MR. Thank U Verymuch

Do you recognize this guy? He's Mr. Gimme A Break, Mr. Throwme A Bone. He's the guy who has been waiting impatiently for the photographer for this blog to get him his damn pictures so there's something to see in his blog entries. He's also me looking a bit older than I believe I am in my head, but that's a story for a different blog. I wish I had a good picture to represent Mr. Thank U Verymuch, because I finally have access to some long awaited pictures and today I'm going to share a few of them with you.

We didn't get any photos of the garden as we had acquired it, but there were four of these boxes laid out in a  pattern to fill the space and divide it into four equal quadrants. We didn't like the way the boxes seemed to limit the growing space... so we pulled them out, dug up what was originally in the space and then removed as much of the weeds and roots as we could (or so we thought). At the end of day one in April this is what we had. Notice that we kept the chive in the corner of that box. Also notice the huge rock in the lower right corner. That was in the ground and we dug it up and knew right away that it needed to have a home in our garden as a sort of utilitarian step/seat. It was a good choice... that rock has served me well on many occasions even in the short two months that we've been gardening.

About a week or two later we had painted the box blue and set the garden up for planting. I had this idea that everything should be planted in raised mounds. Meg hated the idea and eventually I gave in and removed the mounds.

By the end of May we had planted all of our initial round of seeds and and planted our seedlings as well. The chive really took off and has a bunch of purple flowers on top in this shot. Just at the fence line are the peas at about a foot tall. Notice also that we added a slate walk way aligned to our favorite rock.

 This close up from a recent visit in June shows the bottom of Annie's crib, which we mounted above the fence to give the peas more room to climb. They're currently taller than the additional space we gave them. You can see much growth has happened at the ground as well.

Here's a look from the opposite side. In the box is where all of our herbs are growing. Between the box and the fence you can see our cucumbers just peeking over the edge of the box, then there's a row of beets, a row of peppers, a row of carrots with about six carrots in it because we accidentally weeded out all of our initial planting of carrots, then finally the peas. There's asparagus growing just outside the fence, I'll include some shots of that in an upcoming entry. On the other side of the box is a clear patch where our radishes used to live, but I've replanted three new rows of carrots here and they're doing quite well.

Now try to imagine my happy face here as I'm happy to finally have been able to show you some progress in our garden. I know this entry itself was a tad boring, but now that we got this out of the way perhaps I can get more creative and write a fun blog entry... although no promises here... Meg's the more creative blogger, she's just sparse with her entries. (nudge nudge... let's go Meg.... this was supposed to be a joint effort)

Twisty & Rooty

Two months of gardening and finally the results are starting to show. This week our radishes have started to reach the point where at least some needed to be pulled. In fact they should have come out a week ago or more but I thought leaving them in a little longer might let them grow bigger... plumper... rounder. Unfortunately that's not what they had in mind. They decided instead to stay long and narrow. Then they decide to get all twisty and rooty looking.

But more is happening than twisty radishes. Our peas have started to finally flower. This means we'll see some peas in the next week or two. We won't have as many as some of the sunnier gardens, which by the way have had peas for a few weeks. Our's are taller, their's are making peas.

Our original planting of lettuce had almost all been eaten by some critter, but for two of our original plantings. those two are doing well despite the loss of so many of their family members to the great beast. We replaced  much of that lettuce with cheater's lettuce. Cheater's lettuce because we bought them already half grown and then we planted them in place of the fallen soldiers. I almost feel guilty wanting to pluck leaves from any of the non original heads, but I'm going to need something to eat with those twisty radishes.

Last night I once again thinned the beets. It was pretty obvious that some were doing far better than others. So I made the command decision to pull about a half dozen to a dozen wimpy beets. I took them home, cleaned up the leaves and steamed them and served them up with a little butter and salt. Meg and I loved them. Annie, not so much.

