Category: Garden

Whenever I complained about any form of manual labor, dad was quick to remind me of his own youth, namely the pre-dawn cow-milking.  Recently I had him iterate a favorite anecdote to Liz, regarding the drafty farm house and a glass of water on his nightstand freezing overnight.

During the Lubbock years, a brilliant idea was conceived.  My parents, environmentalists and chronically short of funds in those days, decided that when the lawn was mowed, the grass would be bagged and spread under the rabbit hutches.  Then, over the course of the following week, this drying grass would soak up the all the delightfully nitrogenous excrement that the rabbits produced.  The resultant urine-soaked yard waste would then be shoveled into a wheelbarrow and carted to the alley–dumped upon the compost pile–in time for the next mowing and batch of grass.  This pile would lengthen, requiring that it be watered and turned, until the now saturated mass would breed the necessary microorganisms, expediting the pile’s decomposition.  The conclusion, and omnipresent lesson in decomposition models and the nitrogen cycle, courtesy of dad, was an incredibly nutrient-rich and organic soil for use in the gardens.

And amazing gardens my mom did have.  Yet somehow, I failed to appreciate these lessons at the time.  Through some combination of being a kid and doing hard manual labor in the west Texas heat, the miracles of biology fell flat.  And while I remember my sisters helping with the mowing/shoveling/turning, I don’t recall their involvement nearly as much as my own–something I attribute to being the only son, and the point at which the cow-milking anecdotes would emerge were I to point out these injustices.

But, I did enjoy gardening, so mom indulged me with a section of the garden for my very own.  And while there was many a discussion on what I couldn’t plant in it, the joy of having one’s own child willingly involve themselves in a parent’s hobby likely superseded the irritations of teaching me basic gardening.

So it was that I indulged my daughter when she asked me recently for her own garden.  The proud parent within immediately agreed and started working on her very own partition.  I selected a full-sun and rather barren section of the yard, near my own vegetable garden.  After some digging and hauling of recycled bricks (retrieved elsewhere from the yard), I bestowed upon her a section of earth, prime for cultivation.  Unlike my own parents, however, I forked over a few bucks and filled it with a commercial potting soil, since we lack rabbits.

Then it was off to Lowe’s.  I don’t know who Lowe was, but I’m guessing the patron saint of suburbia.  Hail, St. Lowe!  Feeling my mother’s pain, I tried my best to remain silent as we accumulated a cartfull of mismatched plants.  Ultimately though, this is a lesson in gardening, which will require some failure.  Still, it turned out well, and complete with lawn decoration, represents a utopian model of suburban flora.

I do still have her pick up the dog poo, and even though it doesn’t go into compost, it sort of counts.

–Simon

Since the vegetable garden got decimated by frost, I was forced to do something I’ve never done before: buy tomato plants.  I’ve purchased seed of course, and the first year we were in our last townhouse my mother-in-law gave us two tomato plants, but never before have I purchased them at a store.  And once I grow a plant, I save seed–partly out of a sense of self-sufficiency and the desire to maintain my own seed stores, partly to discover new hybrids, and partly because the germination rate on saved seed is significantly better than store-bought (not to mention free).

But with over half my tomato plants dead, and since I didn’t get the chance to put in a vegetable garden at the new house last year, this year I was going to have tomatoes dammit!  So when the local Lowe’s started putting them on sale, I relented.

Normally I don’t get tomatoes until July, but here I am with a single tomato, growing from the heirloom yellow lemon variety:

I suppose since I’ve recently depleted my canned tomato stores, that I can forgive myself just this once.

–Simon

If I’m going to be feeding the wildlife, then I think it’s only fair that I get to eat it.  But nay, the ODNR has restricted when and where I can hunt these voracious little creatures which chew through my garden like a clever simile.  And when have rabbits ever been in danger of extinction?

To be fair, I wasn’t planning on eating that kale.  Yuck.  But it was big and green and happy, and they didn’t have to eat the entire plant.  Rabbits just don’t respect sustainable resources.

In other news, the thyme plant I grew from seed years ago, having lived in a pot and being the only source of fresh thyme to an apartment-dweller, bloomed.  I had never seem thyme bloom before.  It would seem that the plant had gotten old enough that it finally had the energy reserves needed to procreate.

I wonder if thyme can stand up to foot traffic.  The stuff seems to endure through the worst environmental conditions that Ohio can throw at it.  It sure would make a nice-smelling replacement for grass.

–Simon

Damn weather.  Sure enough, the frost 4 days after last frost took out the basil, peppers, and half the tomatoes.  This sets my garden back a month.

I realize in a fortnight I’ll be complaining about the heat, but would it friggin warm up already?!

–Simon