The 2012 garden is planted!

I suspect this posting will interest me more than it does most of you; I wanted to document what I planted this afternoon in hopes of remembering it next year and choosing appropriately, based on the success or lack thereof of this year’s garden.

As usual, I planted three EarthBoxes with seedlings purchased today from Summerwinds. We waited longer than usual to plant this year for two reasons – first, because our Master Gardener friends told us to wait, and second, because we wanted to plant after coming home from Europe.

The first EarthBox is on our porch, and it has:

Diva Organic Cucumber, claims to be ripe in 58 days (July 8)
Slice Max Cucumber, “mid-to-early maturing”
Red Bell Pepper, ripens in 60–80 days (July 10–30)
Yellow Bell Pepper, ripe when it’s a rich yellow.

In past years, I’ve tried planting three peppers, but no more than two have ever produced, so I decided to see how only planting two works. I completely replaced the soil in this box, since the old soil was two years old.

The second EarthBox is out in the sun, with tomatoes. This year’s choices:

Early Girl, ripe in 50–62 days (June 30-July 12)
Large Red Cherry, ripe in 70–80 days (July 20–30)

Last year was not a good year for tomatoes – we got a fair number of yellow cherry tomatoes but only a few of the larger ones. I replaced half the soil in this box, since it was fresh last year.

The third EarthBox is also out in the sun, with watermelons. I planted two of the same:

Sugar Baby, ripe in 72 days (July 22)

Last year, I planted four melons in the same box; we got a few small melons, but nothing exciting. I replaced half the soil in this box, too, since it was fresh last year.

I never could get the hang of Tuesdays….

There’s nothing like having the phone ring early in the morning, unless it’s looking at the caller-id and seeing it’s your credit card company. Needless to say, the person on the other end introduced herself as being from the Fraud Protection department.

I probably should have been properly paranoid and called them back, but she had enough information to convince me that she was legitimate (either that or a very good scammer). After we’d established mutual bona fides, she asked me the big question:

“Did you use your card to pay 399 South Korean Won for a website named ‘First Date’?”

Nope. And neither had my son or my wife.

And actually, neither had the thief – they’d tried, but “Verified by Visa” kicked in and they were unable to answer the question it asked, so the charge was declined and activated the fraud prevention system, leading to this morning’s call.

Naturally, this was the card I use for all my automatic payments (so I’m careful not to use it at gas stations or other places where skimmers are likely to live); fortunately, I have downloaded copies of my last few statements handy and can update all my accounts when the new cards arrive. It’ll make a great excuse not to do something more productive.

On a brighter note, the first thing I saw when I logged onto Facebook today was a congratulatory post to Luba Cherbakov (one of my peers in my last group at IBM) on her appointment to IBM Fellow; when I looked at the press release, I found that Ron Fagin, a fellow member of Shir Hadash, had also been appointed as an IBM Fellow. Well-deserved congratulations to both of them! (I wonder if the food at the ceremony was Kosher for Passover.)