My current arch-nemisis

They look all sweet and sunny here but really they're more like this:



And THIS nasty little thing....



They follow close behind.

The price one pays for organic lawn care?

Tendonitis.

Not adding to the 6-legged frog population:

Priceless.

Here's what we did this weekend.

One of my gardening/green goals for 2008 was to landscape the front yard. This project had been in the "thinking-it-out" phase for a LONG time. We started digging last weekend but got cut off by a good amount of rain. This weekend was warm and sunny -- fortuitous for finishing the project.

I should say, the major framework of the project is done. The actually planting won't be done for a while.....or maybe never! That's one of the joys of gardening. It can always be a work in progress.

So, with a minimum (well, actually moderate) amount of bickering over how to do it, what the other one actually meant, how long to keep working, etc., we got it done.












That really, really awesome, Southwestern-looking tree on the right is a False Cypress Pom Pom tree. Coolest tree EVER. It looks kinda like this





but bigger and thicker.




The tree on the left is a Snow Fountains Weeping Cherry. It's supposed to bloom with white flowers in the spring.



Is that not beautiful?!




So ONO and I are standing around admiring our handiwork and he turns to me and says:

"It's June 1 and this project is done. What are you gonna have me do all summer?"

Look what "sprung up" in the garden last week

I was checking on the nascent strawberries, hoping to find at least ONE red, ripe juicy one, but I found this instead:




Thinking a bird had made a nest in my garden, I started angrily yanking all the soft stuff away. But it wasn't a bird's nest. Can you tell what those are?





Let's all give a collective "Awwwww" for the cute little, baby bunnies.


Once their eyes were open I evicted them. I'm not in the 24 hour, all-you-can-eat, bunny buffet business.

First Fruits

I love, Love, LOVE this time of year!

In the not-so-cold ground

So my experiment with the milk jugs didn't work. They kept blowing over in the windy-ness of March and they didn't stay moist and warm enough for the seeds to sprout. Next time I'll remember to weight the bottoms and make sure I have all the lids for each container.

I would have re-planted long before now except that for the last week the weather was entirely uncooperative. Thankfully, today Mother Nature gave us a nearly cloudless day with temps in the 60s. All I can say lady, is.....IT'S ABOUT TIME!

We got a bag of mushroom mulch from our fave nursery and I "worked the soil." As always, there was a lot of "help," mostly in the way of finding big, fat juicy worms and telling me where I should put them. No, not in that sense -- Brennan just has a strong sense of where things should go ("Back in the garden, Mommy! Not in the compost bin!") This one apple sure didn't fall far from the tree!

Here's what should be poking their cute little heads up above ground in 7 - 10 days:

Sugar Peas



Spinach



Red Russian Kale


Radishes (one of ONO's favorite)


chamomile (I had no idea it was such a pretty flower. Gravy!!)


basil


cilantro

[If you're not a gardener, these probably all look like the same green stuff. Sorry to bore you.]

I'm a little disappointed that things didn't work out as planned, but even with this "traditional" planting we should be feasting on our own tasty, organic produce by late May to early June. Delish!

Celebrating resurrection

It was fitting that we planted seeds today, it being the first day of Spring. And the sun was shining, which truly seemed miraculous. It's been a long, LONG, winter.



















I had lots of help, which I'm actually quite grateful for. I'm always wondering which kid (or kids) will carry on the green thumb gene.

Here's the finished product:



And this, my friends, is what gardeners live for.....



the miracle and mystery of rebirth.

Looking into the future Part 3

This is the last installment of my planned 2008 "resolutions" posts. Yeah, yeah, I know it's March. But my heart just hasn't been in it, because this is a list mainly about gardening, which I equate with being outside, sunshine and warmth.

During winter I TRY to remind myself that the plants are hibernating and that humans can sort of hibernate too -- slow down, pull in, look inside, plan and become expectant for the coming growing season. Some days it works, some days it doesn't.

But now it's March and I'm starting to "wake up." My thoughts have turned to the coming growing season and how to improve and increase my "greenness." Here's what I've come up with:

1. Find a way to capture and store rain water for watering without selling a child to pay for it. (Hmmm...wait a minute...)

2. Find a better way to get the compost-able food scraps from the kitchen to the composter. (caption reads: "All I know I learned in the compost heap.")
Last year the fruit flies were horrible, not to mention the smell.

