There aren’t enough hours in a day.\u00a0 Can’t I get paid to garden?\u00a0 To write?<\/p>\n
7:00 p.m. – \u00a0Stepped out to the Lorelei.\u00a0 This evening’s goal: renovate the herb garden and set in the many herb plants now languishing in small pots.\u00a0 Started by forking whatever soil is empty, working around the parsley, chives, thyme, lemon balm, oregano and mint growing there now.\u00a0 Laid down and turned in two inches of well rotted horse manure and a couple inches more of leaf mold.\u00a0 Raised the level of the garden a few inches, always a good thing.<\/p>\n
7:17 p.m. – \u00a0Gathered the new herb garden residents.\u00a0 Planted seven stunning, stocky cilantro plants (last year’s never took off)\u00a0I started from seed, enough for salsa even now though there wouldn’t be much left.\u00a0 These transplants are more than I got all season last year.\u00a0 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?).\u00a0 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!\u00a0 Tired of naked trellises.\u00a0 What a waste.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
7:34 p.m. – \u00a0Set in dill plants I bought too long ago, (maybe three weeks now?) from the herb sellers at the market.\u00a0 Poor things suffered all this time, waiting, waiting, for the old man to get off his duff and\u00a0put them in the ground.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If they don’t survive, I won’t be surprised.\u00a0 Dill has been hard for me to start.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Smart shopper, eh, spending money to save it?\u00a0 Set in another of the four for fifteen, sage (I plant one per season.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Split the two into six and planted them interwoven between\u00a0endive that’s good for now but won’t be when the weather turns hot.<\/p>\n
7:48\u00a0 – Placed parsley that germinated like gang-busters and then held its breath for three weeks.\u00a0 Not sure it will amount to\u00a0much but I don’t care; I’ll buy parsley plants, too, from the herb-wallahs.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 Yay!!\u00a0 (Gardening as I am at the end of a long work-day, I’m getting a little punchy.)<\/p>\n
8:01 – \u00a0Potted baby eggplants and sweet peppers in slightly larger pots, one of my lessons from this season.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Cleaned up the mess, put tools away, showed off my handiwork to the wife, and whew, done!\u00a0 For now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There aren’t enough hours in a day.\u00a0 Can’t I get paid to garden?\u00a0 To write? 7:00 p.m. – \u00a0Stepped out to the Lorelei.\u00a0 This evening’s goal: renovate the herb garden and set in the many herb plants now languishing in … Continue reading