See, I know that those of you who are paying attention (Hi Mom!) are just dying to know how my radish farm is coming along!  Well, I have an update.  :)

I dreamt I was pulling radishes last night.  They were small but marble-sized, just like the packet said they should be.  I was happy.  I love radishes.  I don't even care what they taste like, I'm not particularly nutty about them, but I LOVE growing them.  I don't know why.  I think it's because when I was a little wee girl (cue nostalgic music) they were the only damn things that would grow.  And then I never could grow them again.

But now - now I've figured out the secret!  The red part of the stem of the seedlings must be buried!  This turns into the happy, bulbous radish later in life - don't ask me why no books on growing vegetables mention this, don't ask me why I have to bury my radishes and the rest of the world doesn't, but hey, it works.  So anyway, I go out this morning to check the radishes and....

Now, I must take a moment to digress.  I go out onto the patio and the cats are so excited I say fine, come out with me.  I figure I'm right there, I can watch them, right?  Right.  You try watching five cats (Bunny couldn't be bothered) while watering your plants, checking your radishes and broccoli, etc.  Oliver finds his way quickly to the beans and starts chewing up a leaf.  I don't know what his fascination is with bean plants.  Peter decides there's too much commotion and heads back in, as does Annie the Chicken.  Jack jumps up on the air conditioning unit and lies down - he thinks it's just great to be out in the fresh air with mom.

But Mamasita.  That little she-devil decides to walk OUTSIDE the railing.  She's so clever.  She has such great balance.  And she's looking for a way to escape.  Fine, I say, there's no way down from the patio, you're a smaller cat, you're fine.  I scold her and turn back to my plants.  The next time I turn around she's bunched up as tight as she can get with her butt as tightly pressed to the railing as she can - eyeing the tree trunk that's about 6 feet away.  And not eyeing it in that "Hmm, bugs... what a nice tree trunk... I love stuff" kind of way.  In that "okay... just take a big spring... on the count of three... one.... two..." sort of way.  Little shit.  So she was summarily dumped back into the house and is not allowed on that END of the patio even if I'm there.  Oliver was shooed away from the beans -again- and put inside.  Poor, sweet, dear, easygoing Jack was picked back up and returned to the house. 

And the radishes - well, I pulled one up and it wasn't bulby at all.  I think I may have run into the overcrowding issue, so I pulled one in the middle of two others to let them spread out a bit.  One in the far corner is obviously forming a nice-sized radish, so I covered its bulb back up with more dirt and I'll check it again tomorrow.  Three of my cucumber plants have sprouted and each have one cute true leaf growing - but two others (of a different variety) never came up.  The problem is that I've no idea which are which - so I'll just guess and plant a couple more seeds.  The beans are doing well and the broccoli is coming along fine, as is the mesclun.  I'm really liking the self-watering containers, by the way.  Next up:  a carrot in a plastic Thai food container (it's deep!) and probably some cat grass... :)