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.