Monday, March 30, 2009

One Million Gardens project

How many vegetable gardens are there in the U.S.? The One Million Gardens campaign is trying to find out! Their goal is to register one million vegetable gardens -- home gardens, community gardens, even container gardens on apartment balconies -- by the end of 2009. Check it out, register if you like, and find other gardeners on the site.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

What the &*#%$*????

At one time I had a beautiful glass ball ornament in my garden:

Today, I do not:

There's no trace of broken glass. Someone walked into my garden and took it.

What is the matter with some people?!?!?!? Do I have to have a razor-wire fence and a locked gate just to have something nice outdoors?

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Garden fever relapse -- the planting begins!

Here we have lettuces, kale, chard, and indigo, all labeled and lined up in their neat little pots under the grow lights. Another set of pots -- the tomatoes, peppers, melons, broccoli, and cauliflower -- are set aside to go to school with me. There's a little corner of the greenhouse I've asked to use, where I can grow a few things out of everyone's way.

With the peas in the ground and more seeds in the pots, this year's garden is underway! The ennui of winter vanishes in a cloud of seed catalog fumes. Sniiiiiffff... aaaahhh! The sweet aroma of potting soil in the morning!

February Snow

Washington's Birthday just went by which, according to my grandmother, is time to plant the peas. Accordingly, I planted them, two packs of peas all soaked and planted and most of them tucked in under some Reemay cloth. I'm not sure if the reason I've seen so few pea seedlings coming up in the last couple of years is cold springs, or if I need to hold off on planting, or if the crows and squirrels are after them. With the Reemay to protect some of the peas, I'll find out!

But lookee here -- no sooner did I get my peas all nestled down in the sweet earth than last Thursday we woke up to this:

Ah, that's the old twisty Hobbit Tree that finally broke in the last ice storm and just got shorn of its branches, which will now suport a climbing rose. And that's Toast, mother of the kittens we took in two summers ago, sporting about in the fluffy white stuff.

And that's snow! More snow!

Licorice, outdoorsman that he is, doesn't think too much of this and decided maybe he could stand to be inside for a while:



My garden was all aslumber under its blanket of white, and the coverlet of snow on top of the cold frame actually kept the last of the lettuces underneath from freezing:


Snowdrops in the snow, looking a little bedraggled in spite of being all covered with their namesake:


Within the snow, a souvenir of summer:

And was there more to come? Hmmm... looking at this sky, what do YOU think?


Ah, but the main roads were navigable and all had melted away by evening.