Pardon the Garden

Little Shed of Horrors

2011-05-14T23:52:00.002-05:00

I cleaned out our horrible mess of a shed today after three years of stuffing things in there haphazardly. Here's what it looked like when I started:

It was actually worse than this at one point, as we'd been keeping a bunch of firewood in the back, but we gave that to our neighbor for his woodstove because the termite inspectors told us we shouldn't be keeping wood in our wooden shed anyhow. Anyway, it took two full hours and I think I inhaled about a pound of dust. I have no idea how I ended up with so many flower pots. Or buckets. I also found a rabbit skeleton in there...what the hell, right? At first I thought, "This must've been in here from before we moved in," but then I realized it couldn't have been, because the shed was empty when we bought the house. So I guess it must've crawled in there (the rabbit, not the skeleton) last year when I was never in the shed because we didn't have a garden. I'm not sure how MB was able to get the mower in and out all summer without noticing the smell, but maybe it got in there in the fall? Who knows. Anyway, a little cool and a little weird, all at once. I don't have a photo of that because it's kind of all mummified and grody.

I do have clean shed photos, though, hooray!

I was hoping to start clearing out the garden but I ran out of time. It is in sad shape, alas:

Perhaps tomorrow I will start. At least there's a pretty good chance I won't find any skeletons in there, right?

Sprouts

2011-04-26T21:46:00.002-05:00

Well, hello! We're hoping to get our garden up and growing again this year. We have a LOT of work to do before we plant, unfortunately (or fortunately, I'm not sure yet). Birds have shredded the landscaping fabric I spent hours laying down, weeds have completely taken over the raised bed I built two years ago, and we're attempting to kill off a gigantic overgrown bush that was hogging one corner of the garden plot.

We've got big plans and big dreams this year, for the yard in general as well as the garden, and I hope to chronicle our adventures in this space once again. Welcome!

Fallow year

2010-05-19T23:22:00.001-05:00

With a new baby at home, we've decided not to plant a garden this year. I'm a bit bummed, but I think it's for the best. I may have some yard projects to blog about this summer / fall, and I hope to be back in the garden in Spring 2011.

xoxo ~vbg

Garden drive-by

2009-06-26T11:56:00.002-05:00

It's been terribly hot and even more humid for over a week now, with heat advisories and ozone warnings to go along, so the only thing I've been doing with the garden lately is going out to water it in the evening.

But I had a new tomato to plant, courtesy of my friend S, and it's been waiting on me since last Monday. After Indy's walk, the sun wasn't hitting the garden yet, so I figured I had about half an hour to work before things got unbearable.

The rest of the peppers are now caged:

Last year my pepper plants got really tall and leggy, and then blew over in a mid-summer thunderstorm. I'd like to avoid that this year!

First banana pepper:

The new tomato is planted:

It's either a peace vine cherry tomato or a pineapple tomato, which is described as a "large beefsteak style tomato sometimes weighing up to two pounds." Crazy!

And the cucumber gates are up:

Last year the cucumber plant spread out laterally and took over an entire corner of the garden. I'm hoping I'll be able to convince it to grow up instead of out this year. The gates are from a fence one of my coworkers tore down. Hooray for recycling!

Now, we wait and watch!

Weeks 5 & 6

2009-06-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

Cucumber:

Tomatoes:

Boxcar Willie
Amish Paste

Zucchini:

Peppers:

Raised bed:

Whole garden at week five:

Another morning in the garden

2009-06-12T11:08:00.000-05:00

I got a bag of strawberry plants from someone on Freecycle on Tuesday, and had plans to find an old wading pool or sandbox to use as a planter. But it was really hot Tuesday and Wednesday, and so by yesterday morning, the strawberries were looking pretty pathetic. So instead, they went into the herb annex that I built last month.

This is how it looked when I started. Weeds inside and out:

Bed plus one hundred pounds of topsoil, bought for $1.19 per forty-pound bag at Rural King:

Strawberries planted, plastic border and landscape fabric added to help keep the grass and weeds from coming back:

Christmas basil from J Dog, planted in the empty front corner of the pea / lettuce / onion bed:

Sunshade MacGyvered from the rainfly off of our old, busted tent. It worked really well, actually!

