Separation Anxiety.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Portland to visit my Mom. I'll be gone about two weeks, and Alex will be looking after the garden while I'm gone. I know he'll do fine, and really the only thing that needs to be done is watering (my hope that raised beds make for little weeding seems to have been fulfilled). Still, though, I can't help but be a little nervous. Aside from worrying about something going wrong while I'm not there to help fix it, I'll miss watching some of the new flowers open and seeing the growth of my little pepper that I just transplanted into the big garden. The lemon basil is growing like mad, and I've only just been able to keep ahead of it's flowers. I'm going to cut it way back today and hang the cuttings up to dry, but still; I wonder what it will look like when I get back.

I've decided to wait until I get back to restart my tomatoes, so I can monitor them in their early stages. I'm still not sure exactly what I'm going to do, either. I talked to my Dad and he said it sounded like there might be some sort of fungus in the soil that killed them. Any major imbalance in nutrients or pH would have killed off (or at least drastically effected) everything else in the bed. Since it was just the tomatoes that kick it, it must be something more specific. But that means that I'm not sure I can grown them in the raised beds. If it is something in the soil and if I did try to grow them there again, the same thing would likely happen. So I'm thinking I might buy a big, deep tub of some kind and fill it with actual potting soil, then plant the tomatoes in that. This being Florida, I'm not too worried about starting them late; we probably won't get a killing frost until late November.

Alex being in the military means that we have a very interesting sleep schedule. We're usually in bed by 8:00 pm, and get up at 4:30 am. This means that I see the sun rise every morning, and I've found that that is a great time to take pictures of my flowers. The other morning the light was particularly odd. There was a storm front coming in, and the sky was glowing kind of yellowish green. It was a little hard to capture how cool and glowy the flowers looked in that light, but I still got some cool pictures. Warning: I got a bit artsy. Enjoy!

Flowers and Failures.

My tomatoes are dead, and I'm not sure why. They were looking great, even the one that started out all small and stunted. Then one by one, they died. I don't know if I under watered them, or if there's something wrong with the soil, or if they just got fried by the sun, but whatever the reason, my tomatoes are dead. And that sucks. I guess I'll just have to start over again, though maybe I should get the soil tested first. I seem to remember Steve the dirt guy saying that he used this soil for his own garden, and that everything had grown great except the tomatoes. At the time, he'd said something about it being because of not enough sunlight, but maybe there's some anti-tomato substance in the soil. Or maybe it's lacking some specific nutrient that they need. Or maybe the pH is off. I'm not sure what it is, but one way or another, I've failed my tomatoes, and that makes me sad.

I also seem to be incapable of growing mint and thyme. I've tried to restart them twice now in the little pots on the windowsill, and each time they look like they're doing fine, and then all of a sudden, they die. This time, it almost looked like something came through and ate the little green tops off the sprouts, leaving the white stalks sticking out of the potting soil for a day or so before they shriveled up. Is our house infested with some kind of vegetarian spider, that creeps in at night and eats my plants? I have no idea what is going on.

The borage is flowering, which is really pretty, but it's also been completely infested with aphids. So much so that I'm actually considering buying some ladybugs from the garden supply store and turning them loose to munch as many as they can. But at least the flowers are pretty. I even have some pink ones.

The nasturtiums still aren't doing so great, and after a little poking around on the internet, I think I've figured out why: they don't really like hot weather. Duh. Maybe I should have researched them a little more before I planted them somewhere with summers this hot. I don't think we had a single day last week where it wasn't in the 90's. Oh well. They're not dead, they're just not quite as pretty and flowery as I'd hoped they'd be. Sigh.

But it's not all doom and gloom. My one remaining Islander pepper is doing great, and it's little brother is almost ready to be transplanted into the big garden. The marigolds are just starting to flower, as are the cosmos. The lemon basil is growing faster than I know what to do with, and the sweet basil is ready to be thinned out in it's pot. I've harvested exactly 30 green beans so far (they're delicious), and will pick more today.

This was the first green bean harvest. They were too perfect to cook, so we ate them raw. Yum!

