching up to the season.

#231. A baby's newfound appetite for books.

#232. Iced tea.

#233. Newly mown grass.

#234. Sunlight on golden curls.

#235. Milestones conquered.

#236. My every-other-yearly night out clubbing. To remind me that I dont actually enjoy clubbing.

#237. Kind strangers.

#238. This guys smile.

#239. Phone calls.

April Garden Update

This month I:

Added compost to all the beds. And started composting myself, in a garbage can, in the hopes that I don't have to purchase compost ever again.

Tilled and planted a potato/onion bed.

After measuring our space, Josh and I realized we had extra room- 2x6 feet of it! So we decided to last-minute add a crop of spring onions right next to the potatoes. I even found one teeny tiny onion sprout this morning!

Did I mention by they way that we are growing purple potatoes? This is the color they should be when they are dug up:

I even started my warm weather herbs (basil, cilantro, oregano, dill) indoors. And then Mal got to them....so then I started them indoors again.

Zeke helped me start his sunflowers indoors as well. They need to be potted up soon, it always cracks me up how quick sunflowers grow.

I re-planned the planting of my corn and beans. I had wanted to grow my green beans up my corn stalks, but after more research decided this method wasn't worth sparing Josh building a bean trellis. I would get a lot more of each if I devoted a bed to each. Plus, the more I read about corn the more I was told that in order for corn to pollinate, you need a big block of corn. So now I have an entire corn bed, and an entire bean bed. And as such, I decided to add a bush bean variety as well, which are the last seeds I will buy this year- I swear. Also the last change in plans this year, this is permanent:

I planted peas (a little over 80), carrots (a little over 40), 8 lettuce, 4 spinach, 2 chives, 2 dill, and a few marigolds in the raised beds. The peas I split, planting half at the beginning of the month, and half at the end. I've heard different ideas of when its optimal to plant peas, so its a bit of an experiment. About 1/2 of my early peas are up, we will see if the rest survived as well.

Zeke and I spread wildflower and lavender seeds in his garden. He also "built" a bench for viewing pleasure.

And Zeke, Josh, and I all worked together to finish the rock garden.

I couldn't have done it without Josh's brute strength OR Zeke's creativity. For some reason I was really stuck on how to go about the rock garden. Zeke knew just what to do, though.

Next month I want to:

-Transplant my "warm weather" herbs, and the sunflowers to the outside.

-Plant forget-me-nots in the rock garden.

-Plant calendulas, green beans, corn, zuchinni, squash, and tomato starts in the raised beds. ------Replant more carrots, lettuce and spinach to extend harvests.

-Begin harvesting strawberries, spinach, and lettuce.

-Enjoy some of the tulips Zeke and I planted last fall...if any at all survive Malachi (and they may not).

March Garden Update (A whole lotta prep)

I've decided to do a garden update on the last of every month this year. Or rather this gardening year. So April-October...and also lets add- or rather near the last of every month.

I've got 2 kids sick with the fever plague of '11 right now and a calender chock full of things that I'm slowly crossing off so I'm hesitant to make any real commitments right now.

But to commence.

It's April and I can legitimately garden now!!!

Last month (or rather over the last 2 months) I:

Built and filled raised Beds. Or rather, Josh did. It threw my old graph and plans for a small loop but I am very excited and everything transferred over to the new layout really easily. I wont be able to trench compost anymore, and haven't quite figured out my new composting plan yet...I think maybe in a garbage can?

Planned my garden. I researched what I wanted and how much I wanted to plant. And then I slowly figured out what I could realistically fit, and where everything will go, keeping in mind companionate planting and crop rotations. I used the 30 day trial at growveg.com and found it super helpful. It has settings for traditional row planting as well as square foot gardening, which is nice because I'm using a hodgepodge of both techniques. It aided me in making the following graph, as well as a few first-drafty graphs before it:
Bought my seeds. Or at least most of my seeds. I tried to find tolerant, fast maturing varieties, because I am a bad gardener and our summers are short. I'm starting everything from seed directly outside this year because I don't have patience or space or talent for starting indoors, so fast-maturing is especially important, as I'm losing a few weeks. For my tomatoes I will purchase starts.

