Garden 2013

It is that time of year again! The garden went down a couple weeks ago (except the peppers; more on that later) and it seems to be doing pretty well despite a few factors working against it.

Number one being the motherfucking wind that’s been blowing through here LITERALLY since I put the tomatoes in the ground. It was touch and go for awhile there, but minus one or two tomatoes that, while still kicking, are looking pretty dire, most are growing and doing well.

Elizabeth always says she’s the best person to know in March, when she starts slanging tomatoes and I must agree, except to say that she’s the best person to know always. (But in March is pretty cool too.) Now that the tomatoes are starting to grow and not looking all leaned over and yellow and sad, I’m feeling pretty good about them.

Number two is the fact that the front garden has always been a bit of a problem child. I think we rushed to put in it right after LG was born and it’s just been floody and uneven since then. There’s grass starting to grow on the left side there, which: ARGH. But this year I decided to just make the far left side my compost area (as you can see, there are bits of coffee filters and lemon rinds and onion peels, yum), so that area can be as fucked as it wants and whatever. COMPOST AWAY.

On the right side of the front garden, where things actually grew last year, I planted one of each kind of squash and two hills of cucumbers and then planted a few more off all those things elsewhere in the front garden because I figured, who knows, maybe something will grow. (As a secondary precaution, I also planted some zucchini in that planter on the rocks, because the fact that I grew no summer squash last year seriously harshed my mellow.)

And that is pretty much all I planted! I am loosely following a northern California gardening guide the SacBee printed back in January and it says to plant peppers in May, so I shall wait until May for that. The peppers will go in front of the tomatoes in the back garden. I hope placing them in front helps them do better than last year, where they were hidden from the sun by huge tomato plants at the beginning of the day and the shadow of the house at the end of the day.

This is the year I decided to stop trying to make fetch happen and so I am only growing things I know I am good at growing. Simple simple. (Oh, I did plant eight potato eyes over in the back garden on the front right side, so I may end up with eight potatoes and I may not, but meanwhile, they’re not taking up a ton of real estate.)

While I know what kind of vegetables I am good at growing, flowers are a whole different beast. This is the year I’ve vowed not to buy any flowers from the grocery story and just clip flowers from the yard. I have three rose bushes I planted a few years ago and they do pretty well and then this random rose bush that we did not plant, nor know about, started going crazy on the side of the house, so I’ve been clipping some pretty flowers from it.

As for these purple and white and yellow things, I’ve always considered them like weeds because they’ve grown abundantly at every house I’ve lived, but I never cared much about them. I clipped some before they bloomed and put them in my room and the next day they were open and cheery and nice, so I decided I do like these weed flowers. (It may be a very nice plant, I don’t know.)

I also have a gardenia plant (sadly being suffocated by one of these weeds, what to do what to do) and I am making it my mission to nurture the shit out of that one because gardenia is my absolute most favorite scent ever.

So that is where we are with the garden. I shall report back as things start to bloom and grow and meanwhile, if you can tell me about the weed plant and also how to talk to a gardenia to make it grow big and huge and glorious, please let me know.