I also extended the newspaper and fabric cover out to the edge of the ~~herb~~ strawberry annex. Reclaiming a garden from grass is a bit of a constant, Sisyphean task, but we're plugging away.

Finally, some baby vegetables:

Week four

2009-06-08T22:31:00.000-05:00

Because gardens are paved with good intentions, I meant to get fences up for the peas to climb long before they started wrapping around each other, but never got around to it. MB and I both had the weekend off, so I enlisted his help on Saturday morning to instill some order in the raised bed.

Before: tangled and shamefully weedy

After: happily fenced and nicely (for now) weeded and mulched

Most of the plants are doing pretty well, though a few are still disconcertingly small. We now have one baby tomato and one baby zucchini!

Cucumber, strangely scrawny:

Tomatoes:
We put trellis-type cages around two on Saturday and I put a traditional cage around the third big one today. The trellis cages were a bit hard to put up, but I think the traditional cage was actually a bit harder. We'll see if the tomatoes do better in one vs. the other.
(No idea what's up with Mr. Runty there on the far right by the roll of wire.)

Zucchini:

Peppers:

Indy, keeping an eye on us from inside a nearby bush:

And look! The new hostas are huge:

Week three

2009-05-31T22:11:00.000-05:00

Cucumber:

Tomatoes:

Zucchini:

Peppers:

Raised bed (peas, lettuce, green onions):

Almost finished!

2009-05-15T23:19:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, I finished laying the landscaping fabric and enlisted MB's help in putting up the first part of the fencing. Last year the chicken wire did a good job keeping rabbits out of the vegetables, but I didn't want to have gaps between the real fence and the wire, because that's part of what led to our weed problems. I'm hoping that lining the chainlink fence with the chicken wire will do the trick.

The raised bed is kicking ass:

On Wednesday, I picked out the veggie plants.

Moonflower seeds from EvilDucky, soaking:

Yesterday the promised rain held off and I got the veggies in the ground. Because last year my zucchini plant fell victim to some kind of wasting phenomenon, possibly caused by a nematode in the soil, I figured I'd try keeping it out of the ground this time around. Luckily, I scored a giant planter on clearance at Lowe's for a dollar:

Since I'm basically making this up as I go along, I picked my veggies based mostly on their names. And let's be honest. Boxcar Willie? That is awesome. AWESOME.

I made a map of where everything is so that as the summer goes on and my memory utterly fails, I'll still be able to figure out what's what:

First week photos!

Cucumber, week 1:

Tomatoes, week 1:

Zucchini, week 1:

Peppers, week 1:

And while I was working, look who was chillin like a very dapper villain:

Now he's noticed that I've noticed him, and is studiously ignoring me because he knows I'm going to tell him to get off the table:

And finally, today I planted snapdragons and moss roses in the little bitty corner bed by the front gate:

And added an annex onto the raised bed for herbs:

A few more buckets of fill dirt, and it'll be ready.

What I did on Friday

2009-05-02T23:09:00.002-05:00

Someone on freecycle was giving away tansy starts, and since the mosquitoes are bad in our neighborhood and mosquitoes supposedly don't like tansy, I went to get some. I planted a bunch around the edges of the garden, which took a while but turned out pretty nice, I think. The plants look really pitiful because they were all naked in the sun for a few hours while I got the landscaping fabric rolled out. I'm hoping the rain we had today will perk them up:

The lady was super nice, and also gave me a big chunk of lemon balm, some lilies, some little bluebell-type flowers, and two yellow iris starts. Hot damn! I planted all that stuff in our front bed, which was mulched but otherwise untouched:

And some bonus pics. Morning glories from Danger & MacGyver, planted in the tiny corner bed by the front gate:

Huge mess of huge-ass bush pieces that I had to cut up:

Robins' nest on the carport gutter. It's cute, but I'm half afraid one of them will attack my head when I take out the trash or something. Gah.