Made a graph of what, how much, where, and when I'm planting everything that I'm planting. I also made more in-depth index cards for each thing I'm planting, with growing tips, and space to take notes as the year goes.

Planted Raspberries. Four of them :)

Did a soil test. Our soil is surprisingly good, but completely depleted in nitrate. Good to know.

Started to clear a potato patch, and build a rock garden. I considered potatoes in a can but after research decided against. I just cant find anyone that has actually had luck with this method. Instead I am battling roots to clear a space next to our soon-to-be rock garden.
And raked Zeke's Garden.

This month I want to:
- Research and decide on a composting method.
- Buy last of the seeds (potato, lettuce, herbs).
- Decide if herbs are going in my window planters or in the veg. garden border.
- Finish digging up all the roots in the potato patch.
- Buy and apply compost and an organic nitrogen source yet to be decided on to the garden beds.
- Build trellis' for the peas.
- Plant: carrots, peas, lettuce, spinach (raised beds), potatoes (pot. patch), marigolds (raised bed border), and wildflowers (zeke's garden).
- Maybe start herbs indoors. Maybe.
- Work on rock garden. Maybe.

Phew.

Gardening stories (and moments 239-252)

Every time I go off of coffee, because I am pregnant, or because I think I'm going to have a heart attack and I haven't figured out it's my allergy pills yet, or because I'm not sleeping well, or just because I need to prove to myself that I can, it is so horrible that I swear I wont ever touch the stuff again.

But then every time I get back on the coffee addiction train my productivity goes up so much that I swear I will never put the stuff down again.

And I suppose that is as good an explanation as any as to why I spent a little under 5 hours on Sunday in the backyard, digging, moving large rocks, and otherwise chipping away at our spring
to-do list.
I got out the coffee press last week.

But of course that is not the whole story.

It fails to take into account that it was 50+ degrees out there. In February. In the frigid north, that is the kind of weather that cant be ignored. That is the kind of weather only caused by weather angels and I was duly elated.

It also fails to take into account the sight of crocus buds breaking thru the winter and dirt. The first hope of Spring, that season that we each of us know comes every year but all the same almost doubt will arrive.

And so I got out a shovel and tilled the garden after church while the boys napped.
And then I gathered up the fallen sticks and raked up the leaf mulch I had spread around the bushes and over the bulbs to hep protect them thru the winter, carefully scooping it away from the crocus buds.

And then as the man and boys of my family joined me, one by one, I attacked this area:
This out-of-the-way corner has never been that high on the to-do list in past years as it was just
overgrown with ivy and rogue grass. It wasn't necessarily ugly and so shaded besides that I wasn't sure what it would be fit for. Anyways we had quite a to-do list; evil rosebushes with 3 inch thorns to dig up, neglected shrubs to prune and nurse to health, a vegetable garden to plant, and weeds...oh the number of weeds I pulled that first summer!

But Sunday, filled with the excess energy of 3 cups of coffee and the sight of new growth in the yard, Sunday I decided to finally do something about that corner. And lo and behold after some pulling and digging and all-around sweating, underneath all that dirt and ivy were paving stones. I've been dreaming of a rock garden for a few years now. Since here, in fact, and I'm beginning to think this is a perfect place, and this a perfect year for each of us to take a stone upon our shoulder and build a memorial of thanks.
The best part is I wont have to fight the ivy when it tries to grow back. Which it will as the
neighbors planted it right on the other side of the chain link fence. I'll just train it to grow
around our rocks.

There are many annoyances to moving into a new house, and therefor a new yard. It takes time, and work, to make it your own. But I think I will be sad when these little surprises have run themselves out. The morning Josh looked out the window and said, "Well, it seems we have tulips." The day our crazy unidentifiable bush flowered bright red blooms which later fruited what looked like (but definitely weren't) pears. We are entering into our 3rd year in this house soon and I can't help but think I have discovered all its secrets.

