The yard is emerald green and wonderfully jungly this summer because it’s actually been raining. For the first time in years, it seems, we’ve been getting daily afternoon thundershowers in the proper summer pattern. Rob and I spent Saturday taming our backyard jungle (just a …
This weekend Rob and I spent all day Saturday cleaning up our vegetable garden. The outer beds, where our pomegranates and clown peppers grow, had become jam-packed with wild petunias (Ruellia caroliniensis), so we dug those out. I felt bad removing them because wild petunia …
This weekend was very satisfying, one of the best I’ve had in a while. I got to do all the dorky things I love, like playing with my cats and making cat videos and drinking too much Coke, but I also moved ahead on some garden projects. I mean, Rob and I did. We were outside all weekend, and the yard looked way better today (Sunday) than it did on Friday.
For the longest time I’ve wanted to add some color to our little sitting area under the giant water oak tree behind the vegetable garden. Well, on Saturday I finally found two bold blue pots that were just the right size and shape. I planted rosemary in them and arranged them on the little stone patio next to the cast-iron furniture. The whole area looks so much brighter and more eye-catching now, but I still think I need a third pot, one a bit smaller, to complete the scene. I’m going to try to look for one this week.
To be honest, Rob and I don’t often sit in this sitting area—because the furniture is rather dainty and we are rather big. Bernie, our stray-cat friend, is much more likely to relax here than we are. The lacy little chairs and settee are quite appropriately sized for cats . . . and gnomes.
On Saturday afternoon we started preparing our fall vegetable garden. The old summer crops looked so tired and bedraggled that it felt refreshing to pull them out, kind of like doing a good spring cleaning. First we removed the worn-out eggplant and tomatoes. Then we harvested all our sweet potatoes in order to make room for our new fall stuff. Rob was disappointed because a lot of our sweet potatoes had bites taken out of them. (I think it was the work of voles or mice.) The potatoes that didn’t have bites were very handsome and kind of reminded me of little pink manatees.
This morning we set to work planting. We’d gone to the nurseries on Saturday and gotten a bunch of starters. We planted nine arugula, eight Red Acre cabbages, 18 Bonnie’s Best white cabbages, nine Red Russian kale, nine Blue Knight kale, 18 Top Bunch collards, six Coronado Crown broccoli, and 18 Packman broccoli. We mixed lots of compost into the beds, along with some Garden-tone. We make our compost from kitchen scraps . . . and bags of leaves we collect all winter long from our neighbors’ trash piles.
We took some little breaks from our gardening to sit on the screen porch and drink the season’s first Rangpur limeade. We picked 20 limes on Saturday and polished them and squeezed them and made limeade in a big glass pitcher. It was so delicious. The flavor of a Rangpur lime is wonderfully complex. It’s not just sour and acidic; it’s also got a flowery taste. I often think I can detect a hint of honeysuckle.
While we were drinking our limeade, Carl was being cute. He’s such a cheerful little fellow, he really brightens up our house. When we first adopted him, we thought he was a girl and we called him Daisy. The name still seems kind of perfect for him because he’s such a sunny, happy soul. He’s friendly to all the other cats, but especially the ones with social problems: shy, timid Foxy and moody Buntin, who is her own worst enemy and a helpless slave to her emotions. He works on them, trying to draw them out, win their trust. His method with Foxy is to bump heads with her repeatedly and purr and rub his side against hers. He likes to stand right next to her and drape his tail protectively over her back.
Oh, I forgot. I also did a couple of inside projects (on Saturday night). I finally figured out how to display my cute little pig-shaped serving bowl, a treasure I’ve had for years and kept buried at the bottom of our old salt box (a piece of furniture that looks kind of like a primitive desk). I put a potted fern in the pig bowl and turned it into a centerpiece for the kitchen table. The cats approve of this new addition—they enjoy walking around on the table in an unsanitary fashion and nibbling on the fern.
Lastly, I found pictures to put in some brass frames that have been sitting empty for several months. It’s quite a relief. Now if only I could find a little decorative item to put next to the frames. . . . I’ll have to add that to my to-do list.
On Sunday Rob and I made a batch of vegan zucchini bread with our first zucchini of 2013. It’s interesting the sense of duty we feel toward our homegrown vegetables. We never want to waste them, so the bulk of the weekend is often spent …
On Sunday I woke up early and started mulching the enormous bed we’re creating on the south side of the front yard. We’ve been building this bed for about two years—that’s how huge it is …
Over the past two weekends we completely revamped our vegetable garden. We had some problems with it this year. I think most of the trouble was caused by the horrible drought we’ve been experiencing, but there were also problems with overcrowding. You see, our main vegetable garden is right behind the house, under our bird window, but it was so small that we were forced to plant our sweet potatoes and several other rambling crops in our beds of shrubbery. It didn’t work out very well.
Last weekend we harvested the sweet potatoes we’d planted in the “barn garden” (the bed around our garage), and the yield was terrible, only 14 pounds. This was mostly due to drought, I’m sure, but it probably didn’t help that the vines were planted in the midst of a tangle of turks’ caps, sasanquas, elderberry, Korean mums, and lemongrass. There really wasn’t a whole lot of room.
So we set out to change that, like I said, by expanding the main vegetable bed behind the house. We scrapped everything and started over. The area right behind the house is the only real sunny spot in the entire backyard, so we need to use the space wisely. To that end, we tore out all the grass inside the fenced area (we have a little wire fence that outlines the entire sunny spot). We got rid of the old bed (a messy, lopsided square outlined in rocks) and replaced it with a much larger series of rectangular beds, each four feet wide and 15 feet long. Rows of homemade stepping stones run between the beds so we can access the beds; the stepping stones also help delineate the beds. There are eight beds so far, but we still need to build more.
We amended each bed with compost and organic fertilizer, and we planted Inchelium Red garlic (54 cloves) and a bunch of seedlings: Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collards, red cabbage, white cabbage, Savoy cabbage, broccoli, pak choi, and Red Russian kale. We also planted some seeds: spinach, carrots, Fordhook and Ruby Swiss chard, and cilantro.
It’s all very orderly, as you can see! Now, if it would only rain!
This weekend was crazy busy. Rob and I cleaned the house, did tons of laundry, prepared our taxes, weeded for hours, watered three acres of thirsty plants, swept our porches and garden paths, and cut down a bunch of invasive nandina …
This weekend was particularly satisfying because I got to spend most of it gardening. On Saturday Rob and I mowed and edged and ran the weedeater, which took up half the day but certainly resulted in …
Babs in the purple cabbage patch