Weekend warriors

2009-04-26T20:42:00.009-05:00

The city collected all the downed limbs from February's ice storm and turned them into woodchips. Then, rather than pay a disposal company to take the chips, somebody had the legitimately brilliant idea to just give them away to the public. And so, yesterday I went out to a big grassy lot with my dad and loaded up a full pickup load of free mulch. You cannot beat that.

We took the first load to my parents' house and then went back for another load for our house. Luckily the weather was really nice, warm and sunny but with a pretty steady wind to keep it from being overly hot. We used most of the second load to add a new, thick layer of mulch to the long-neglected landscaping around the front and side of the house:

I don't have a "before" picture, but everything looked about the same, except with more weeds and maple seedlings.

Indy inspects the pile of leftover mulch and
contemplates whether or not he should pee on it.

While Dad and I were finishing up with the mulch, MB and BoMB were out buying a little grill and supplies to have a cookout. Dad, Mom, my sister, and their dog joined us, and we had a really nice time. Now that we're finally getting our yard fixed up, I think we're going to end up having a lot more get-togethers out there.

Today, MB and I went out around 1:00 and picked up a load of really nice tile bricks from another freecycler, and then I worked in the garden. I had hoped to get the entire garden plot covered with newspaper and landscaping fabric, but it was hot and I was pretty tired from yesterday, and I had to scale back my ambitions. I really wanted to get a raised bed built for the seeds I'm going to attempt to grow, so that's what I spent the afternoon doing.

pile of fill dirt, courtesy of my cousin MacGyver
Bricks from a freecycle pickup a few months ago. And look! I'm using a level and a tape measure. That means bed building must be serious business.
getting there
inspection time!
Finally done!

I planted three rows of snap peas and two rows of lettuce, and also transferred my pitiful onion sprouts. Now if only I could have another weekend to recover from my weekend!

Operation Landscaping, part two of infinity

2009-04-16T22:12:00.012-05:00

EvilDucky snagged me a big chunk of hosta starts from one of her coworkers, and they've been sitting in a bucket in the kitchen ever since:

Today I finally had a day off with nice weather, so I wanted to get the hostas in the ground before they gave up and died. It's best to put the plants in after the landscaping fabric is down, so that meant I had to finish pulling the rocks and covering the beds.

It's sort of like performing surgery.
I couldn't find the trowel, so I improvised with a tiki torch stake and an old slotted spoon. It worked out surprisingly well.
Good God, he looks pathetic.

I spent the whole afternoon outside -- with the exception of the hour I used to take Indy to the vet for his yearly exam -- and it payed off big time. Just as the sun was setting, I got the last of the fabric pinned down and the last two hostas planted:

I didn't get rocks onto the last 12 feet of the bed, but it's supposed to be nice again tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I wish I had remembered to ask MB to take a picture of my rad and super classy wifebeater burn lines (hey, I'm a redhead. I don't tan.), cuz they are SEX-AY.

While we're here, let's do a seedling check. I wasn't very happy with the way the peat pots were working out. They didn't maintain moisture well at all, and the outsides of the pots were growing funky blue-green mold. The onion sprouts in the plastic cookie tub were doing much better than the ones in the peat pots, go figure. I pulled the seedlings out of the peat pots and replanted them in two windowbox planters that I already had, but didn't really expect them to survive the transplant.

They are still alive, though they still look pretty spindly:

Not very many basil and catnip sprouts came up, but the ones that did are doing really well:

I'm starting to get impatient for the start of the real garden, too. The weather has been going back and forth from nice to chilly, but I'm hoping it'll settle in soon. I'm anxious to get the veggies growing!

Obamas to Plant Vegetable Garden at White House

2009-04-16T16:26:00.003-05:00

Click here to read the NYT article :)

Operation Landscaping, part one of infinity

2009-04-03T11:43:00.003-05:00

Last April, I spent a day working on the beds that line our side yard sidewalk, and Indy & I planted some hostas in May. Four of the five hostas came back this year (hooray!), but they weren't alone. This may come as a surprise to exactly no one, but it turns out that newspapers alone are not enough to hold weeds at bay, even with rocks on top.