Look at the little curlycues!

But best of all, all of the zinnias are flowering.

They're so pretty! I was gone all last week, and when I left, there was only one flower just starting to open. Now they're all flowering, and they're wonderful. I can see them from the kitchen window, and it's just how I imagined they'd look when I first dreamed this garden up. Part if me wants to pick them and fill the house with flowers, but I don't think I will. Not these first ones, at least. Eventually, if each plant starts producing more than one flower, then I'll pick some. But for now, I'm just enjoying seeing them as they are. They're my consolation for all the other plants that aren't doing so well. At least these ones are flourishing!

I kind of went nuts taking pictures of them this morning...

Go, tiny pollinator, go!

This was always my favorite color of zinnia when I was little.

This is the one that was just starting to open when I left last week. And...

...this is what it looks like today. It's the only bi-color one so far, and I think it's my current favorite.

P.S.
Also, it rained four inches on Sunday. Four. In one day. That's nuts. My rain gauge was almost completely full, and the yard and driveway flooded. Luckily, the garden didn't flood, though it certainly got a good soaking. If anything was lacking water, it sure isn't now.

So..much...rain!

Ka-BLOOM!

The first flower has opened! It's a bright reddish-orange nasturtium, and it's gorgeous. It stands out like a tiny bonfire in the middle of the green of the rest of the garden.

Early morning.

Late morning.

Afternoon.

There's another bud on the same plant that looks like it's going to bloom in the next few days. I wonder what color it will be?

First harvest!

Yesterday, a momentous occasion occurred: Alex and I harvested the first of the lemon basil! And by that I mean we cut the tops off three of the seven basil plants, but hey, I was excited.

I was making curry for dinner. I had been looking forwards to it all week, because I knew that it called for fresh basil, and instead of buying it from the grocery store, I was going to use my very own, home-grown stuff. It felt like a milestone, the first time getting an ingredient from the back yard instead of out of a plastic-wrapped styrofoam container.

It also seems so fitting that the first thing we harvested was basil. My Dad is a basil farmer, and for as long as I can remember, summers with him have revolved around basil. If you hug my Dad between the beginning of June and the beginning of September (or later, if it doesn't frost), you'll smell basil, even if he hasn't been to the field that day. The first solid food I ever ate (or so the story goes) was sweet basil pesto. Yesterday, as I stood there grinning and holding those first stalks of basil, I felt very much my like father's daughter.

There is something so magical, and yet also wonderfully simple about eating something you picked moments ago from where it was growing not ten feet away from where you're sitting. I've experienced this before, but it was different this time, with my own garden. I felt proud, but humbled at the same time. Yes, I planted the seeds and tended them, but really, they did all the work. (I still find it hard to believe that the plants I see all came from such tiny little seeds.) I guess grateful would be a good way to sum up how I felt, sitting there in the yard with Alex, eating curry seasoned with lemon basil. Grateful and full of wonder.

Before

After

 

The trick with basil is to cut it right above where two new sets of leaves are coming out. Cutting it this way makes it get nice and big and bushy.

Yummm!

Countdown to flowers.

Yeah...so it's been a while since the last post. No excuses. But I have exciting news! Flowers are immanent! Actually, a few green bean flowers opened this morning, which is super exciting. I don't know if I've seen green bean flowers before, or if I had, I didn't remember them. They're white and sort of tightly curled in on themselves. They kind of look like pea flowers, only not so frilly and delicate.

Other than that, I think there's a nasturtium flower on it's way, and maybe a zinnia. You can bet there will be pictures as soon as those bloom. In other news, the cosmos are huge. The tallest is up to my hip already, which is impressive even if you don't count the ten inches or so it's raised off the ground. No sign of impending flowers yet, though I did notice a little spider living in one of them.

