For all of you who are housebound by bad weather, or for other reasons, here is a fun eccentric set of brief pieces from the UK’s The Guardian newspaper. Oh sure they did publish the Wikileaks stuff and more edgy journalism, fine fine, but hey:
shows us such an admirable, sometimes slightly too obsessed group of people who clearly are very serious about having serious fun in their gardens. Apart from not having much soil, or rainfall, or any plants that are the ones that appear in this series, I feel like I am leading the same life as some of the wilder folks (oh and the lavender lady is nice too–lavender actually does grow here).
This place is about 45 minutes away from me–that’s Texas-close, folks!
Yesterday, I threw a lot of soaked black-eyed peas under my “first year in the ground” fruit trees for nitrogen-fixing and soil biota fostering services. I cleared out the arugula-kale bed. I pulled a lot of native sunflowers up not because I don’t like them, but because the fire ants tend to congregate all over them and it sucks getting bitten every time I brush up against a beautiful booby-trapped sunflower to pick asparagus or chard. Today I can plant the bed with okra (Clemson Spineless and Burgundy), cucumbers, and a lot of mint to keep the bugs off the cucumbers. Chocolate mint, because I like it in smoothies and homemade popsicles. When I see the mint looking wilted, it’s a sign that I need to water more–cucumbers want a lot of water.
Potatoes are late getting planted (blue potatoes and a strange gift from a friend: potato seeds) because I had to buy more soil. Container growing those for easier harvest. I can’t make soil here fast enough. A dear wise friend down the road rakes all those leathery hard live oak leaves into piles and pees on them, and voila the leaves are soil inside a month. That’s a lot of pee though. Hmm.
The compost pile’s Genesis Device® dynamics have a bunch of butternut squash vines as long as my arm and I’m trying to get my courage up to dig them out. They seem really happy but they are in a weird location, and if I don’t fence it off the deer will eat the volunteers into oblivion. Who knows if they will survive the transplant, though… do I dare? Plants are so mercilessly honest with their feedback!
Fire ant mounds are swarming now with winged ants (once a year, fire ants don’t just bite you on your feet, they can get into your hair and neck–and those bites do burn!). My arms have welts on them from pulling cleaver (even after using Tecnu Extreme) and my hands are cut up from not wearing gloves when I was handling fence. I started wearing Chaco sandals this year after many years of wearing Keens, and the break-in period is…eh… rigorous on my very flat feet. Perhaps I will wear boots today. Looks like rain, and that’s absolutely a good thing.
I manage a pool and the season starts 1 May. The pool has many charms, including a deer-proof fence and a hose bib that I don’t have to pay to use. I planted olives trees inside its fence last year (Picual, Arbosana, Pendolino). Close together–olives are wind-pollinated. Black-eyed peas were under it last summer, and in winter: clover, vetch and Austrian winter pea. This year, I am planting more flowers at the pool for eye candy (anything free that a neighbor offers me automatically qualifies). Am hoping to cadge some more Four O’Clocks from a sweet retiree whose cats I take care of 10x/year. I have various flower seed packets given to me for free and I throw everything in the ground: good luck y’all! sort yourselves out!
I have a bunch of citrus (Owari and Meiwa kumquat, Meyer Lemon, Changsha Tangerine) in pots around the place, at the edges of walkways. All their thorns are pruned off because I don’t want negative comments from over-protective parents to my employer. The pots are all taken indoors (o what a heavy chore that is–these are ceramic pots and they weigh almost as much as I do!) every November before frost.
To business, then. Bottoms up on that tea, or coffee, or green smoothie, or clean cool water. I’ll be outside amid the fire ants and those striped scorpions I spotted yesterday near the wood pile. Hmm. Boots. Today, definitely… boots, not sandals.