Since we're completely redoing the vegetable garden anyway, I decided to re-use the landscaping fabric from the veggie patch as liner for the sidewalk beds. Since I never did anything with the long thin bed across from the hostas last year, I decided to start there first.

Indy says, "This is going to take a while."
(That tiny thing down at the end is a milk crate. Hold me.)

Section one. Relatively easy since I had removed most of the rocks from this corner last year. After this it got a little harder. Whoever originally landscaped the beds put down fabric under the rocks, but it has been so long since that was done that fully developed soil with worms and everything has covered the fabric and the lower layers of stones. And thus, before putting down newspapers and fabric, I have to dig out all the rocks and pull out the weeds.

It's not unpleasant work, especially on a really nice Spring day (which yesterday was), but it sure is time-consuming. Indy and I worked from 8:30 to 12:30 and then from 1:30 to 2:30, and this is as far as we got. We would have kept going, but it started to rain.

Here's what we have left to do on the right side, before we even get to the hosta beds:

I can honestly say I now fully understand why wealthy people hire landscapers and gardeners.

It's supposed to be pretty out this afternoon, so we're going to head out and try to make some more progress. Indy is currently napping, to save his strength for the rigors of supervising me.

Update

We went back out after lunch today and got another 6-foot section finished. We're now exactly halfway done, even though the photo doesn't show it very well.

I also found out today that EvilDucky has scored some more hostas from her coworker, so at some point, we'll plant those to prettify the now-empty side.

"Thanks for reading!"

Transfiguration

2009-03-19T22:14:00.000-05:00

Nine days later

2009-03-11T23:10:00.000-05:00

Look, sprouts!

Also, first signs of Spring, thanks to lovely weather for the four days preceding this one:

Of course, it was cold and windy today, so everything looked like it rather regretted coming out to play.

And some milkweed pods / seed fluff:

The messy garden workout plan

2009-03-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

I am not the world's most dedicated gardener, something I will freely admit. I like to pretend I'm taking a laissez-faire approach, but in my case it's no coincidence that laissez sounds an awful lot like lazy. Once the plants are in the ground, I'm happy to water them and pick the vegetables / fruits, but I'd rather not prune and I don't want to weed. I once made smart-ass remarks about the concept of mulching a vegetable patch. My parents certainly never mulched theirs, I scoffed. Then I attempted to turn an established plot of Bermuda grass into a garden. I let things ride for two months before conceding defeat and rolling out the landscaping fabric.

By the end of the summer, I was just about gardened out. It was ridiculously hot, it was humid, and the mosquitoes were so bad that I once came in from a fifteen-minute picking session with so many bites on my legs that it looked like I had chicken pox. I love having fresh veggies, but there are only so many times I want to risk getting West Nile virus just so I can have some cucumber on my salad, you know? By mid-August, the garden was pretty much left to its own devices. I kept meaning to go out and at least take down the fence and put the (woefully inadequate) tomato cages away, but I never did. And so, the garden stayed intact, through the fall and winter.

I've had garden fever for weeks, and this past Friday it was finally nice enough for me to get outside and assess the situation. Things were pretty bleak, to tell the truth. All the dead, crispy plants were still standing, the fence was half-collapsed, the whole mess was surrounded by dead foot-high grass where MB wasn't able to get the mower into the gaps last year, and to top it all off, my darling husband had thrown a bunch of cut branches from the giant, annoying, SPIKE-COVERED bush into the garden area. THANKS, HONEY.

I spent about an hour and a half out there, and easily half that time was spent cutting up the small-tree-sized branches and stuffing them into a garbage can. If I never see another razor-sharp holly leaf again, I'll be a happy, happy girl. And let's not talk about the bush with the half-inch fucking thorns on it, okay? Okay. Tearing down the dead tomato and pepper plants was surprisingly easy, and the cages seem to have made it through the winter in pretty good shape.