Digging up that old pathway of paving stones may very well be the last.

Or at least the second to last. We still don't know what in the world that bush is.

And that is my rather long explaination of #252.

Always counting...

#239 Bright blue January skies.

#240 Sun salutations.

#241 Husband-editors.

#242 Little boys goading eachother to greater and greater silliness across the dinner table.

#243 Really big plans, and the graphs to represent them.

#244 Playing outside again- almost every day.

#245 The book of common prayer.

#246 New baby cows.

#247 The freshest possible milk.

#248 The sound of scales dutifully practiced coming up the stairs in the morning.

#249 Phone calls, just to talk.

#250 Coffee.

#251 The first growth of the year.

#252 Spring Discoveries.

Bow Down to the Awesomeness of my Chart

Every morning I ask Zeke if he wants to go to the library story time today; or to our mindful mama's meeting; or to preschool co-op, or what-have-you. And every morning for a week now he has said no. "I want to stay hooooome and eat yoooogurt." was his exact answer today.

And so home, for the most part, we have stayed.

It's difficult at times to remember that he is a person too, with plans for his day and moods. And both kids have seemed extra tired lately, not really wanting to do much. I try to respect their desires on how our day should go when I can, because very often I can't. We WILL go to Costco this afternoon, for example. But I'll admit, I am also getting very tired of staying home. I haven't been anywhere since church on Sunday. Pretty soon we will have to switch from respecting their needs to respecting mine.

In the meantime, I will show you what I've been doing these past home-bound days. You know, other than changing diapers and cleaning the fridge and playing hide and seek.

Is there anything more satisfying then a chart?

From left to right, or north to south as it were...

Bed 1
1 Squash hill (probably butternut)
2 Zuchinni hills

Bed 2
3x2 square feet of Carrots (probably 40-50)
2 Tomatoes (Jet Stars if we can find starts)
2 Cherry Tomatoes

Beds 3 and 4
2 rows of Green Beans (10 each) growing up
1 row of Corn (5 each)

Bed 5
2 double sided Pea trellis' (15 peas per side)
with Spinach in the shade between (7 successively planted)

Bed 6
Zeke's Strawberry Patch


The brown lines between each Bed represent my walkways. I'm going to dig them into 8 inch deep trenches for trench composting, and fill them as we go. Last year I used the end of the garden (what is now a squash bed) as a compost pile but it didn't really work out for me. Composting is apparently beyond my skill. Seriously, its not just letting stuff rot...there is an art to it. Trench composting seems much less an art and more like dumping garbage in a hole. That I can do.

It also makes me feel way less guilty about all those waste-of-space walkways. My garden is deep enough (a little over 6 feet) that I need them if I ever hope to reach the back but they still grate my nerves.

Anyways, if it works out for me I will just move the walkways every year and soon have a nice layer of compost over the whole garden, 8 inches deep.

You may also have noticed all those little flowers. They are Marigolds, Calendula's, and Cosmo's. All picked for their qualities to fend off slugs and dogs, attract pollinators, and feed nasty bugs that would otherwise eat my veggies. They are my guard-flowers, if you will.

Below you can see our Potatoes will be growing in a trash can. The raspberry bush that I want (and Josh needs to remove a different bush to make room for) is also represented, even though I doubt we will get around to it in time. It would need to be planted in March. And then there is Zeke's sunflower house that I'm hoping to put in his digging area. If I can keep him from digging them up.

I also made an at-a-glance chart with all of my amounts to plant alongside the various planting dates, and another more in detail month-by-month To Do list, including planting garlic (and also something else...I don't want 6x25 feet of garlic) in the fall as a winter crop to enrich the soil.

Now I just have to wait a few months to start....

