Do you see it? No?
How about now?
Not anymore. “Tomato? Mmmm…I like tomatoes. I’m chewing. All gone.”
This little plant hitched a ride a long way. From kitchen to compost. Compost to garden bed. Garden bed to front bed in the soil surrounding a (still unhappy) rosemary plant. It grew. And grew. Dodging lawnmower blades and only getting misty watering twice a week, it grew.
Perhaps next year I’ll plant an intentional tomato there.
I’d thought we were done with spring. Weeks hitting 80 and nights no longer cooling. Broccoli bolting and tomatoes past ready.
This week cooled again. Highs in the 60s, lows in the 40s, and everyone out soaking in the final days before the heat truly takes hold.
Each evening I’d lay on a blanket ten feet from the back door while DH or his amazing mother made dinner. Our daughter would ask me to find bugs, so we’d peer through the grass for ants and pill bugs (or rollie pollies, or as she calls them “doodle buhgs.”)
Today marks the last day of bed rest. She and I are outside examining pebbles and spilling water bottles. DH is planting tomatoes (24 transplants this year, and 14 of them kept their labels!)
“The volunteer dill is doing its job,” he announces. He comes over to help me up and the nearly-four of us trek to the dill. Sure enough.
Hello there, handsome.
It’s been raining for days. Thunder in the night that gasps me awake if I’m lucky enough to be asleep. Storms that water fond memories of childhood sleep undisturbed by earthquakes and dynamite.
The earth, parched in winter as it often is here, gulps down each cloudfull before the bursting winds carry off the empty buckets above and usher in the next round.
I stole a few soaked moments this morning while my coffee steeped to puncture holes in the bottom of the tomato cups and rescue the pepper pots from the overflowing trays.
The drops paused long enough this evening for a few fleeting shots of the drenched promises of future garden spoils.
Here’s hoping for perfect shoveling weather coming soon, as a “biiiiiiig druck” (we have quite the budding machinery expert in the house) will be dropping four yards of compost tomorrow for my most lovely partner in life to dole out to the remaining empty beds.
Not literally, but they are late. I sowed the tomatoes a month ago and ran out of steam/time/hands. “Next weekend,” I promised. It passed. “Next weekend,” I repeated. Again, it passed. A month late now, but they’re sown and heated and moist. Bells and jalapenos, fish and five color, poblano and (if I can find my seeds) gypsies.
The tomatoes are already looking to move. The strawberries, too. I think it’s time to buckle down and build a second grow light.
And sow some peas! I’m ever so excited. I missed the fall window so we haven’t had garden snacks (aka peas) in ages.
Speaking of changing lodging, I do believe the paper whites are moving off of the kitchen window sill and into the out of doors. The neighbors’ bedded ones seemed much happier than mine.
The fire’s been burning for days now. There’s something primordial about a fire. There are few things that can cause a group of people to just sit in silence and stare. A fire is one of those (a newborn baby is often another.) Yesterday, I really was able to scratch the itch of generations by having bread rising on the hearth while planning the spring garden. In short order, there were fresh hoagies to polish off the last of the Christmas prime rib complete with sauteed peppers and shredded cheese.
Not these Christmas-lights-looking peppers, but close.
I was mistaken about the last of the tomatoes. I picked a few more yesterday, although they were not immediately gobbled up. So in an odd turn of events (like sowing next year’s exactly when I’d planned to) and weather (the lightest of freezes only days ago) the tomatoes of 2015 have gone full circle and this house shan’t be without a tomato plant even in the depths of winter…provided the seeds sprout.
I do hope to keep track of the labels from sowing to potting up to planting out this year. It’s my goal every year, and so far I haven’t done it quite as I’d like and tend to only hazard guesses as to which varieties of what end up where.
Speaking of plans, my first attempt at paperwhites (thanks to Stacey for the idea!) didn’t quite make it for Christmas blossoms.
But this cold cloudy weather has the bulbs planning their own New Year’s Celebration.
The lemon basil is officially a weed, and officially the most stalwart garden companion I’ve ever had. Summer drought and triple digits? Sounds good. Frost and short days? Ok, sure. Floods and wind and hail? Why not…
The lettuce is trying…we’ll see how it goes.
The citrus is happy, but nap time is ending and that’s all for now. Happy New Year!
Sometimes I have a day. As everyone does, somedays. Today was one of those days. And on those days, whether or not the weather is game, a good sweat with a shovel solves most things.
With the sweat and the shovel off limits a few months yet, I took to the fingertips. One fresh, soft, new tuft of grass at a time. Into the bucket with you! With you, and also with you. And the calm came and the methodical was found and all was well again soon enough.
I fill the feeder and they come. They drain and abandon. I fill the feeder and they come. They drain and abandon. The finches and swallows, scissortails and sparrows, they give way. The doves and grackels have claimed their turf. I stop filling the feeder.