Indy inspects the scene
neat-looking tomato skin
As seems to often be the case with me, there were no cute gardening moments, nothing you'd see in a glossy magazine spread. Instead, there was a lot of thanking my lucky stars that none of the neighbors could see me as I rolled up the chicken wire, spending most of my time bent double with the already-rolled portion pinned in a very ladylike fashion between my thighs, one arm, and my boobs while I used my free hand to untangle the next several feet of fence. It probably looked just about as sexy as it sounds. It was a hella workout, though. My forearms (inside and out), abs, and trapezius muscles were killing me all day on Saturday. And hey, I got a lot done!

All I've got left to do is roll up the rabbit fencing and cut the grass, and then I'll be ready to launch Garden v2.0. Oh, and annoying thorny bush? I am coming for you next. You're on notice.

the gardening assistant, working hard
(P.S. When I checked on my onion starts yesterday, two pots each had two tiny sprouts. Huzzah!)

And, we're back.

2009-03-01T20:51:00.002-06:00

Recent planting prep blog entries from Meg and J-Dog have made me itchy for garden season. I also realized that the onion seeds I bought to grow for MB probably needed to be planted right away.

Historically, I am not very good at growing things from seeds, so we'll see how it goes.

I got seed start planting mix and plantable peat pots. It took about half of the planting mix to fill all the pots, and getting them "thoroughly wet" turned out to be a bit of a pain. The soil particles just encapsulated the water and it sort of floated around instead of soaking through. I finally just dunked each pot into a pitcher full of water until the soil started to float, and then planted the seeds.

The pot packaging said to put two seeds in each one, but the onion seeds were tiny and many in number. Even putting a pinch of seeds into two holes in each pot, I only used half the packet. I didn't want to spend money on more peat pots without knowing if they're even going to work, so I planted the rest of the seeds in a plastic cookie tub that I had lying around.

I also planted the basil and catnip seeds from J-Dog's Christmas gifts, and put everybody in front of the South-facing window in our guest room:

And now, I suppose we wait.

(And tomato people...are these trellises good for tomatoes, or should I stick to a traditional tall, round wire cage?)

The garden in winter

2009-02-28T18:00:00.003-06:00

Looking rather bleak after January's big winter storm.

It's a jungle out there

2008-07-13T20:27:00.008-05:00

Remember when my tomato plants were teeny?

Or even two weeks ago, when they were large but not ridiculous?

Check them out now:

From the front of the garden, the tomato cages are barely visible beneath the sprawling plants. I knew that tomato plants are actually vines, and that they'd behave like vines given the chance. I didn't realize that the smallish cages I borrowed (about three feet tall) would be way too short. Apparently, caged tomatoes can grow up to six feet tall. (Another site I looked at said tomato plants can get to be ten feet tall. TEN FEET.)

The tomato plants looked sort of pitiful, all slumped over the sides of their cages. I used yarn to tie some of the longer vines back up and anchor them to the fence posts, but I'm not sure how much good it will do. Next year I'm definitely going to buy some much taller cages, and possibly a stepladder for harvest time.

And while we're talking about vines, let's check in with the cucumber plant. Remember this cute little sprout?

I have decided it shall henceforth be known as the cukudzu, because it is trying to take over the world:

Note how cukudzu is climbing the garden fencepost, seeking new territory to conquer:

The tomatoes are in on the plot as well. I caught one of the Big Boys trying to link tendrils with the cukudzu across the top of a hapless, vineless bell pepper plant:

The day I went out to tie back the tomato vines, I checked the cukudzu for baby cucumbers, since it hadn't produced any yet. I lifted a few leaves and came face to face with a small baby rabbit. Hee! So cute! I thought, and let the leaves drop back to cover him. As I turned away to head for the tomatoes, I suddenly realized what I'd seen and did a total cartoon character double-take. I went back over to the cukudzu, lifted the leaves, and said to the rabbit, "Wait a minute, how did you get in here?"