3. Plant a tree in the back yard near our air conditioner compressor. I hear, from the Arbor Day Foundation, that doing so increases the cooling efficiency as much as 10%. AND since ONO's and my anniversary is coming up, and the traditional gift for the 6th year is wood, we're giving each other a tree.

4. Take care of the nasty, evil Japanese beetles that have plagued us the last two years in a "green" way (notice I didn't say humane). I'm looking at some stuff called "Grub Guard" from Gardener's Supply that's supposed to kill the Japanese beetle grubs and continue working a few years down the road.

5. Grow more of the veggies that we use more of. For example, being mostly vegetarian we use a MEGA ton of beans in our meals, so we're including that in the list (see #6).

6. Use only heirloom and organic seeds in the garden this year. We bought our seeds from Heirloom Seeds on-line and I was thrilled at the variety of very interesting sounding choices.

RUBY RED SWISS CHARD
BLACK TURTLE BEAN
PINTO BEAN
LIGHT RED KIDNEY BEAN
AMISH SNAP PEA
GOURMET SALAD BLEND
MONNOPA SPINACH
RUSSIAN RED KALE
YOLO WONDER PEPPER
SUNBRIGHT PEPPER
GOLDEN DELICIOUS SQUASH
SWEET POTATO SQUASH
CUBANELLE PEPPER
ITALIAN HEIRLOOM TOMATO
OLD VIRGINIA TOMATO
AUNT RUBY`S GERMAN GREEN TOMATO
HONEY BEE MIX—these are flowers

7. Buy an energy efficient deep freezer to store the bounty produced by the above listed seeds. This will go in one of the new storage closets of our nearly finished basement.

And the biggest project of all…..(drum roll, please)……

8. Landscape the front yard.

Grow, baby, grow!!

The "up" side of Global Warming?

I guiltily admit --


I'm enjoying the prolonged warm weather.

Last vestiges of my flower garden

Autumn approaches.....

Garden Delight

I've worked in a garden since I was a little kid. It's definitely in my blood because my maternal grandfather ("Granddaddy") owned his own plant nursery and my mom is a gardener extraordanaire. Many a summer day was spent weeding, picking beans and chopping up turnip and collard greens to blanch and freeze for the winter. When you're a teenager, it's the last thing you want to be doing....standing at the sink rinsing icky bugs off of big, pokey leaves that you don't like to eat anyway. Doing that certainly wasn't the reason I love gardening today. I doubt that my mom had me help with the garden harvest because she hoped to instill in me a love for plants or an appreciation for the work and care it takes to feed a family. I think she wanted us to spend time together and she needed the help! (Thanks mom for convincing me that leafy greens are good for your skin, though!)

It wasn't until I was a college senior at Utah State University that I thought to grow a garden on my own. I dug out a tiny little patch in an empty lot next to the house where my basement apartment was. I don't even remember what I grew....probably the usual: beans, tomatoes, maybe corn. What I do remember was trying to figure out the City of Logan's irrigation system so that my baby plants would get water and not shrivel up in the dry Utah summer. That was truly a learning experience! The city had set up the system probably in the 19th century and had established a schedule for when water could be diverted from the main canal to your plot by turning the sluice gate (a feat in itself!) Not knowing about the schedule of odd days north/south streets, even days east/west streets, I was reprimanded one day by a somewhat prickly farmer in a classic pick-up. "Today's not your day, young lady." I wasn't sure what he meant and said "Excuse me?" "The water. It's not your day." He then explained the system and the schedule for me. You can be sure I never made the mistake again!

This is our third full summer in this house and third summer of vegetable and flower gardening. It is by far the most satisfying activity for me outside of interacting with people. Here's what's growing this year: to our regulars of radishes, carrots, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and sugar peas, we added strawberries, kale, cucumbers, yellow squash, hot peppers, pumpkin, and 5 types of herbs (peppermint, thyme, basil, fennel, and cilantro). My smart, willing DH made the taller garden box out of cedar for our first year of veggie gardening. Last year I thought it would be a good idea to have a compost bin after reading in the Sierra Club magazine how much energy it takes to clarify water from our use of garbage disposals. He made a wonderful bin but we decided it was too big and not efficient enough. So this year we created a plan together for an additional garden box with a built-in compost bin (which you can see on the right side of the picture above) and herb plot. We got some amazing mushroom compost from the near-by nursery and paired with a number of good, solid rains, you can see how the growth exploded! Of course, squash and cucumbers were the original prototypes for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, so there's no surprise there.

Happy Summer!