There aren’t enough hours in a day. Can’t I get paid to garden? To write?
7:00 p.m. – Stepped out to the Lorelei. This evening’s goal: renovate the herb garden and set in the many herb plants now languishing in small pots. Started by forking whatever soil is empty, working around the parsley, chives, thyme, lemon balm, oregano and mint growing there now. Laid down and turned in two inches of well rotted horse manure and a couple inches more of leaf mold. Raised the level of the garden a few inches, always a good thing.
7:17 p.m. – Gathered the new herb garden residents. Planted seven stunning, stocky cilantro plants (last year’s never took off) I started from seed, enough for salsa even now though there wouldn’t be much left. These transplants are more than I got all season last year. Also parsley I started from seed, plus scarlet runner beans to adorn the two trellises I erected last year for sweet peas that never amounted to a hill o’ beans (all that work getting them going for what?). Proper scarlet runner beans are vigorous vines clothed in scads of orange blossoms that produce edible beans: they better succeed and I mean it this time! Tired of naked trellises. What a waste. I planted the mottled, purplish flat bean seeds in peat pots about a week ago, kept ’em wet and warm and they look dandy now, like some lucky seventh grader’s science experiment.
7:34 p.m. – Set in dill plants I bought too long ago, (maybe three weeks now?) from the herb sellers at the market. Poor things suffered all this time, waiting, waiting, for the old man to get off his duff and put them in the ground. I wanted to much earlier, but rain and holidays and travel intervened and time marched on and all of a sudden it’s much later. If they don’t survive, I won’t be surprised. Dill has been hard for me to start. I actually bought dill plants at the market to have a fourth plant so I could save money, buying four for fifteen dollars instead of the three I really wanted for four dollars a piece. Smart shopper, eh, spending money to save it? Set in another of the four for fifteen, sage (I plant one per season. Why buy a packet of seeds just for one per year?), and two pots of French sorrel, good in salads, maybe medicinal, an attractive deep green oblong leafed creature. Split the two into six and planted them interwoven between endive that’s good for now but won’t be when the weather turns hot.
7:48 – Placed parsley that germinated like gang-busters and then held its breath for three weeks. Not sure it will amount to much but I don’t care; I’ll buy parsley plants, too, from the herb-wallahs. Planted two lovely, healthy basil plants (started from seed) just in front of the scarlet runner beans, not far from the chives, who are now cheering the other herbs with perky purple pom-poms, gimme a G, gimme an A, gimme a RDEN, What’s it spell? GARDEN! Yay!! (Gardening as I am at the end of a long work-day, I’m getting a little punchy.)
8:01 – Potted baby eggplants and sweet peppers in slightly larger pots, one of my lessons from this season. It’s okay, no, it’s necessary to graduate infant seedlings from their nursery cells, to slightly bigger pots, playrooms for toddler plants to give them time to strengthen and grow a bit more for the big, wide, scary world of the garden. Cleaned up the mess, put tools away, showed off my handiwork to the wife, and whew, done! For now.
