Garden update

I came back from my weekend out and I can't say I ran straight to my mini-greenhouse to see what had happened - I do have children to check in with first - but it was one of the first things I did, certainly. (I did water the front garden before coming up so as to avoid a riot of small children wanting to be outside playing in the mud.)

The nasturtiums outside were still alive, more or less. Which is to say that they weren't killed by drying out over the unusually-hot weekend, but several of them were eaten. I'd had to come back late Saturday night to pick up my prescriptions, and as we drove down the street an opossum crossed in front of us. Now I don't know if I'm just not accustomed to opossums and this is the normal way they walk, but I have to tell you that that thing did not look to me as if it were moving the way God intended. He waddled. That doesn't quite capture the motion I saw, but I couldn't begin to describe it otherwise. I could be wrong, but what I believe we had here was a case of an obese possum. At any rate, obese or not, that opossum is my best guess as far as what's been happening to people's gardens along my street (a neighbor has hostas that are munched down to the ground).

There was no sign of the spinach, lettuce or carrots last night, but I did see some sprouts while watering this morning. And no more nasturtiums have gone the way of the possum, so that's good at least. None of the remaining nasturtium seeds seem to be sprouting, so I may have to spread the plants that I have around a little to make up for what got eaten.

When I did check my greenhouse, things were looking good! The basil - actually out of the greenhouse now - is growing well. The chamomile is too, and they had the chamomile plants outside at the greenhouse store this weekend, so I'm considering hardening them off and planting them. The parsley is growing well, although no more new sprouts have emerged, and the Greek oregano is starting to show its face.

We never did wind up trimming any blueberry bushes at all, but we did make it over to my other friend's to work on the garden plot. It's communal in nature; too much work for one person by herself (particularly with two young children), but a light bit of fun for a bunch of friends together. We raked and, though we tilled by hand, between three people, we managed to get half of the original plot softened up and preliminarily weeded.

By that time we stopped only because we had a jones on to get something in the ground. So my boyfriend and I ran to a greenhouse store not too far away - Brookside Nursery on Route 67 - on the basis that it appeared not to be a chain. It turned out we're too early for the tomatoes I envisioned popping into the soil, and in fact most of the herbs I bought too, but we bought them anyway since we'd only have to keep them inside for another two weeks or so.

My friend had told me that she was a "fresh herb freak," so I bought everything that struck my fancy without feeling too bad about it. Besides, the plants were three for $7. Why not? We bought rosemary, sage, thyme, tarragon, regular oregano, and something called "Greek columnar basil." We also picked up two grape tomato plants - we'll buy more varieties later - and seeds for carrots, broccoli, and bush zucchini.

Tuesday night I'll go to my friend's again to start planting. I can hardly wait!