How the garden grows
The garden…I have a kind of love-hate relationship with the garden. On one hand, when I bought this house last fall and it had the large garden with raised beds, 2 patches of strawberries, some rhubarb, asparagus, fruit trees and other stuff I couldn’t identify – I thought, what fun! I hadn’t really grown stuff I could eat since my Ohio days – a lifetime ago! And my last house had a beautifully established herb garden – perennials – all I had to do was weed, water and enjoy…and I planted annuals around and in pots for color. But here was a REAL garden. Turned out that it was/is a lot more fun in theory – at least for me.
I spent several weekends in the spring cleaning up the raised beds – the strawberry patches were particulary awful as they should have been cut back in the fall so I had to cut dead runners, pull weeds and try not to kill the new growth in the process. By the time I left for Colorado, the entire garden looked wonderful – I had been able to enjoy the rhubarb and the strawberries were in bloom with little green berries starting, and some Iris planted along a border had bloomed. Iris are a particular favorite of mine, but ironically, I am not a huge fan of strawberries – I like a few now and then. I spoke to my neighbors about keeping an eye on the house, yard and garden while I was gone – making sure my “irrigation system” did not run amok, etc. and said they were welcome to all of the strawberries – which they were thrilled about.
On my return, the neighbors had had their fill of strawberries … the irrigation system did fine and everything thrived, including a LOT of weeds… I found out that I wasn’t really into gardening on the scale of the BIG garden. I have decided – I think – to take it out. A little more grass would be easier and I have another smaller spot by the garage that would make a garden area – veg garden – plenty large enough…and in fact I think I’ll just do container stuff – a pot of tomatoes, peppers, etc. – and easy to rig up a drip system and cover them with some sort of mesh to keep the deer out – so that is the plan.
And in the meantime, I have the plants that I brought back from Colorado – Egyptian Walking Onions, Pimiento and a Pepper started by my step-Dad, Bill. The pimiento was eaten to the quick by a deer but Bill says it will recover and I should be able to winter it in the house – ditto the pepper and he says the onions “are not mortal” and I definitely cannot kill them! These onions are wonderful – something on the order of sweet scallions – and you can see below – they make “babies” on the tops – cut the “babies” off and put them back in the dirt – more onions – it is like magic! Well, it’s fun.
Above right – the photo makes the garden look much better than reality at the moment…I have a bumper crop of thistles, quack grass and other weeds I don’t know what they are called. It is green, though….