The tomatoes are in the shade. Did the china berry grow since last summer? I doubt by that much. My garden layout made it to Plan G before being constructed, and ended at Plan P by the time I finished building. I may’ve encroached on the shade a bit much. Everyone on the west side is a tinge yellow.
I grew peas this year. I wanted my daughter to have fresh garden peas. Yesterday, she ate fresh garden peas, straight from the pod held in my hands. A moment in time where the time spent away with the soil allowed the soil to grow the food to feed the time spent together. I didn’t even think they tasted that great having already baked through many a day near 90 degrees. She devoured them one by one. As did a caterpillar who had burrowed its way down into a pod and was happily munching through each pea toward the bottom. I let it be.
A tomato appeared at a sprint. Only flowers swearingly yesterday and today a large gum ball grown at an odd angle. As though one side pinched shut while the other ballooned. I lost the labeling system after the final transplant thanks to all of the rain we’ve been having (I never did make it back out with a pencil to rewrite the pen notations.)
Trees are trying for it seemingly everywhere. In the self-re-seeded celusia. In the lavender. In the lime. As much as I like trees and as much as some places need so many more of them, I have quite enough right here. I cannot help but pot up some of the more impetuous specimens. Would you like a baby bur oak? Or perhaps a pecan? I have extra.
The sweet potatoes are impatient months into their stint in the burlap sack. They were promised parole in April. “It’s May, you know,” they say. I dug a bed for them. Grass begone! Organic matter mixed in to lighten the clay. Oh, there’s a rock. Let’s pry that out of there…oh! there’s another rock. And another. Pry pry pry. And…that’s a pipe. Here’s a car, and a hardware store, and some couplings, and here’s a hole in the ground. It’s almost dark. I eyeball. I dry fit. It’s beautiful. I prime. It dries. I cement and connect and cement and connect. Cement and connect and cement and – snap! That’s another pipe. That was Sunday three weeks ago. Last Sunday I attempted the second fix. Cut too long…adjusted too short. Tried anyway. It leaks. There’s still a hole in the ground.
Saturday I could hardly believe my luck. Again? Weather and kiddo and energy and cough? Glorious. I’m not sure I’ve ever more enjoyed pulling thistle (and henbit and dandelion.)
Besides, it gave me the good fortune to witness the opening of these…wild crocuses? I do have some Prairie Crocus here and there, but the centers of these little wildlings look different (more like a cone), as do the leaves. Any ideas?
I also managed to sneak in some seed sowing (even if I had to keep my phone on me for a little work wrangling.)
In case you couldn’t tell, I’ve never been one to invest in actual labels. I’m not sure why. Instead, I tend toward taking pictures of what went where and the metadata of the photo captures the day and time for me automatically. Perhaps I’ll treat myself to labels soon enough. (I did receive some lovely ones as a gift this year, so it really is only about actually using them at this point…brains are silly things.)
And just as I was about to sow something on the heads of where I’d planted the potatoes because they were obviously not doing anything themselves…
I took a closer look.
Now if only the peas I planted in their midst would sprout…
Tomorrow will mark nine months in our new home. I thought it may be time to introduce myself to the soil. Yes, really, it has taken this long. But by “I thought it may be time” what I really meant was that work, the weather, the kiddo, my Daycare Immune System Marathon, and my energy levels all conspired to give me a gift – opportunity.
So Friday afternoon, amidst sunshine and high 50s, I took the shovel, the dog, and the wheelbarrow into the front yard. The Great Grass Removal was underway. The soil here seems lovely. Dark, rich, and crumbly. When I first got to know the soil at our last house, in 100 square feet of triple dug (go big or go home?) earth, I found precisely two earth worms amidst soil that refused to release the roots within it. Here I find fat happy worms two to the shovelful and the soil goes with the flow, shaking off into the air with the bang of each grass clump against the shovel. Forget a front heat bed repeat, I could plant tomatoes right alongside the curb! (And just might, seeing as I have thirty of them…)
The first wheelbarrow was nearly full, my ankle was reminding me that this was my first real shovel work since its last injury, and then the dog perked up his head and started sauntering down the walk. I looked up and saw he was shyly wagging his way to meet the neighbor two houses down, so I followed. Our dog minds well on good days, minds with mediocrity on some days, and gets a mind of his own on occasion. He’s eighty-five pounds of strong sweetheart but has his triggers after he was attached two years ago, so we never lack for caution. An hour later, he and I both felt as though we had made a new friend and the sun was slipping. It was going to drop into the 20s again soon, so I cleaned up, packed up, and we went went back inside to check on my little tomatoes, now in their 4″ pots of garden soil, seed starter, and coir.
plumdirt 