Garden Chaos

You'd think with being home most of the time, my garden would be a little more tended to than it actually is. Fortunately, since we went the square foot gardening route, there has been virtually no weeding to do. Picking off bugs and grasshoppers has been surprisingly minimal.
I should have been doing a better job of pruning and staking. There are pepper plants buried under mounds of tomato vines.

The strawberries and beans and cilantro succombed to 114 degree heat. I planted late so we are now getting tomatoes, peppers, and zuccini. Looks like cantaloupe and watermelon soon too. We've had lots of cucumbers but for some reason most were too bitter to use unless doused in lime juice and hot sauce. I got tired of radishes so stopped replanting those. I pulled everything in that bed to get ready for our fall planting.

Not sure what happened to the corn there. It started out strong then just gave up.

I have one more bed to plant in but it doesn't have soil yet. Kinda ran out of time and money before I got to that one. I wanted to add some taller beds for root veggies too but might have to save that for next year.

Well, I've learned some things but not enough yet to get all that I wanted out of the garden this year. It gets really hot here so I need to figure out the best timing for planting. Definitely starting early next year and all of the kids want their own beds so I'm going to make a few smaller ones so they can each have their own to plant and tend whatever they want. More flowers would be nice too. Our landscaping is a little heavy on the palm trees and ornamental grass and not enough color but we have to find hardy, low-water varieties that will also survive our nippy winters. I'm used to San Diego non-weather and still need to figure out what grows best here besides the weeds and scrubby shrubs that adorn our local hills and and mountains.

Toasty

The temperature is 110 today. Dry-up casualties include the strawberry plants, Gerbera daisies, string beans, onions, and my sinuses. I think the strawberries will recover.

Squeaker had what must have been heat-induced insanity this afternoon when, instead of getting on the school bus she ditched and left school property to apparently walk to a boy's house. The driver of another bus spotted her and stopped but she refused to get on the bus. I got a call from a teacher, the bus driver, and later the summer school principal and had to go find her.

I thought she would run the other way when she saw the car but she came straight to the car and got in (a little warmed by walking in the heat wearing long sleeves, perhaps?).

I have not said anything to her about it yet but have required her to sit at either the kitchen table or living room couch so I can keep an eye on her. She'll have to be within an arm's reach of me all weekend which will stink for her tomorrow since it's Foster Family Picnic day and there's lots of fun stuff to run around and do for kids who don't have to be within an arm's reach of mom.

Come to think of it, it will probably stink for me too.

"Get Used to Disappointment"

I stand corrected. My S.C. buddy reminded me of the above Princess Bride quote, suitable for all occasions but certainly apropos of my yard upkeep as of late.

Thanks again, E. I can always count on you to fill in my many gaps.

If at First You Don't Succeed Spend, Spend Again OR A Sucker's Work is Never Done OR "Then I'll Do It Myself", Said the Little Red Hen. And She Did

All three of the above misquotes were said by me or Ana this weekend as we again spent way too much time on the lawn, sweating and sun-burned as the weather took a turn for the "holy-cow-is-it-hot-or-what?". (Okay it was me. Ana did all the heavy work and my contribution was mostly in the form of grumpy comments. Too bad no quotes from Princess Bride were applicable. Always disappointing when we can't work one in.)

Our (ir)regular gardener flaked out and, even though he did great work, he was just too iffy in reliability and other areas anyway. So we paid some other guy to fertilize and seed the lawn.

Here's where the "sucker" part comes in. The fertilizer was too mulchy and was smothering the grass so we've spent hours raking it off our brownish lawn. Of course, the guy does not return phone calls. So this weekend we also re-seeded. I can't believe how much we've babied this grass for it too look so shabby. We've now thrown enough "green" at it that it's got a lot of nerve to be so tan and crunchy (okay, there's the "spend" part). We have now vowed to never hire anybody again to do anything in the yard. (I'm sure you caught that...it's the hen part).

We also got the materials needed to build our garden in the back replacing more pointless grass. The guy at the home fix-it store complained that we gave him a work out cutting all those boards. They are kind of heavy. I've been schlepping them around the yard for a few days now. I have more than half of the beds built and we all are eagerly looking forward to growing our own food with the help of the square-foot gardener and our buddy from South Carolina who Amazoned the book to us. (Thanks, E!)

I promise, no more snivelling about the lawn and I will seriously look into cutting back on use of parentheses in future posts.