Life Muses by Ro

Into each life some weeds must grow

I looked at my garden yesterday. I hadn’t gone out there for weeks because it is hard to garden with a bad knee.I suspected that the garden would be weedy and I didn’t want to be frustrated with my inability to garden. Ignoring my problem just made it worse. The garden is now a jungle of hip-high, scratchy grasses and mysterious weeds of a variety I am unfamiliar with.

What a mess!

As I looked around, I found  food growing so I must somehow summon the courage to pull them out. I guess I’m going to have to take some gigantic ibuprofen, put on safari gear, get a machete, load my iPod up with interesting things to listen to, and make my way through the brush. Next year, I am determined to have weed cloth and grow boxes. NO WEEDS

After I get my work done, I’ll go out and see what I can do. If I don’t come back, send help. There may be some woman-eating plants in that mess.

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P.S. I also need to address a ruined peach tree. We had a horrible wind storm last week and it split a tree in half. I have branches with peaches on them reclining innocently on the lawn. Now I have to clean up that mess and thin some of the other trees down so they don’t break, as well.

P.P.S. The current state of my garden contains a life-lesson for us all. Do not ignore problem that need addressing. They don’t improve on their own!

Garden report: Weeds, pink boots, strawberries and lots of other yummy stuff

I’ve had a lot of fun harvesting strawberries from my garden. The patch isn’t huge, but I’ve been able to get enough to fill a bowl every couple of days. We’ve enjoyed them at breakfast, in bowls of milk and sugar, and with shortcake and whipped cream. Yum!

Gotta have pink!

I have to show you my gardening boots. I originally bought them as snow boots, but they’ve been wonderful in the garden. They have a soft lining in them so I can wear them without socks and they hose off well. (The sock issue is important to be because I wear flip-flops all summer long.)

I keep my boots by my backdoor so that any time I get a mind to weed (which, I’ll admit, isn’t often enough), I can grab them and go. Every time I pick them up, Molly gets excited because she knows we are going outside for a while.

It’s a debate: Do we have more weeds than produce? I’m not telling…

I’m still fighting my nemesis – bind weed. Man… that stuff is persistent. Here is a bunch I pulled up the other morning. That tool on the top is the best weeding tool imaginable. I have two of them that I inherited from my grandparents.

Apparently, they still make them. This one is available at ReStockIt.com. (It is on sale today for $17.81. I have no idea how long the sale will last.)

Life lesson from a garden

Weeding a garden teaches you a lot about life. It is impossible to get it done in one shot and the weeds come back in a couple of days. So weeding a plot of ground is a continual process and my obsessive self has a hard time with it. It’s never done. I want to get done!  I’ve learned to tell myself, “That’s enough for today. You can do another row tomorrow.”

Heavenly Father is so wise. He understands so well how to teach us patience. Every time I weed, I think about Adam and Eve and how God told them that they would eat by the sweat of their brow all of their lives. Anyone that has weeded a garden knows this is true!

Some yummy stuff

 

Swiss Chard

Peas

Onions (The big plants to the left of them are over-grown radishes. I ripped them out. Radish season is over.)

Squash. I think. I planted so many different things that have these blossoms, I think I might get a surprise.

 

Tomatoes

Peppers

Peaches. We have so many peaches on so many trees that I believe I’ll be sharing peaches… with lots of people. (I’ve had a few volunteers already!)

 

Apricots. We don’t have a lot of these because most of the blossoms froze. The ones that we do have are beautiful. Look at this cluster.

Pears

Plums

A different kind of plum

 

Apples. We don’t have many of these, either. They bloomed at the wrong time. But the ones we have are pretty and I’m looking forward to eating them.

Of course, I have to show you one of my flowers. These are right outside my back door.

What’s for supper tonight?

We’re going to have peas and potatoes in a white sauce, steamed Swiss chard, a green salad with green and red onions, radishes, green pepper and tomato. I like to toss a new garden salad with a squeeze of lemon mixed with a little sugar. It’s very refreshing.

I’m also going to do something with that rhubarb. I think I’ll make a rhubarb sauce and we’ll have it over vanilla ice cream.

Oh my… that sounds great.

I think I’ll get out of here now… the rhubarb is calling!

Garden Report: It’s alive!

It's the last Saturday in May. We've had so much rain this year that we almost missed the planting season, but we are squeaking under the wire.

The last group of seeds I started inside included a lot of different varieties of squash, melon, and cantaloupe. But there’s a problem…of them died... and all of the remaining plants look so much alike that we are not sure what we do and do not have.

Will we have squash? Maybe. How about melon? Perhaps. Will the cantaloupe survive? We hope so!

We are sure about one thing... I started too many seeds. Gary has the unpleasant task of trying to decide which of the survivors will make it into the garden. But what if he throws away the wrong ones? What if we miss out on juicy yellow watermelon because of a user-error?

ACK

Look how many “mystery” plants are still in the flat. What was I thinking?

A good gardener doesn’t give up their secrets – unless his wife takes a photo. I’ll just give you a tiny hint… MG.

