Charlatan

A charlatan is someone who claims to have knowledge or a skill that they don't really have. 
 I don't want to be a charlatan, so this is my anti-charlatan post where I own up to all that I don't know; all the times I realize I am such an idiot!

Charlatan #1: This fall I was so excited to plant my newly built circle garden! I went down to the local feed and seed to pick up some transplants. I found two types of kale, curly kale and a kale labeled just "kale", no type or description, so I called it flat leaf kale. I planted the flat leaf kale in the back of the bed and the curly kale in the front. 

We ate mixed greens salads throughout the fall.  The picture above shows how depleted the kale was by the end of November. When things got busy prior to the Christmas holidays, I quit checking on the garden as often, but after the New Year, I went out one evening to see if  there was anything left to throw together a salad with and THIS is what I saw.......

Yes, this charlatan had been growing kohlrabi and calling it flat leaf kale!!!!!! I was stunned - could hardly believe my eyes! I wasn't even really sure what kohlrabi was. I had to look it up. Kohlrabi is a type of cabbage also know as a turnip cabbage or German turnip. You are suppose to slice the turnippy cabbage thing and saute' it. When I stop feeling embarrassed, I might try cooking them.

Charlatan #2: I have been determined to free range my chickens.  Every time I mentioned this to Kathy and Liz, my chicken mentors, they knitted their eyebrows together and looked extremely skeptical, but I was too foolish to pay heed. At the end of the growing season, I cleaned out the big garden leaving only some over grown zinnias for the hens to peck on. This is what it looked like before I released the chickens.

This is what it looked like after they had been free ranging for a few weeks!

There was nothing, and I mean nothing, left!! Their scratching had shot pine straw out all over everything; it looked like a bomb had gone off. And they had accomplished this while free ranging for only a couple of hours each afternoon!! 

Fred and Ethel didn't dig this hole, the chickens did!!! They were even digging up the dadgum drip lines!

Well, I gathered up leftover wire, netting, and anything else I could get my hands on and slapped together a makeshift fence to section off a chicken yard inside the garden.  I'd show you a picture of it, but it is too ugly to admit to. 

Love ya'll,

Shelli

The trouble with people is not that they don't know

 but that they know so much that ain't so.  

~Josh Billings

You can be sincere and still be stupid.  

~Charles F. Kettering

Light travels faster than sound. 

 That's why most people seem bright until you hear them speak. 

 ~Author Unknown