Good, growing, green.

I promise this is only a very short paragraph of exposition before I get into what y’all actually want to read, and to make up for it, that bit is a bit longer than usual. :)))))

I was on a mini roadtrip of sorts over Memorial Day weekend. My brother, his wife, and I spent a night in Charleston, West Virginia (and had a life changing breakfast at First Watch) before making our way to Lexington, Kentucky where we spent two days enjoying great food, a Hocus Pocus Airbnb, and the celebration of my cousins marriage (and exploring their gorgeous property, life goals seriously). On Monday, we hopped up to Cincinnati to see some baby hippos (Fritz and Fiona!) before hightailing it home. Little did I (or anyone) know at the time, I managed to survive quite a long, hot, painful couple of days with a full blown case of the plague (not the bubonic one, the current one).

All told, I lost ten days in the garden to Kentucky (expected) and then the subsequent Covid (unexpected). That may not seem like a lot, but time gets real weird in the garden, especially right after planting. There were tons of weeds, lots of new growth to inspect, and lots of labor to put in. In the hopes of not getting too far behind, yesterday (after testing negative!) I asked my dear friend Sarah if she wanted to come over to help me catch up on some garden work. And boy, did we! So let’s get into it.

I technically had my first harvest of the year! They were just radishes, and I didn’t actually do anything with them. But a harvest is a harvest! Something(s) chomped on a good portion of them, and I took a bite just to see how they tasted. Those were peppery little bastards! Into the compost pile they go, soz.

Cleaning up the radishes left plenty of room to take a good look at the melons, which seem very happy so far! Originally I wanted to make an A-Frame trellis for that bed, but I ended up with a much more aesthetically pleasing pyramid one! I have thinner reeds of bamboo that I will be tying on as needed as the melons grow. I am interested to see how this ends up working out, but I have high hopes. The top left one might not do too hot, but that’s okay. That’s what backup melons are for. (???????)

Speaking of improvising trellises…I don’t know what I had planned for the cucumbers, but it wasn’t this, and it wouldn’t have worked as well as this. Like, I really cannot believe how perfectly this worked out. It’s not the prettiest, and I hope the neighbors aren’t weird about it. But dang. Lucked out with this one. The cucumbers are also coming along quite well, and even had some flowers that I had to nip (so they can put their energy into establishing healthy growth and roots rather than fruiting). The netting they will be growing in also happens to be dual purpose for some sweet potatoes! Which, to be honest I don’t have super high hopes for? I planted them in quite the hurry just before leaving for Kentucky (literally the morning of lmao) and they’re looking rough. But we’ll see.

Going back the other direction, I think I’m going to be drowning in zuccs this year, which I’m not really complaining about. My husband might, though. Both plants already have a couple of babies on them. I am debating whether or not to clip them so I can start training the plants into a tree rather than a bush, but I still have a couple of days to decide. Bad news about them though is that I already have to replant my eggplants because my Galaxy of Stars was wayyyy too close and is completely shaded by the zucc. The other plants in that bed (peppers pepeprs peppers peppos) are doing well and getting either nice and tall or weird and bushy. My one mystery pepper is going a little wackadoodle, but that’s okay. As a bonus, the companion plant that I definitely thought was chamomile was actually a poppy! So now I have one of those in the bed and I have no idea what to do about it. That’s a problem for “next-weekend-Caroline”.

And then we have this year’s chaos bed. First year was the right hand bed, because I planted a Big Max pumpkin without realizing it was a Big Max pumpkin and that bitch literally grew INTO THE NEIGHBOR’S TREE. Second year it was the middle bed, because everything in there died and then the other two beds grew into it. This year, it’s the left hand bed, because nothing is coming up at the proper time and now there’s replacement eggplants in there too.

I admittedly did a pretty bad job direct sowing that bed, but some things are thankfully still growing. The corn is coming up slowly but surely and mystery beans are popping up. They might be green beans or they might be dry beans, I’m not sure. But I did throw some more seeds in because fuck it. Either way, I don’t think I’m getting snap peas this year, at least not in summer. Not sure where they went, but I just never saw them germinate. Good news is the acorn squash looks really good, and I think I’m gonna end up cutting it down to one plant, especially now that the eggplant is there. While we wait on the corn, I’ve put a tomato cage and some spare bamboo in to give the beans something to climb.

Hold tight, just a little bit more!