Something is up with my zinnias. I'm not sure if they're being eaten by something, or what, but the lower leaves on some of the plants are getting all brown and spotty, with holes in them in some places. The nasturtiums, too, don't seem fully happy. Some of their lower leaves are turning yellow and dying. At first, I thought maybe they hadn't been getting enough water, but now I think it might be the opposite problem, since I've been watering them thoroughly and if anything, they seem to be getting worse. It's kind of ironic that the two that seem to be having the hardest time right now are also the two that seem closest to flowering, other than the beans. I wonder if it's because they're under stress that they're trying to flower early. I'm not too worried about them; if over-watering doesn't turn out to be the problem, then I still have my parental units, the local garden center, and the internet to turn to for help.

Any advice for what might be going on here?

Actually, I was wrong: the zinnias and nasturtiums aren't the ones that were having the most trouble. That award would go to one of my Islander peppers, which keeled over last week for no apparent reason. It seemed like it was doing ok, though it was definitely smaller than the other one, and growing more slowly. Still, though, it had put out a few sets of leaves, and I hadn't been worried about it. Then one day, it just fell over and shriveled up. I tried reviving it with some water, but that didn't work, and in a surprisingly short period of time it was dead and dry. All the while, the rest of the plants in the bed were doing fine. My Mom suggested that maybe something had come up from underneath it and eaten it's roots or something like that, but there was no hole under it or anything to suggest that that had happened. It remains a mystery.

I finally gave up on the mint and thyme ever coming up. I think I probably just didn't keep them moist enough over their incredibly long germination time. So I started them again, along with a new Islander, in little pots and put them on the window in the kitchen where I can keep a close eye on them.

When Alex came home yesterday, I told him I'd restarted the mint and thyme, to which he answered: "I'm sorry Disa, but you can't restart time. It doesn't work that way!"

My ABC's have had a rather rough ride, or at least the A and B have. In my last post, the arugula and sweet basil had just come up. Then, only a night or two later when they were still very small, we had a big rain storm. Unfortunately, those two pots happened to be sitting on the part of the back steps that is directly under the run-off from the little metal awning that shelters the back door. The next morning when I went to check on everything, I'd mostly been worried about the frilly cosmos. I had assumed that everything on the steps was protected by the awning. Well, it turns out the cosmos were fine, but the baby arugula and sweet basil were flattened.

Poor things! I tried to prop them back up and cover their now exposed roots, but they were all matted down and tangled up with each other. I thought that most, if not all of them would die, and I'd have to start over again, but they once again showed me a plant's amazing will to live (with the exception of Islander peppers, that is...). A few died, I think, but when the sun came out that afternoon, most of them picked themselves up and pointed their faces at the sun. Now they're doing great, though they're no longer in their neat little fairy ring circles. In fact, I have so many tiny basil plants that I'm going to have to thin them out, or they'll get majorly overcrowded.

This is them later that same day, when they were just starting to pick themselves back up again.

This is them now, including the cilantro, which didn't get smooshed by the rain.

 
The garden survived another barbeque without anything being trampled or kicked or hit with a soccer, golf, or football. My potted back step garden survived being played with by a curious two-year-old, who was more interested in getting at the dirt they were planted in than the plants themselves. I have some flowers now, with more on the way, and I might harvest the first of the lemon basil later this week. So all and all, I'd say things are doing pretty well!

Watching the plants grow.

My garden is getting big. The green beans are six inches tall, with the zinnias and cosmos not far behind. The nasturtiums look like some kind of mini Dr. Seuss umbrella plants. Everything seems really happy, with the exception of one of the Red Pearl tomatoes, which I think got nibbled by something and only has one tiny little leaf so far. But it's still growing, so I'm just going to wait and see what happens.

So everything is doing great. And yet, it's not quite exciting now as it was a week or two ago. Satisfying, yes, and still magical, but not quite as exciting. Now when the green beans grow an inch in one day, it doesn't mean they've doubled in size like it did when they first emerged, so I don't notice it as much now. I still find myself walking to the kitchen window to stare at the little plants several times a day, but now its more just to enjoy the sight of them, instead of looking for new growth.

