For years my garden was something I took pride in and grew great plants. The first garden here was smol, an old wheelbarrow and a large oak stump that had a hollow in the middle. They survived for a few years then I expanded, and grew tomatoes and peppers in a small plot. This, too, was expanded, and four years ago I decided to go big, and turned a chunk of my front yard into a miniature farm. Three growing seasons ago, I expanded again. Things went to hell on me
Heat got my garden three years ago, and only the peppers survived, and not all of them did. Two years ago, we had hurricanes that flooded the garden and killed everything. Last year, an eleven inch rain killed every plant I owned. Then the hurricanes came to rid me of the notions I was going to grow anything at all.
Weeds took over and I couldn’t be bothered with trying to keep the dead garden in shape. The back of the property was flooded, trees were dying and falling and there was no respite from the never endingrain.
Few weeks ago, I stood in front of the tangled mess that was a garden, a good garden, and I wondered how much work it would be to just get it cleared. Did I want to try again, really? I took the garden rake out and dug up a large weed that looked somewhat like an alien creature, and maybe it had drowned, too.
I smelled the dirt.
Garden dirt, when dirt is done right, smells different.
I know this dirt. Most of it came from the compost pile that is still under a foot of water. I hauled wagon loads to the garden to make the soil deeper, to give the garden a chance to have better root systems, and earthworms by the score tagged along.
The soil is good, made better by the coffee grounds I tossed in, and there I found some random piece of plastic, an ingredient I worked hard to rid the garden of for years. I pulled up a patch of grass, knocked the dirt off the roots and squeezed it in my hand. I made this dirt. Weather took my plants away, killed the tomatoes first, then the squash, and finally the okra and peppers, but the dirt is still here.
I sent my plant person a text and she send back, “I wondered where you were.” But the hurricanes ravaged her hot house. She has tomatoes, squash and okra, but no peppers. I stop by the next day, and she loads me up with plants, and back home, in the freshly cleared garden, I do what I have always done in the Spring. I start a garden.
Yeah, I’m oh for three in the last three seasons. Yeah, hurricanes are stronger and coming more frequently. But part of me that matters wants to grow stuff I can eat and share with my friends.
I’m back.
Take Care,
Mike
I hope you have better luck this time, you deserve it.
I am an expert at growing weeds. It doesn’t matter what I plant, only weeds appear.
we grow tons of veggies every year. deer, squirrels and birds eat it all before we get any but it does grow!!!
Keith, rabbits got Mama’s tiny vine garden two years ago. Morning Glories, Moon flowers, and one more they were nibble to the very ground.
The deer don’t come in so close.
a few months after i planted them the deer ripped all the branches off of 6 peach trees (long before the trees could produce a single peach)… that effectively killed the peach trees and we ended up replacing them with dogwoods which deer apparently don’t consider a 24 hour buffet… i am considering grafting some peach tree branches onto the dogwood trees above the reach of the deer but those bastards will probably show up with a rented scissor lift the next day. we have hundreds of tulips but they rarely last more than a week after they flower, the trail cam has provided plenty of photos of those nightly terrors rampaging through our yard…
Keith, mostly I fight with armadillos, who dig holes in the garden. I rigged an electric fence and that was that.
Rikki, I share your passion for undesirable plants. But at the end of the day, the process of trying to grow is as important as harvest. You punt the time in trying to do something right, something that involves our oldest DNA, and it’s a form of therapy, even when it fails.
if it’s a kid or a dog I can grow it, especially a dog. I have one really good kid, so I didn’t press my luck. Plants, not so much. My thumb is decidedly brown. We have similar weather patterns lately it seems, although we have tornadoes instead of hurricanes. Right now I have a tree that fell over on to my house. My lawn guy will be here in the morning to remove it for me. If it weren’t for the gutters I’d pull it down myself. I really don’t want to rip those down. Dang it!!
Chick, trees have been falling since the place flooded and it’s not done yet. The first bad wind is going to bring more down, too. I do pretty good with dogs, never tried to raised kids, but when I was young they said I raised Hell.
Good luck, Mike, not trying again would be giving up. For MLB, you’re still batting average over the last four years, right?
Scoakat, considering the seasons before I was posting photos of a glorious bounty and now I’m posting text, it would seem my batting average is that of a rookie. A blind rookie. A blind rookie without a bat.
My wife has the green thumb, not me. I help getting the chicken wire fence up around her garden (to keep the rabbits and other ground-based critters out) and lay down the holey garden hose to water the garden with minimal water usage. She can usually get things growing.
Unfortunately, she and our son likes raw veggies and I like them cooked, so they usually end up eating all the veggies before she gets a chance to cook them.
She also has a gooseberry bush that she usually ends up using to feed the birds–and it is a pain to mow around.
Tim, wives were put on the earth to remind us our lives never did belong to us. Gardens serve the same function.
Mike, first time I’ve been called Rikki for a long time.
It’s short for Richard, but my Grandmother spelt it with two k’s as I liked her reading about the mongoose in Rudyard Kiplings Jungle book.
I became Rikkochet about 15 years later, but that’s another story.
Though I am a failure at growing flowers I have had better luck with vegetables, but that was due more to the soil than to my expertise.
Rikki, I was born without a name, went ten years before I knew what it wasn’t, wound up borrowing one from someone who didn’t have one, and wound up growing my own.
My father when alive started small just enough to keep him and my mother well supplied. But as time goes on it turned into 65 acres. Still just the two of them. Gardening is like a good drug, can’t get enough of it.