The rabbit spent the next ten minutes dashing from hiding place to hiding place among the squash leaves, with intermittent sprints that always ended with him hitting the chicken wire / "rabbit proof" fencing head-on and rebounding. He finally escaped by taking a flying leap THROUGH one of the holes in the rabbit fence, which should apparently be called Big Rabbit Prevention Fencing (Don't Ask About the Baby Ones).

He's so cute, I almost wouldn't mind sharing. Almost.

Transformation

2008-07-09T20:11:00.000-05:00

I actually made three loaves from one of the zucchinis and gave the other one to Evilducky. I figured I didn't need SIX loaves of zucchini bread hanging around the kitchen and tempting me with their yummy, yummy goodness. This was my first time ever making bread (lame, I know), but it was pretty simple. I used the recipe from our Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and it turned out pretty damn tasty, both with and without nuts.

still growing!

2008-07-04T15:33:00.001-05:00

The newspapers that I put down in the garden last month didn't do a bad job. The paper held up really well against the weeds and grass, but where there were seams between pages, the grass was finding a way through. It was also sprouting up around the sticks that I used as stakes. The papers had to be wetted down every day so they wouldn't start to blow around in the wind, so after about two weeks I decided that the maintenance was just going to be too much and bought a roll of landscaping fabric.

It was pretty nice outside when I started the project. Most of the garden was in the shade, and it wasn't too hot. Since Bermuda grass is so tenacious, I figured it would be best to finish covering the garden with newspaper, and then lay the landscape fabric on top. I've heard that grass can get through landscaping fabric, and I didn't want to take any chances.

So far, so good! Of course, I haven't had to do much yet. I just laid another row of newspapers down along the beta test row and pulled out all the sticks, and then rolled out and anchored down the fabric. Cake!

Then the sun started beating down on me, and I had to hoe out weeds and grass that was rooted at least 6 inches deep, and I hit the fence with the hoe about 45 times and snapped one of the fence posts. Easy? No. Vocabulary enhancing? Yes.

This is the point at which I almost quit. I was hot and sticky and pissy and just about done with caring about weeds. I knew I'd really regret having to come back out the next morning, though, so I sucked it up and kept going.

Finally done! Woohoo!

The zucchini plant had started flowering that week, too, which was nice:

Week Six:

Fabric holding strong so far!

First harvest:

(It's not much, but we were pleased.)

Week Seven:

(I put up chicken wire across the middle of the patch in an attempt to keep Cucumberzilla from overtaking the pepper plants.)

"Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy." -- Astrid Alauda

2008-06-20T23:10:00.009-05:00

Beefmaster tomato plants, week 4

cucumber plant, week 4

And just the other day I was giving Sara a hard time because she had baby tomatoes and I didn't. Now I have some, too! (Well, two.)

Okay, garden people. How will I know when this guy is ready to be picked?

The ginormous cucumber plant is flowering!

huge (and pretty) zucchini leaf

keeping an eye on things, as always

This is either madness or brilliance

2008-06-07T23:36:00.001-05:00

The garden seems to be doing pretty well, other than the ridiculously persistent Bermuda grass that just keeps coming back. I chopped a bunch of it out with a hoe last week:

It was ridiculously hot, hard work (for me, anyway), and a week later, you couldn't even tell that I'd done anything.

I really don't have the time or the inclination to hoe out the garden every few days, but if I don't do something, the grass is going to take over and choke out my vegetables.

I read somewhere online that a good trick for keeping the grass from coming back after the winter is to cover the garden plot with newspaper and wet it down every day until it freezes over. I figured it was worth a try as mulch for the time being, too. I have no idea if there's any chance of it working. I'm either going to save myself a lot of work down the line, or I wasted half a day staking newspapers to the ground with sticks.

Since we're still beta testing, I only did a strip along the front. We'll see how it goes!

cucumber & zucchini, week 2
zucchini, week 3

bell pepper, week 2
row of peppers, week 3

Big Boy tomato plant, week 3
Beefmaster tomato, week 3
row of tomato plants, week 3

baby pepper!