In all honesty I'm glad I did it all, though. I looked at the calender the other day to check the dates for Easter and remembered that we have a really really late Easter this year (April 24th). So late in fact that almost my entire usual-garden-planning time will be smack in the middle of Lent, which would have left me little time to read all the gardening books and blogs I have been. So late even that the bunny wont be able to give the boys all the garden seeds, as the spinach, peas, potatoes, marigolds and maybe even the carrots will be in the ground by then.

Oh well, they can get the sunflower seeds ;)

Garden Dreams

We had unseasonably warm weather last week. It threw us for a loop and several times, in fact, either I or Josh have talked about Spring as if it was just around the corner- despite the fact that it is in fact still 2 months away. And even though today has been a much more average 20 degrees, it was still blue skies. So inside the heated house I was still thinking Spring; contemplating making pom pom flowers for my sometimes empty vase, spying eagerly out the window in search of a crocus bud, wondering what clothes await me in Mal's size in storage, and for that matter what size he will be, and how many things I had in 3T last year, I think Zeke was still mostly a 2, and what I will have to purchase to get us thru.

And I just couldn't resist it. I got out my household planner and I started planning out our garden.

I've decided on repeating last years' Peas, Spinach, Green Beans, and Tomatoes, throwing out the Peppers (which were too spicy for my boys' tastes) and the Lettuce (because it ended up really soft with no crunch, I don't know why), and adding Carrots, and Potatoes, and some sort of Squash...maybe a butternut or an acorn? Oh yes, and Zeke will be in charge of the Strawberries again, and adding Sunflowers to his domain. We might make them into a Sunflower house like this, I haven't decided.

So now I am looking up all my old gardening posts, and googling companionate planting, and searching for growing tips. Last year my basic plan was- throw as much compost as I could afford down (it wasn't much), stick in the seeds, and wait. It worked out great but I think this year I want to develop a real plan and grow my knowledge base a bit.

Gardeners out there, any favorite books, blogs, or sites? Want to send me your garden plan so I can shamelessly copy it?

I've got 4 months to overthink this.

Garden Update- Harvest

"You dig a little hole, and you put in the seed, and you put on the water, and then a little plant comes."

I was never more happy about gardening, not even when I was eating sun-warm tomatoes with salt and pepper, than when Zeke explained this to an older woman at the store. We were picking out bulbs to plant, as was she, and I have to admit that I swelled with pride.

I decided that if I want flowers next year, bulbs are the best way to go about it. Zeke insisted on crocus'. Truly. When he first pointed to them, I led him away pointing out the big hyacinths and cheerful daffodils and crazy narcissus, and he pointed out 2 other brands that also offered crocus'. So crocus' we shall have. I picked tulips, because they are pretty much guaranteed to thrive (there are a million in our neighborhood) and iris', because they aren't, also because I love them. I love them all, though, and seriously considered turning Zeke's dirt patch into a flower garden. But then I remembered how much he loves his dirt patch.

When I have boys too old to dig in the dirt, I will have a huge flower garden.

The tomatoes are out of control. We're eating spaghetti, and cacciatori, and lasagna, and tomato soup, and tomatoes sliced on every sandwich, and diced on every salad, and thrown into ministroni and onto tacos, and yet there are still 4 or 5 always sitting on the counter.

My tomatoes are usually blemished, sometimes split from over-watering, and anything but uniform in size, but they are the most delicious tomatoes I have ever eaten.

The bell peppers are spicy. Spicier then I am used to bell peppers being. And it seems as if the ones I am allowing to (or forgetting about until they) turn red are spicier then those I pick while green. Which is opposite of what I was always told. My whole family prefers green, which is what we buy in the store but I was always told that red is sweeter?

Our peas are about 4 inches high, and flowering. I'm going to have to find the time to stake them pretty soon or else they will be falling over. If I'm lucky, I can talk my husband into finding the time to build me a little trellis. Staking them this spring didn't work very well.

I'm really hoping we get peas before the frosts come.

The green beans are the plants that just keep giving. I thought, at my last update in August, that they were done. But we ended up getting one more dinner off of them and yesterday I picked what I truly think are the last...a handful fit for a Zeke-lunch.