Update from the Reluctant Gardener

While we are rushing around doing birthday celebrations and such, God is blessing the Common Household vegetable garden, which consists of six plants in pots on the deck.  What a pleasant surprise to see flowers on the tomato plants! 

 

Promise of future cherry tomatoes

For several years we have planted peppers plants but not once have I seen a pepper grow.  This year I’m trying jalapenos.  So far, no evidence of pepper progeny.

Alas, the marigolds met an untimely death, due to neglect.

The miracle is this lettuce plant.  At the farmer’s market, I bought what I thought was a head of red-leaf lettuce.  But it turned out to be in a little pot, actually still growing in actual dirt.  This was the best thing ever – whenever I wanted to make a salad (which I do almost every day) I just pulled off a few leaves from my lettuce plant.   I used up one plant in one week, which meant it was time to go back to the farmer’s market to buy another one. 

New tasty lettuce leaves are growing!
Now the trick is to make sure the attack rabbits don't
come up onto the deck and steal them.

Here’s the miracle.  My friend (who is knowledgeable about many things, especially plants) said, “Just put last week’s lettuce plant outside.  If you left the root in the soil, it will probably grow more lettuce leaves.”  Now “just put it outside” is a gardening instruction that I can follow.  I practically threw that pot with the spent lettuce out on the deck.   And it is indeed growing new leaves! 

In the front yard, tragedy struck.  Someone, probably a lyme-disease-tick-carrying ungulate, ate all the buds off one of my balloon flower plants.  In retaliation, paying no heed to the fact our neighbor was having a huge party, I went out yesterday and stunk up the whole neighborhood by liberally spraying Liquid Fence, which smells like rotten eggs + wolf urine. 

Applying Liquid Fence has become trickier than it used to be.  The spray nozzle got a strategically placed hole in it, which means that some of the Liquid Fence comes out sideways, rather than straightforward.  I have to be very careful to stand to the left of the bottle when I spray, or no one will ever want to sit next to me in the movie theater ever again.   Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I couldn’t get anyone in the family to go see “Far From the Madding Crowd” with me.