Church Blend

So the other day, mom and I got to talking about soil and amendments and what not, and she clued me in to Church Blend. Now for those of you who aren't in the know, I grew up in Salt Lake City (that's UTAH, folks) and mom still lives there, so there can be absolutely no question as to WHICH church we're talking about here. It's true that there are special Church versions of many things in Utah, but never would I have guessed that there'd be specially sanctioned Church manure. We got to wondering just what makes Church Blend Church worthy, and after some effort we decided that there must be a blessed secret ingredient : Elder Urates. Picture if you will a group of stalwart young LDS elders in their Sunday best, outlines of Garments proudly visible through their perfectly starched white shirts, peeing into the compost pile with all the pride and responsibility that God has blessed them with. Ah, yes. Elder Urates. That's absolutely gotta be it.

Here's the best part -- doing a Google Search for "Church Blend" and "Utah" brings up four sites : Three of them are landscaping supply places in Utah, ones that ostensibly sell Church Blend (mom's going to try to score a bag to bring to me next time she visits, although we're pretty sure they ask to see your Mormon ID before they'll sell it to you). The fourth site is labeled "XXX Adult Hardcore Exclusive". I didn't look at it too closely, but sure enough, the words "Church Blend" and "Utah" are right there in the keyword listing. Even my mind, known to "go there" almost without effort, boggles at the idea of eroticizing Church Blend. I guess it's true what they say about internet porn -- if you can think of it, there's a fetish site dedicated to it. Perhaps it's pictures of elders peeing into the compost pile sans pants??? Who knows? It's probably best not to think about it too much.

Anyhow, I've decided that I've got to score myself some Church Blend and do a test case next year. I'm partially convinced that the soil amendment will somehow detect my non-member-osity, and my crops will wither and be plagued by locusts. But my mom's (non-member) friend Dave swears by the stuff, so I'm willing to give it a try if mom can sneak some across the border in to Cali-fornica.

Following are some recent pictures of the crops, which as you can see are actually doing quite well without the help of Elder Urates, thank you very much!

A good lengthwise shot of the largest bed. That's eight foot tall corn back there behind the 'maters and sunflowers:


Pole beans and a giant sundial sunflower, which is just about to bloom:


Cukes and melons (a cantalope varietal that seems to be doing quite well, there to the right of the climbing cucumber vines):


Tomato close up (variety Stupice, which despite sounding like a combination of the words "stupid" and "useless" is actually proving to be quite a good performer):


Two pictures of the scarlet runner beans, which are one of my very favorite things to grow -- aside from being lovely vines, the beans are really great fresh and dried. Oh, and there's a glimpse of purple bush beans visible in the second shot:




Two lovely-as-fuck sunflowers. Man, I just adore sunflowers. Maybe next year, we have an all sunflower garden!!




And a great shot of the dog decked out for the beach, just for good measure:



Okay, that's it! Go about your business, and do your best not to picture all those pants-less elders peeing into the compost pile!