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." -- Margaret Atwood

2008-05-26T14:06:00.004-05:00

We intended to plant our garden on Mother's Day, but the weather was cold and nasty and we had to wait. Yesterday, MB spent the day with his parents to celebrate his dad's birthday. Meanwhile, my dad and my sister--newly returned from a semester abroad in Ireland--helped me get the garden started.

Armed with rakes and a hoe and a lovely short handled spade, we put in four tomato plants (two Big Boy and two hilariously-named Beefmaster); bell peppers in red, green, and yellow; a cucumber plant; and a zucchini plant. It's not much, but I figure it's best to start small since we're not exactly sure we know what we're doing.

Although he wasn't allowed inside the garden itself, Indy provided supervision from his cave behind the bushes:

He definitely looked like he was up to something back there.

Lowe's was sold out of rabbit fencing and even though all three employees we talked to claimed they had it, Rural King only sold "poultry netting," which I guess is what they call chicken wire now, to avoid offending the turkeys. They can call it whatever they want, as long as it keep the rabbits from snarfing down all my baby vegetable plants.

zucchini

cucumber

bell peppers

Both You Grow Girl and Lasagna Gardening recommended using cut-off jugs to provide a more continuous water source to thirsty plants like peppers and tomatoes:

baby tomato plant

holly jolly

2008-05-04T21:05:00.003-05:00

We have a beautiful holly tree in the backyard, which the utility company has told us they'll have to trim out of the reach of the power lines. We tried getting a quote from a reputable tree trimming company, since the crews the power company uses are notorious for hacking the tops off with little regard for the health or stability of the tree. I had a guy come look at the tree, and he gave me a quote for trimming it back, but then said that in his professional opinion, we'd be better off just letting the power company top the tree and then getting the rest removed, because we'd just end up paying to have it pruned year after year. We decided to just let things be and see what would happen, and just enjoy the tree in the meantime.

There are, of course, holly leaves ALL OVER the ground around the tree. I wasn't too worried about it until the day that I noticed Indy doing a hot coals dance any time he had to go over there to fetch his ball. He'd sprint over to the tree, stop a few feet short, and hesitate for a few seconds before carefully picking his way over to the ball and then high-stepping his way back to the safety of the grass. I promised him I'd rake up the sharp pointy leaves so he could frolic safely, so I picked up a rake at Walhell one night. Last Thursday, I had a day off so I kept my promise.

These two huge piles are in addition to what I'd scooped up Wednesday evening:

I was almost done raking them all together when the rake fell apart.

And the cat laughed, a lot:

I guess that's what I get for buying a $4 rake at Walmart. I think I can fix it, but at the time I didn't realize that so I was a bit pissy.

After I finished scraping the leaves into smaller and smaller piles and stuffing them into the trashcan and a big moving box we had in the shed, it was time to plant some of the hostas that I got from one of Evilducky's coworkers. With the help of my faithful gardening assistant, of course:

You know, it might've been a good idea to plant these the same day I cleaned up the beds and before I put the newspapers down.

The soil in the beds is pretty much all clay, so after the first plant, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to give the rest of them a little help.

Ooh, yummy.

Much better!

"What, this mat? You weren't using it, were you?"

Now what am I supposed to do with a giant bucket of clay?

I guess I could make little animals and sell them on Etsy.

"Do whatever you want. I'm tired from all that work."

Nice job, Indy. Nice job.

no (day of) rest for the wicked

2008-04-27T22:28:00.000-05:00

We aren't quite to the point of actual gardening yet, but we spent all day in the yard today. MB and my cousin MacGyver cleaned out the gutters, put on gutter screening, and cleaned out some disgusting, disgusting clogged downspouts.

While they worked on the gutter project, Indiana and I tackled the beds along the sideyard sidewalk. The people who lived here before us edged the sidewalk with brick and then filled in with rocks, which is a fabulous alternative to having to edge and mow grass in narrow spaces. Unfortunately, weeds were starting to make it out past the rocks, and it was only going to get worse. I've read several different times that newspaper makes a good weed barrier under mulch, so I figured I'd pull all the rocks out, dig up the weeds, lay down newspaper, and then replace the rocks. Of course, writing it out like that makes it sound easier and less tedious than it truly was, but we made it through.

