Pardon My French

State of the Garden Address

So. I spent an entire month in Virginia and just ask me how much time I devoted to absorbing garden knowledge from my parents. I know, I know; it's just sad. Granted, their entire veggie garden is surrounded by an electric fence (deer issues) which makes it a little difficult to just pop in and walk up and down the rows, but still...

Thus I have returned to my own tiny plot none the wiser but still determined to grow food. Initially I put in 8 tiny tomato plants, thinking not all of them would survive. I chose not to prune the suckers, whatever those things are, because I once read in a book that I didn't technically have to. Those 8 tomato plants are now looking wildly out of control, but I'm managing to keep them upright thanks to some spare yarn I had around the house. Right now my plan of attack is to water and pray.

It's amazing how many weeds can grow in one months' time. Seriously. When I left, I had carefully nurtured some leeks, sunflowers, and sweet peas, but upon my homecoming they were nowhere to be found and uninvited guests were growing in their place. My mint and parsley had flowered, and now I'm trying to figure out what I should do with those. As far as happy surprises go, the clematis in the front yard is blooming again along with one I didn't even know about in the back yard. So that's good.

The biggest news is that we finally ordered a garden shed from England, it has arrived, and my husband is working hard at assembling the thing. It does take up a significant chunk of garden in a prime sunlight location, but there's no getting around the fact that we need some storage space. Once that's installed, I hope to work on enlarging some of the beds and getting rid of that gravel, to which I still just cannot see any benefit. I have to weed it, it's a pain in the rear to try to sit on, it gets stuck in my shoes and we track it in the house, and doesn't prevent mud. Ack.

And the really big news is that once we get rid of that horrid stuff, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to try to get grass to grow in its place and might opt for a terrace instead. In the end, we'd have a workable "backyard" area more quickly and with a lot less effort. I'll get my green fix with more plants in containers and am going to work on maximizing the little actual gardening space I have. I've spent a lot of time agonizing over what to do with my patch of land that in all probability is about the size of my parents' living room and this just makes the most sense at the moment. I know I should post a picture of it in its current state, what with the shed-in-progress, patchy, weed-filled gravel, unruly tomato plants next to flowering mint, and giant pile of dirt smack dab in the middle, but I'm just too ashamed. Y'all would definitely think I'm crazy for spending so much time writing about it.