The grape vine is doing so good. I still don’t think I’m getting grapes this year, but every year is getting better. The raspberry, however….well, I don’t think I did a good job of keeping it watered because a bunch of it died. It should probably also be repotted. But while it was so dry, I had the delight of finding that a freakin ANT COLONY MADE THEIR HOME IN THE POT and when I tell y’all I screamed and dropped the whole bush….oops. Thankfully Sarah knocked them off for me and then I took a surprising amount of joy drowning those bitches out.

While I was building the trellises, Sarah put in quite a bit of work weeding the new fairy garden. It’s this perfect little spot in the corner of the yard where our gutters drain. It stays nicely shaded so there’s plenty of nice soft moss, and there’s even painted ferns sneaking their way over from the neighbor’s garden! She also tastefully placed some old glass bottles I stole from the woods by my husband’s childhood home (old dumping ground, there’s hundreds of them). I’m not sure what other plans I have for that spot, but I am excited to see how it evolves over the next few years.

And last but not least, I want to take a second to talk about the front garden.

It. Has. Exploded. I don’t even know where to start. There’s like nine colors of dianthus in there. Sudden forget-me-nots. Even more sudden giant fucking coreopsis bush. Seriously, I have no idea where it came from, but I think it was leftover from the previous homeowner’s garden, and I had just accidentally killed it the past couple of years. The front garden is an EXPLOSION of color and I am so, so in love. This is exactly what I wanted, to be honest. I just wanted color color color and so many flowers and happy pollinators and I got just that! I do think it’s going to take some work to maintain it that way, so I have cautious optimism about this season. The dianthus will need to be thinned soon , and I should probably try to keep the coreopsis out of my neighbor’s garden. And the hostas just need to GO. There’s still a lot of time left to see what else shows up in there from the wildflower mixes. But until then, I will be basking in the utter chaos of color.

And a quick note on chaos in general - I love that, too. I always try to stress the fact that I absolutely do not know what I am doing in the garden. I am by NO MEANS a professional, and I am a hobbyist at best. Sure, I know a few things about how to care for what I’m doing, but I don’t go into it knowing exactly how the season is going to play out. But I think that’s half the fun! I’ve taken a lot of hard blows already this year and so so many (and worse) in years before. Every year I learn so many new things, and every following year I use that knowledge to do better. Like this year, I’m being ridiculously proactive about mildew infections, and I am taking steps like better trellising and careful fungicide application to hopefully prevent it this year. I’ve already learned this year that I don’t really like using the Roman looking cup planters anymore, and they will be moving to the front porch for annuals in the future. I also still don’t have spacing down, and I need to be a lot better about mulching for water conservation (getting straw this weekend). Rolling with the punches is hard, especially when trying to go food. The heartbreak over losing so much last year hit really hard, and still kinda hurts. But I roll with them anyway, and I use it to get better. Plants are gonna do what plants are gonna do. May as well let that chaos reign and nurture it while I can.

Before I go, I wanted to give a shoutout to yesterday’s helper. To just have Sarah in the yard with me while I did the complicated stuff and she weeded was so so sweet. I’m a big fan of body doubling, but knowing Sarah genuinely enjoyed helping and has as much love for my garden as I do meant so much more. It is annoyingly unnecessarily hard to ask for help sometimes. I hate that I was out of commission for so long that I had to ask for help with my dumb little hobby garden. But there Sarah was at like 10 am, strawberry apricot (best flavor) Red Bull in hand, ready to put in some work and just vibe with me. It was worth it to ask for help because she didn’t make it feel like help, she made it feel like just another normal hangout with the added bonus of touching grass. She’s a great friend and compassionate spirit, and I just had to give her a little shoutout for helping me get here. Also, I’m pretty sure Duder loves her more than he loves us.

Which leads me to the sappy wrap up for this post. To come back to such lush beauty after a week from hell really hit me hard, in a good way. I can’t believe that over the winter months I managed to forget how all of this made me feel. Gardening is absolutely wild. You’re telling me I can take these little pips, throw them in dirt and make sure they get wet every once in awhile, and it will make good smells? And food?? And actual, touchable, real, wild beauty??? In reality it’s obviously way more complicated than that (I will murder any squash bug and burn every spot of mildew to the fucking ground), but holy shit you guys. The feeling of cultivating, nurturing, growing something from the very beginning to the very end is like no other I’ve ever felt.

I am a firm believer that gardening and growing and the nature of nature is one of the purest forms of magic we can find in this world. And every time I remember that, I love it even more.