I don't have a "before" picture, because I was positive I'd already taken one and didn't bother to take another. In this photo of Indy supervising, you can see the worst patch of weeds, though:

Step 1:  Weeds! Wah!

Steps 2 & 3:  Move rocks aside, dig up weeds:

Steps 4 & 5:  Lay newspaper, replace rocks:

Someone has to hold down the rocks in case of a strong wind:

Keep repeating the process:

Finally, nearly an entire day later, enjoy the results:

Here's what Kitters was doing while we were slaving away:

I have to admit, he seems to be onto something.

Planting a seed

2008-04-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

I grew up in the city, but my parents had a pretty respectable vegetable garden in their large backyard. There's a photo in the family album of me at about 12 months old, a blue plastic hoe in my hands, "helping" my dad get the garden ready for planting. I don't know what they grew in those early days, but by the time I was in elementary school, they planted corn, green beans, and tomatoes. They experimented with other crops, to varying degrees of success. One year, Mom planted a small watermelon patch, and by the end of the summer the things were plotting world domination. Potatoes always seemed to go in too late and come out too early, never getting much large than seed potato size. The yard had be leveled with fill from a dump, so it was full of rocks. When my cousins and I complained that we were bored, my mom would offer us a quarter for every gallon ice cream bucket we filled with rocks from the garden. Suprisingly, all kind of interesting pursuits always came to mind before the bucket was full. I don't honestly know if we ever earned a single quarter.

My mother babysat a girl who was a year younger than me. Her father lived out in the country and kept apple trees. He invited us to collect apples, and so we did. My mom canned jar after jar of apple sauce, some with cinnamon turning the sauce pink. I think the same guy gave my mom a few raspberry and blackberry canes one spring. She planted them in a small plot by the fence, and while the raspberries quickly gave up the ghost, the tame blackberries thrived. They were moved to the back corner of the garden the following spring, and in years to come grew into a thicket four or five feet deep and ten or twelve feet wide. Mom collected the berries all summer, freezing them in buckets and ziploc bags. When berry season was over, she ran all the berries through her food strainer again and again until all the juice and pulp had been extracted. Then she made dozens of jars of blackberry jam. I never learned to like raw blackberries (too many seeds) but I still love blackberry jam. Just writing this down has awakened scent memories long forgotten--the smell of the crushed fruit, of the strained-out seeds, the aroma of the juice and pulp cooking on the stove.

Tomatoes also went through the strainer, and Mom canned tomato juice to use as a base for soup and cooking meat through the year. Ears of corn were sealed in ziplocs, either on the cob or just the sliced-off kernels. Green beans were soaked in the sink, snapped into manageable pieces, and sealed in Ball jars. I can still call up the sound of snapping beans and the way I'd see a sink full of beans behind my eyelids when I went to bed after a long bean snapping stint. I always knew that when I had a yard of my own, I'd have a garden, too.

When we moved into our last apartment, I was initially excited about the tiny yardlet in back, and succumbed to visions of a tiny vegetable patch. But then the reality of neighbors throwing cigarettes and trash over the balcony upstairs, the lack of an outdoor faucet, and the yard man's slash and burn style of lawn grooming all came together and showed me reality. I amassed a pretty huge collection of houseplants, but never put anything much in the ground. Then we found this house, and I knew immediately where I'd put the vegetable patch if we managed to buy the place. Once our offer was accepted and we set a closing date, MB and I started talking about what we'd plant in our garden, how we'd fence it off from the dog we wanted to get. It won't ever be the huge corn / bean / tomato / blackberry extravaganza that my parents pulled off year after year, but I think it'll be pretty fabulous anyway. And since we've never done this before, I'm sure there will be lots of ridiculous missteps, too. I started this blog to document our gardening journey, but I'll still be blogging regular non-gardeny things over at Pardon the Egg Salad.

Happy Spring, everyone!

the garden in its native state