Gary’s method for planting starts: Dig a hole. Mix Miracle Grow with the soil you have pulled out of the hole. Put the plant in the hole. Make a well to hold the water.

In the past, Gary has had such good results with this simple way of doing things that a couple of landscapers wanted to know his secrets. (I think chest-high tomato plants made them jealous.)

Speaking of which… I have a whole self of bottled tomatoes I haven’t used yet. Oops.

We have 12 , TWELVE, peach trees and they are loaded with fruit. (The lady we bought the house from liked peaches, apparently…)

Something tells me that I’m going to be gifting a lot of peaches away!

We also have Bing cherries, pie cherries, two varieties of applies, apricots, and pears. And our trees have fruit on them, too. Lots of fruit. Too much fruit. For me. To use. And eat.

I’ll have the job of picking the fruit, cook the fruit, bottling the fruit, throwing the fruit at the wall… whatever.

Anybody like to bottle fruit? I might have to open a fruit stand…

You can see the tomato plants, squash, peppers, and cucumbers in this shot.

My grandmother’s rhubarb made it to our new garden successfully. Because Gary divided it when he moved it, we now have a nice row of them. I’m already licking my lips as I think about rhubarb cobbler… Next year!

Garden rows: We have peas, beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes, celery, kohlrabi, cabbage, Swiss chard and lots of onions growing here. I taught Gary how easy it is to plant the rows if you use a garden hoe today. I don’t know why he had such an issue with it. He was shocked when he saw how easy it makes to plant seeds if you use a hoe.

(Thank, Mom. It is helpful that you made me garden. I am hoe-certified.)

The top of the rows going into the strawberry beds. The strawberry plants have blossoms and some beginnings of berries. I hope that the birds leave me a few. (We have tons of birds here. In fact, I think my backyard is a teenage hang-out spot for robins.)

This last photo of a hot air balloon is completely off-topic, but I wanted to show it to you anyway. I spotted a couple of hot air balloons floating past my bedroom window this morning. By the time I ran downstairs to retrieve my camera, they had traveled so far that I almost didn’t get a shot.

Note to self: Keep camera in bedroom at night. I’ve seen some amazing things out that window of mine!

Mystery flowers: Does anyone know what they are?

This is the first spring in our new home. The builder of the home had a landscaper put the yard in and as a result, there are plants that I have never seen before. A few weeks ago, we were amazed to see a bush covered with these larger purple flowers. I don't recall seeing them before and have no idea what they are.

Does anybody know?

I have to say that it was amazing seeing them. They remind me of orchids.

Garden is underway!

The weather is finally cooperating and Gary is planting the garden. It took him quite a while to set it up because we decided to put weed cloth over all of it this year. This means that he has had to take the time to cut slits in it.

This is a new process for us, although we've been using weed cloth under the starts - like tomato and squash plants - for years. We were inspired to try it because our neighbors in Holden used to raise an awesome garden using black plastic as the ground cloth. There is lots of bind weed there so it was smart. 

It's a lot of work, though, and Gary says that if it doesn't work well, next year, he would rather weed. I think he is forgetting how hard it is to weed the garden all summer.

We are having an extensive garden this year. Here's what we are planting:

• Beets
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Swiss chard
• Parsnips
• Radishes
• Onions
• Peas
• Beans
• Corn
• Celery
• Kohlrabi
• Cabbage
• Summer Squash (crook neck)
• Zucchini
• Butternut Squash
• Jalapeno peppers
• Bell peppers
• Tomatoes
• Watermelon
• Cantaloupe

We also have the following perennials in the garden:

• Strawberries
• Rhubarb (These plants were originally my grandmother's plants. When we sold our house in West Jordan, one of the terms was that would be able to come and get them in the spring, which we did. They transplanted well and because Gary broke them into pieces, we now have more plants than before!)

We have the following fruit trees:

• Apples
• Cherries
• Pears
• Peaches

I am praying that we will get some fruit because we had some late snow right during prime blossoming time. I have spotted some fruit growing on some of the trees. YAY!

We have purchased some asparagus starts which we hope to get in. I'm concerned that it is getting late in the season but the ground was too muddy. That will be Gary's project once we get back from California. He has to take out some lawn, dig some trenches, and amend the soil with some sand. (We are going for a family wedding.) It's a big project and perhaps, we are going to lose the starts and we'll have to try again next year.

We also have to put the plants I started in the house then. They have been growing really well. I'll have to help put them out because there are a LOT of them. Burpee hasn't shipped the tomato plants yet and I am praying they don't arrive while we are gone. I am trying a few varieties of heirloom tomatoes. I thought it would be interesting to see how they taste. I'll have to instruct the kids in how to take care of the starts and the tomato plants, should they arrive while we are away.

I'm a little worried because Gary forgot to save room against the fence for the corn and string beans. The hope we have is that the garden is on the west side of the house. We do get a lot of sun once the sun makes it overhead, so perhaps we will be fine.

 

It's all very exciting to me. This is the biggest garden I've been involved in for years. Wish us luck!

Have any of you planted gardens? Will you show them to me?