Tag Archives: garden

Gardens, Real and Imagined

We’ve been redoing our back and side yard gardens this spring, and I couldn’t be more excited. New raised beds mean less stooping over for my tired old back, and new rich soil means we might actually get some decent veggies this year!

Meanwhile, I continue to collage with my friend Martha and I’m often inspired by flowers and gardens. I put all those seed catalogs that keep piling up to good use, cutting them into flower arrangements and fanciful dream gardens for cards to flower and garden loving friends.

Making gardens, real or imaginary, brings me back to my “roots” so to speak. My father always planned and executed a large vegetable garden in our yards – first in New Jersey and then in Vermont. After he passed away, my mother kept the tradition, enlisting both myself and my sister in the work.

I hate weeding and I never really liked picking green beans (they are really hard to see among their foliage!). I especially detest squash bugs, spotted cucumber beetles, and slugs, and whatever likes to take big bites out of ripe tomatoes. But I do like to play in the dirt. And to eat the results.

Watching things sprout and grow brings us hope. We all need a big dose of hope right now.

Here are some plant and garden pix, real and imagined.

New fancy raised beds. There are three this size and another smaller one. Blank canvas for all sorts of plants!
I always wanted some sort of strawberry tower thing. Hopefully this will thwart the slugs this year??
Some day maybe I will get a greenhouse or at least a hot frame. For now, its an indoor thing and when the day allows, taking these babies outside to hard up and get some direct sun! Always too many…
One of my imaginary collage gardens.
This was our 2020 “pandemic garden” in Pennsylvania. Lots of tomatoes! Black Krim are my faves.
Fanciful flower collage.

Tomato Time

The 100+ heat index last week was good for at least one thing: hastening the ripening of the tomatoes in our “suburban vegetable farm.” The moment the backyard gardener waits all year for, that first juicy flavorful bite that banishes all memory of the sad waxy things passing for tomatoes the rest of the year.

Unfortunately, that first bite is sometimes taken by some other creature than yourself. Grab onto a big delicious looking specimen, and you may encounter a messy, gooey, open wound. Chipmunk, squirrel, bird, or something else that comes by night and chews…no matter, damage done and hopefully something left to salvage.

Most of our tomatoes were grown from seed. This year, I got several varieties from the Gurney seed company because they had a sweet introductory discount. I was intrigued by a variety called Mortgage Lifter, explained (at a farm museum I toured last spring) as being so prolific that it raised Depression era farmers out of debt. Makes a good story, and, if I have figured correctly, a good tomato too.

“Figuring correctly” is what one must do in our garden, since the varieties of tomatoes somehow always get mixed up between the seedlings and the planting, no matter how I try to keep them labeled. So you just have to wait for them to mature to find out what sort of tomato they will produce. Even then, I am not sure sometimes, especially since I purchased a “rainbow” package of heirloom seeds with a number of varieties mixed in. Is it a Cherokee Purple or a Black Krim? Is this one going to stay yellow or has it just not started turning red yet?

Who cares, really. They are all yummy. If you don’t have your own, go find a farm stand or a farmer’s market and pay whatever it cost for a few pounds. It’s the essence of summer, and it’s gone all too soon.

Plants and Human Wellfare

The last couple of days, I have had encounters with giant plants.  First, in my own garden where the Giant Pumpkin Plant of 2016 (see image above) threatens to take over the whole side of our yard, and into our neighbor’s yard as well.  (Maybe due to the bees doing a great job of pollinating?)  I went out to check on why the heck the squash plants were not producing any squash yesterday morning, and I discovered the Giant Fuzzy Squash of 2016, pictured here in its 16″ glory.  Not sure it is still edible, we will find out soon.  I20160802_075318f so, it is all we will be eating for awhile I guess.  Send me some squash recipes just in case!

Then, last evening, some friends and I experienced the unfortunately named Corpse Plant of the U.S. Botanical Garden, which has just bloomed.  By now just about everyone in Washington, DC has heard of, and perhaps visited, this phenomenon.  At least it seemed like everyone in DC was there last night; it took us about 45 minutes to get inside.  This giant plant supposedly smells like some combination of rotting flesh and rotten vegetables, but we couldn’t get close enough to catch a whiff.  Maybe for the best.  I didn’t get a photo because my phone battery died (ironically considering the subject matter), but you can get the idea from this link of photos from CBS news.  Photo #9 is pretty much the way it was last night, huge crowd and all.

Plants are pretty amazing, in general.  Giant plants are even more amazing.  Giant squash…well, I would prefer smaller more tender specimens, but I guess I should see it as more to love, right?