Plays With Dirt: What's new in my garden?

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

What's new in my garden?

Good intentions notwithstanding, I've been away from this garden communication for way too long. My New Year's resolution (Rosh Hashonah is around the corner) is to regularly share my garden escapades with the one or two people who remain interested (mom, husband...). Here are my topic promises for the next few days:

Why did I pull out all the flowers from my raised beds?
How did this year's Ratatouille garden grow?
What's up with Beach Plum jam/jelly?
Current greenhouse events
My dreams of a rooftop garden...

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Welcome to my garden blog

I bring to my garden, and hopefully to this blog, an exuberance about dirty hands. Someone once pointed out to me that the difference between those who are passionate about working in the garden, and those who are not, is that the former think that dirt smells wonderful, while the latter do not realize that dirt has any odor at all. Those who share my passion for getting very dirty, smelling (or, on occasion, tasting) the earth, rejoicing upon the return of the earthworms, planning the year's garden, reading catalogs, and generally obsessing about the outdoors will find a kindred spirit here. Those who are glad when November arrives to enjoy a well-deserved rest, but who begin to get restless in January and who have seeds ordered by February, will also find companionship here. You will not learn studied technique here. I do what works and, when I remember, try to do it again. Part of the purpose of this blog is to help me remember from which vendor I ordered wonderful seeds, which purveyor sent smaller-than-expected seedlings, and how things looked throughout the season. I would like to have seen, for the last time, a wonderful perennial that I started from seed, and has now taken over, but whose tag is lost so that I have no idea what it is. Next year, and for years to come, I can review my previous years' blogs for pictures and descriptions.

I hope you enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy my garden.

About me

I'm a busy workaholic with two grown children. My husband and I live with our big yellow Labradors, Rufus Griffin and Zeke (short for Ezekiel, the prophet who saw bones --- get it?), in a sort-of-rural suburban community just North of Wilmington, Delaware. Several years ago I was complaining to my world's-most-wonderful husband that my aging bones would no longer allow me to putter around my unkempt and unruly garden that was, in any case, being rapidly overrun by smartweed. Without missing a beat he proposed that for this year's birthday (a BIG round number) he would have my dream garden built to my specifications. Yes, the dream garden...English stone walls, trellises, tuteurs, raised stone beds, pea gravel paths between the beds, a small area for naturalized bulbs and sunflowers, and (drumroll), a greenhouse.

My garden is beautiful and perfect. That I am no longer impressed by any of the Philly flower show displays is more a statement of the leanings of my mind's eye than it is of the reality of the matter. Let's face it: like one's children, the garden is perfect only to me. But that's all that counts.

When I'm in my garden I measure my enjoyment by the number of milliseconds it takes for me to forget the pressures of the workday: usually less than five. When I'm 100 years old in some smelly nursing home I'm sure that I'll have a paper cup filled with dirt at my bedside. If I'm very lucky, it will have a flower in it.