Gardening: The good, the bad, and the oh-so-gross...

The garden has now officially been in for about a month now, and I am daily amazed by the progress that has taken place in terms of growth.  Everyday when I wake up I rush outside to check on my babies.  And for the past few weeks, I am greeted each dawn with a new surprise awaiting for me in one of my precious vegetable beds.  At first it was just a tiny sprout or two peeking out of the earth.  But as days go by, I'm seeing more and more growth... from tomato plants that have literally quadrupled in size, to tiny peppers that are beginning to peek out from the dying bloom petals that surround them.  My neighbors probably think I am a total freak... the woman with the ugly gardening shoes who not only visits her plants regularly, but pets them and talks to them by name.  (It helps them grow.  I swear).

But sadly, along with all the wonder and beauty that has come from my garden, there is some sad and bad stuff as well.  

Did you know that plants die?  Yeah.  They do.  Like if you over water them... or don't water them enough... they can't survive.  Or if the little tag on their pot says that they are a "full sun" plant, and you put them in the most ridiculously shady corner of your garden... they die.  Or when your child thinks he is helping you garden and proceeds to carry around your precious potted berry plants, only to trip and topple and fall onto the wee little baby plant, thus smashing every little living cell out of it... they die.

Oh.  And plants get bugs, too.  Lots of bugs.  And bugs loves plants.  Love to eat them, that is.  Yeah.  Bugs are jerks.

And so are weeds.

But even with all the hard work that has gone into creating and tending to this wee little garden, I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I love being out in the backyard, Popeye or Swee'Pea often by my sad, working the dirt and the earth and the soil with my hands.  I love that I know every new leaf that forms and every new blossom that blooms.  I love that I feel energetic and happy when I am in my garden, and the way the stress and anxiety and worries of life just melt away.  I love how I have learned so much about myself and nature through this process, and how I can identify without aid the smells and textures of leaves that belong to tomato, pepper, and squash plants.  I love that I can distinguish the difference between the first sprouts of a wee carrot and the first sprouts of a hideous weed.

There is something intoxicating about gardening.  Hm.  Must be all that crazy Vitamin D I'm getting from the sun.  

Can you see the difference that just a few weeks makes?  Check out the pictures I posted before!

Doesn't that leaf look amazing?!  These things are growing by the second.  I'm hoping I get some nice blooms soon... and then it will be time for the actual veggies and then it is MONTHS AND MONTHS OF ZUCCHINI BREAD!!!

Isn't that wee little bell pepper the cutest thing you've ever seen!?  It is about the size of a thimble now!

Mmmm.  Orange blossoms.  I can't get enough of them!

Funny thing about this rouge little sprout is that we didn't even plant it there!  As you can tell, it is obviously not growing at the same rate as the pumpkin plants in the mound next to it, so it hasn't been there very long.  My suspicion is that a bird ate one of the planted seeds from our mounds, and then did his birdie doodie business and it landed in the garden.  We aren't going to pick it, we want to see what it turns out to be.  If it is from our garden, it will be either a pumpkin, a zucchini, or a yellow squash.  We shall see!

Check out my last gardening post and see what is different about this bed... I hope you notice a difference, because I worked for SIX STRAIGHT HOURS on Tuesday digging out four big bushes and working the ground until it was nice and soft.  I added some FST (don't ask me what that stands for, all I know is that is helping our soil to go from super alkaline to more neutral) and worked in some mulch.  I'm hoping to fit in at least six boysenberry shoots along with the two raspberry plants and the two blueberry bushes.  Blueberries like extremely acidic soil, so I'm still playing around to see how I can get the soil in their area more acidic than in the rest without hurting the other plants.  We shall see how it goes... all I know is that a year or two from now, I'm going to be dining on berries, baby!

A sad but oh-so-necessary part of gardening... thinning.  I had to thin my pumpkins and my zucchini this week and it was oh-so-depressing.  I know that it is for the good of the plants but ay ay ay.  It makes me sad to see a beautiful wee plant that was a seed just a few weeks ago be ripped from its warm comfy mound of dirt and be tossed into the green waste bin along with old grass clippings and piles of weeds.  Sniff sniff.  I'm sorry, dear sweet squash sprouts.  We will miss you!

Gross, gross, double gross.  I had an infestation of aphids and caterpillars all over my orange tree.  I'm talking HUGE caterpillars, and they splooge nasty gross slime ALL OVER the leaves.  It was horrid.  They are horrid and nasty and AWEFUL.  I had to pick over a dozen off of my leaves... and they had already destroyed several areas of the tree.  This picture is actually a leaf that looks decent, some were completely eaten away by the time I found the caterpillars!!!  GROSS.

I have more to blog about but I am exhausted and have a busy day of sewing and such to do tomorrow.  Spring break is almost over (sniff, sniff) and I have SO enjoyed it.  I've gardened and baked, baked and gardened, made jams and journaled, and baked and gardened some more.  I know I've only been back to work for two and a half days, but I'm already counting down the minutes until summer when I'm free to spend time doing what I love most....

...ahhhh.  This is going to be a fabulous summer.