Last night also included the addition of two locations of cantaloupe, but I'm not convinced we'll have any luck with those. In August at our local farmers market you can get locally grown musk melons. Have you ever had a musk melon? It looks a lot like a cantaloupe, but it's larger and has pronounced grooves, almost like a pumpkin. Anyway, these locally grown musk melons are a personal fave of mine. I have to buy two because I know I'll eat the first one when I get back to the house. The other is for later on when I wish I had another and lo and behold there's another right there.

We added a couple more herbs to our herb garden last night. We had basil already, but decided to get a second different variety to mix it up. Then I saw some lemon thyme and that sounded good to me... so in it went. I have to report that Meg's cilantro that she planted recently is starting to grow. I actually tore off a leaf the other day and ate it, just to make sure it was the cilantro and not a weed.

Speaking of weeds... if weeds were edible we would be amazing weed farmers. We grow more weeds than we do vegetables. I guess that's the reality of it all anyway, right? I mean the world is covered in things that grow and perhaps its edible to something but most of it isn't edible for us and we call them weeds. Weeds have played a part in our history for as long as we've maintained cultivated land. According to the book of genesis, after the serpent convinced Eve and then Eve convinced Adam to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God drops this little nugget on them:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground"

Oh, that crafty little serpent, tricksey he is.

A Mental Picture

It would be great to include some lovely photos of the progress our garden has seen. Unfortunately our photographer hasn't been doing her job to get us photos. Maybe I can get Meg to have a little talk with her and encourage her to get some updated shots of the space. I feel overdue on an entry into the blog and would really love to show you what the garden looks like, but instead I'm going to do my best to paint you a mental picture.

To start you off you need to envision our space, which is approximately 10'x15'. There is a light blue colored box sorta centered in our garden. It's approximately 3'x5' and 8 inches tall. In the corner of this box is a chive plant that we acquired with the space. It has grown quite tall and is dotted with purple flowers that are starting to die and fall off... possibly due to all the recent rain. The rest of the box is filled with single plantings of myriad herbs, including basil, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme. There were some cilantro seeds planted but we haven't confirmed any growth there as of yet.

Out side the box towards the fence we have some recently planted cucumber sprouts, then some long ago planted beets which are in need of some thinning. Then there's a row of peppers looking like they need some nutrition. Our carrots come next and we have very few of these... most likely due to our overzealous weeding when the the carrots were first breaking ground. No one told us they would look so much like the grass we were pulling. Against the fence our peas are climbing and a few have even surpassed the top and will soon latch onto the bottom of Annie's crib, which we installed a few weeks ago in anticipation of these little climbers needing more vertical space to climb than that 18" fence.

Outside the fence is a row of asparagus playing volley ball with the peas. The asparagus once looked exactly like what you might purchase in the store, but have long since grown into ugly weedy looking shrubs in need of a good haircut, which is sorta the point when starting asparagus. You let it grow tall and weedy then cut it all back to the ground... or let it fall back to the earth. Next year the growth will be thicker and the following year thicker still. One needs patience while waiting to reap the rewards of growing asparagus. For about two feet beyond the asparagus is the flower bed with our bee attracting flowers just starting to pop up from the earth. In this same area I've transplanted from another garden a small raspberry shrub and a couple of strawberry plants that I found invading the walkway outside a neighboring garden. The raspberry has taken quite well, but the strawbs are struggling.

On the other side of the box you'll see two rows of radishes. Originally one row, we created a second row as we thinned the first row. I'm happy to say that our radishes are doing quite well and we even picked one yesterday and sliced it up and ate it. It was a bit small but delicious. I ate a second one later in the afternoon. Beyond the radishes is a hodgepodge of recently planted young lettuce and  brussell sprouts, a transplanted poor man's onion, and some seeds were planted for eggplant and butternut squash.

We've also recently added 6 tomato plants and 4 zucchini plants along the back side adjacent to the walkway. The tomatoes, like the peppers need some nutrition. But the zucchini's look quite happy in their new home.

A final note: Due to an abandoned garden we have recently acquired some more space. I started working the ground in that space yesterday. I really dig the earth... literally and figuratively.