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Catching up with the outdoors...
My only clear memory of gardening from my youth was the time my stepfather planted something on the order of fifty tomato plants in the middle of our spacious back yard in New York. Whatever other differences he and I may have had, a love of tomatoes was not one of them.
We had a bountiful harvest, so much so that my stepfather—who hated to see perfectly good tomatoes go to waste—even sent me over to the house of our neighbor—who my stepfather despised with a passion—with several salad bowls full of the fruit. I also distinctly recall how he carefully scraped seeds from those tomatoes (oh! those tomatoes!) onto a pane of glass, with the idea of replanting them again the next year.
Alas, that was not to happen, for reasons unknown to me. By that time, I was at the university, and minimized the time I spent at home. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I found that pane of glass, with those 40-year old seeds still stuck to its surface, squirreled away in the corner of the basement when I was going through my parents' effects after my stepdad died in 2007. It didn't even occur to me to try to germinate any of them.
The next time I buried my fingers in the ground was after Galina and I had bought our first home in Jacksonville, Florida. If truth be told, I did little other than plant the seeds and seedlings; the rest just happened. We had tomatoes, and squash, and beans, and dill in abundance. It was a very good year or two, until eventually we moved to a bigger house and I, at least, became too busy to occupy myself with gardening.
And so that particular itch was left unscratched, even after moving to Colorado, where the soil (what soil? we lived on a shale outcrop), the short planting season, and the wildlife (which ate anything that did manage to grow) conspired to keep my mind on other, more practical endeavors.
Last fall, I gave in to the urge and bought a couple of tomato seedlings locally, and by all rights, the yield—two or three small tomatoes, depending on your definition of "tomato"—should have caused me to swear off any notion of doing any gardening around these parts.
And but for the fact that the little stubs of those plants survived what passes for winter locally and began to sprout leaves, I probably would have, but seeing those leaves... just made me wonder if there might be a percentage in trying to grow a "containerized" garden.
The result thus far is here:
In the foreground, in the brown pot, are some mint stalks that I uprooted yesterday and repotted with some soil. I did this not long ago in Pagosa, and the mint lived up to its reputation as a weed ("a plant that's almost impossible to kill and growing where you don't want it to"), and I'm hoping to repeat this feat here in Texas.
Behind the mint is a green pot of fennel, behind which is a small tomato plant that started life as a limb torn off of a tomato plant. Behind that plant are two "senior" tomato plants, with some fruit already turning yellowish on the way to red.
Behind the tomatoes and not visible in the picture is a small patch of spaghetti squash that I planted as a lark. If something comes of it, great; if not, no biggie.
All in all, it's "so far, so good," quoting the character played by Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven.
* * * If you live in this part of the country for any length of time, you cannot help but notice all of the small lizards that dart from place to place. They camouflage themselves well, and the local crowd is split between those that choose to look like wood (or brick) and those that want to look like plant life.
So there I was, sitting quietly earlier this evening, just enjoying the end of the day (and contemplating another 500-word slug of work before stopping work for the day), when this character:
draws my attention by doing a series of what look to be three or four lizard pushups (head and shoulders jerking up and down), and the next thing I see is this:
Yeow! The little fellow is definitely trying to say something, for sure!
When I showed the photo to Galina, she sort of shrugged and said, "Haven't you ever seen that before?"
"No," I said.
"You must not be very observant," she said, "but I love you anyway!"
How can I complain?
Cheers...
We had a bountiful harvest, so much so that my stepfather—who hated to see perfectly good tomatoes go to waste—even sent me over to the house of our neighbor—who my stepfather despised with a passion—with several salad bowls full of the fruit. I also distinctly recall how he carefully scraped seeds from those tomatoes (oh! those tomatoes!) onto a pane of glass, with the idea of replanting them again the next year.
Alas, that was not to happen, for reasons unknown to me. By that time, I was at the university, and minimized the time I spent at home. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I found that pane of glass, with those 40-year old seeds still stuck to its surface, squirreled away in the corner of the basement when I was going through my parents' effects after my stepdad died in 2007. It didn't even occur to me to try to germinate any of them.
The next time I buried my fingers in the ground was after Galina and I had bought our first home in Jacksonville, Florida. If truth be told, I did little other than plant the seeds and seedlings; the rest just happened. We had tomatoes, and squash, and beans, and dill in abundance. It was a very good year or two, until eventually we moved to a bigger house and I, at least, became too busy to occupy myself with gardening.
And so that particular itch was left unscratched, even after moving to Colorado, where the soil (what soil? we lived on a shale outcrop), the short planting season, and the wildlife (which ate anything that did manage to grow) conspired to keep my mind on other, more practical endeavors.
Last fall, I gave in to the urge and bought a couple of tomato seedlings locally, and by all rights, the yield—two or three small tomatoes, depending on your definition of "tomato"—should have caused me to swear off any notion of doing any gardening around these parts.
And but for the fact that the little stubs of those plants survived what passes for winter locally and began to sprout leaves, I probably would have, but seeing those leaves... just made me wonder if there might be a percentage in trying to grow a "containerized" garden.
The result thus far is here:
In the foreground, in the brown pot, are some mint stalks that I uprooted yesterday and repotted with some soil. I did this not long ago in Pagosa, and the mint lived up to its reputation as a weed ("a plant that's almost impossible to kill and growing where you don't want it to"), and I'm hoping to repeat this feat here in Texas.
Behind the mint is a green pot of fennel, behind which is a small tomato plant that started life as a limb torn off of a tomato plant. Behind that plant are two "senior" tomato plants, with some fruit already turning yellowish on the way to red.
Behind the tomatoes and not visible in the picture is a small patch of spaghetti squash that I planted as a lark. If something comes of it, great; if not, no biggie.
All in all, it's "so far, so good," quoting the character played by Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven.
So there I was, sitting quietly earlier this evening, just enjoying the end of the day (and contemplating another 500-word slug of work before stopping work for the day), when this character:
draws my attention by doing a series of what look to be three or four lizard pushups (head and shoulders jerking up and down), and the next thing I see is this:
Yeow! The little fellow is definitely trying to say something, for sure!
When I showed the photo to Galina, she sort of shrugged and said, "Haven't you ever seen that before?"
"No," I said.
"You must not be very observant," she said, "but I love you anyway!"
How can I complain?
Cheers...