And then there's the mint and thyme, the only two plants that have yet to sprout. I think the mint just didn't germinate for whatever reason, and a few days ago I planted some new seeds. But the thyme takes such a long time to germinate, I can't tell if it's just late, or if I should start again. According to the seed packet, I've just gotten in to the time frame that it's expected to come up. I think, though, if it doesn't come up soon, I'm going to try starting it and the mint in pots, where I can keep a closer eye on them and make sure they're ok. Both have such incredibly tiny seeds and need to be so close to the surface of the soil that I wonder if they just got pushed too deep by the rain or got washed away. So we'll see. I haven't given up yet!

There was one cool new thing that I noticed last week: the garden is moving now. I don't mean that it got up and is walking around (though that would be kind of cool...), but that some of the plants are now big enough to wiggle in the breeze. When all the seedlings were tiny, they didn't really move much, even in the middle of a thunderstorm. But last week I was sitting and watching them, and I noticed that the leaves of the green beans and the zinnias were moving gently when the wind touched them. I don't know why, really, but it struck me as a kind of milestone. They look more alive now. When I peek at them from the kitchen window, it looks like they're waving at me.

"Hi Disa!"

My ABC's are all up now, too. The arugula was first, followed a couple of days later by the sweet basil. The cilantro just came up this morning. I think it's kind of funny that they came up in alphabetical order...

I have an arugula fairy ring!

The little basil sprouts are so familiar to me. Ever since I was tiny, the beginning of summer has been marked by trays and trays of tiny basil plants being readied for planting in my Dad's field. In the seed starting trays he uses, they're so densely packed that they look like moss from a distance. Now I have my own little bunch!

Alex's Dad is here visiting us from Wisconsin. Yesterday he came home from his exploring with a pack of yellow marigolds for me! They're really pretty, and will look really nice with the red marigolds already planted in the garden. Thanks, David!

Yesterday morning I went outside at dawn to look at the garden, and I noticed that the young nasturtiums trap the dew on their leaves in really interesting ways. The water forms perfect little beads that sit delicately at the very edges of the leaves. I spent way too much time taking pictures of them, trying to capture a bit of the magic. Here's some of what I took.

That's all for now! Thanks for being on this adventure with me!

Garden Therapy.

The world is a scary place sometimes. There are lots of things that scare me, including North Korea, brown recluse spiders, tornadoes, American politics, and the fact that my boyfriend is in the military. Yesterday, the world seemed scarier than usual, so, as has become my habit when I'm unhappy, I went outside and sat by the garden, drinking in the sight and feel of living, growing, beautiful things. I honestly think that they're nurturing me just as much as I'm nurturing them. Garden therapy.

I also finally got around to planting my ABC's (arugula, basil, and cilantro). For some reason it had taken me a while to get around to actually filling up the pots and putting in the seeds, but it was ok, because I really needed something simple and comforting and life-giving to do yesterday. There are now so many potted plants on the back step that it almost doesn't function as a way of getting in and out of the house.

The ABC's (from left to right: Arugula, Basil, Cilantro)

The rest of the garden is growing like mad. We had a lot of rain last week, including several days with rainfall amounts of more than one inch. I was worried that the fairly torrential downpour would hurt the fragile-looking baby plants, and the first night it stormed I ventured out twice in my pajamas with a flashlight and an umbrella to check on them. But they actually fared better than my bucket of pansies, who seemed to be living up to their name and got all droopy and sad looking for a day or so after the downpour. (They're better now, don't worry.)

Then yesterday the sun came out, and that combined with well-watered soil makes for happy plants. The peppers have finally emerged, as has the sage. I'm almost positive that the nasturtiums all grew at least a half inch yesterday while I was out running errands. I also finally accepted that my Amish Paste tomato seed probably didn't germinate, so I planted a few new ones, and hopefully these will do better.

Nasturtiums, with the zinnias in the background.

The green beans don't look like monsters anymore.

Cosmos

Earl, the early zinnia that was the first seedling to come up.

Then, as I was threading my way through the potted plants on the steps after taking the above pictures, I found this guy:

He was sitting on the cooler by the back door. I'm assuming it was a he, because he did this:

Just one more beautiful thing in life to appreciate.