A Healer’s Geste

Garden 2011: Greening Up

Things are starting to get exciting! There are blossoms!

Despite our fears that the grapes are just dead sticks (all the vines within a few miles around us — grapes are common here — are full and leafy), there is a new, tiny, sign of life on one stick, at least:

Unfortunately, there’s also loads of other signs of life:

Last year I was positive all my lettuce seed must have spilled and been blown. The leaves are crunchy and look like they should be edible. Now I know this is just what happens to irrigated bare ground.

Speaking of lettuce, though, I’ve had my first small harvest, and we’re almost ready to start getting dinner salads!

My kohlrabi is looking fine.

But I’m having a very hard time telling the beets from the weeds. I’ve never seen beet plants before, and to me their leaves and one of our common weeds look very similar. I’m pretty sure I’ve pulled up beets unintentionally. The red factor isn’t helping me out, because I planted mostly a yellow beet variety.

There are signs of another sort of life, of course:

And I am now on a rolly-poly eradication mission. One evening I caught 6 little guys chomping away at a new seedling. That definitely explains the disappearance of my seedlings — herbs & beans, mostly. Ugh! In researching the matter, I found out they will eat strawberries, too, so now I’m furious. Our rolly-poly population is gigantic (I am blaming the lasagna layering of wet newspaper…every bottom layer all across the garden was covered with baby bugs), and I will not have my beautiful strawberries wasted on them. I had to take back my initial statement about said bug to the children: “Nevermind. They are not cute and friendly. They must all die!”

But in better news, my four-year-old parsnip seeds germinated after all, so we’ll have some parsnips in the fall!

And despite the bugs, I still do have a few herbs:

As far as I can tell, though, the sorrel and basil is gone. I’ve started a second round of sorrel and might just try getting a nursery basil whenever the grocery stores start clearancing out their herbs.

I’m very excited. I am actually feeling rather fond of my garden and my land, and enjoy even getting down and weeding and messing with the plants. Who would have guessed?!