The Family *roll » Garden

The Garden

emjcarroll — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:06:07 +0000

When we first moved in, one of my priorities was to fix up the front garden, which, at the time, was best described as a thistle patch. I took a great deal of care choosing a handful of perennials and grasses and grandly told people “I’m planting a garden”. Torontonians and Chicagoans would murmur approvingly but Minnesotans would ask “flower or vegetable?”. I felt, somehow, that “flower” was the wrong answer.

This year, we’re doing it right. Dan and I built a 4×5 raised bed vegetable garden and planted arugula, kohlrabi, eggplants, zucchini, bell and hot peppers and cucumber. Then I decided it would be neat to have pumpkins for Eleanor at Halloween so I made a little brick annex to plant a pumpkin and buttercup squash vine. Then we decided we needed a rhubarb patch. Then our first rhubarb patch site became too shady (despite clear warnings on the rhubarb seed package advising us to be mindful of not planting in an area where tree branches will obscure the sun as the summer progresses). So we then relocated the rhubarb to the side of the house. And then a neighbor gave us three tomato plants which we planted next to the house.

So in some ways we’re not really doing it right at all: we have too many plants and we aren’t completely certain of their watering, fertilizing, sun or space needs. I checked out a book from the library but it completely overwhelmed Dan and I by page 5 so we’re being guided by (baseless but firm) instincts, slapdash Google searches (“why do zucchinis die?”, “how do eggplants grow?”) and the patient tutelage of Dan and Bonnie. I won’t bore you with a full crop report but I am happy to report we’ve eaten *roll-grown kohlrabi, arugula and cucumbers. And our cucumber harvest is such that we’re going to try to make pickles. Pickles!

Here is a brief photo tour of the vegetable with thrilling before-and-after shots of the front garden:

: Cucumbers for the pickling. And eating.

: 3 kinds of tomatoes given to us by kindly neighbor.

: Buttercup squash

: Zucchini

: Kohlrabi

The flower box before & after: The first shot is from the day we first saw the house (the box collapsed by the time we moved in) and the second shot is after Dan and Ryan cleared the thistles.I planted all the flowers from seed except for the purple amaranthus. I had no idea they would get so big. Clearly no idea at all.

Before:

After:


The side garden before and after. Note the removal of 2 satellite dishes, one fence and stump. Note also removal of giant baby belly.

Before:

After:

The great dandelion massacre of ’10.

dmjg — Fri, 14 May 2010 02:58:07 +0000

“We ordered a push mower yesterday after reading a lot of glowing Amazon reviews and receiving reassurance from a neighbor that a push mower will do us just fine. It’s due to arrive tomorrow. I don’t know how long we’ll last without a gas mower and if a push mower is the ultimate in hippie hubris or what. Place your bets now.” — Emily, August 11th, 2009.

So, did you place your bets? Because we have moved to a gas mower. We were happy with the push mower. It did a great job last summer and it provided some nice exercise. What we didn’t know last August, however, was what our lawn would like come spring. The answer is on offer in the right half of this picture:

Right side: pre-mower. Left-side: post-mower. Worth every penny.

The push mower literally couldn’t cut it. The dandelions glided under the blades unharmed, mockingly jumping up intact behind the mower. We couldn’t bear it. So we caved and bought a gas mower. As you can see from the left half of the picture, it does the job. Next year, we will have the new gas beast in hand before the dandelions turn white and, as their last act, spread their seed far and wide as the mower cuts them down. I should add that pushing a gas mower across our lawn on a Saturday afternoon made me feel more like a dad than anything else I’ve done since Eleanor was born. Strange that.

In other news, Eleanor is adding to her repertoire. She now climbs stairs:

Says “doggy”:

And sits on guitars:

The cheap (not the less cheap) Epiphone.

While we do not yet have a video of it (like some people we know), she also stands on her own (for the first time today actually). Finally, as you can see from the following picture (although it is a touch fuzzy), she has revealed her stripes as an empiricist of the first order, having chosen Hume over both Kant and Berkeley. Smart kid.

Eleanor peruses Hume's *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*

A late apology

dmjg — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:43:43 +0000

When I was around 10 years old, I hit upon a very gratifying spring activity: lined up on the south side of our substantial yard were many, many peony bushes. For those not in the know, here is a picture of a peony. Now, my 10-yr old self was decidely uninterested in the peony’s beautiful bloom, so nicely featured in the picture. What appealed to me were the “flower balls” — the tight balls of pre-bloom flower, that were sitting up nicely around 10-yr old chest height. Like baseballs teed up on pedestals. Just waiting to be hit out of the park. And hit them out I did. In one afternoon of supreme pleasure, I whacked the tops off my mother’s peonies with a baseball bat.

Prepping our new Dogwoods for planting

I really couldn’t understand why my mother was so upset about the whole thing. I mean they’re just plants. They’ll grow back, right? And they’re just plants. Who cares? Well, some 20 years later, I can now say I get it. We have spent a lot of time in our garden these past three weeks. Em will give a full run down in a post soon. Suffice it to say that there was no garden to speak of when we moved in, unless a massive thistle patch in front of the house counts as a garden. We did some preliminary work on the garden last summer, but this summer we have big plans.

What suprises me most is that I love working in the garden. I’m always looking for stretches of time when I can get out there to water, plant, clear, cut, weed etc. What makes grownig a garden so gratifying is, I think, not so different from “growing” a child or, as people normally put it, watching a child grow. In both cases, you invest a lot of time and in both cases you’re in it for the long haul. Finally, in both cases you’re watching something that starts out very small literally grow and thrive as a result of your care and concern. There’s just something inherently satisfying in that.

So, at the ripe age of 31, I can now sincerely say: Sorry about the peonies mom.

One reason we can spend so much time in the garden: Eleanor loves the dirt.

My blood for a lawn

emjcarroll — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:53:52 +0000

And there were more. Many, many more.

So far I’m pretty taken with gardening. This is surprising as we have no garden to speak of, only stretches of weedy lawn and some dug up areas I have big hopes for. We also have a delightful shady spot at the back of the house with some healthy hostas, a spectacular number of weeds and saplings and an even more astonishing number of mosquitos. I received about 20 bites in 10 minutes on Sunday night trying to rip out some of the offending vegetation. Yesterday afternoon I wore copious and obviously poisonous amounts of bug repellant and only received a dozen or so bites after 30 minutes of weeding. The mosquitos in Northfield aren’t bad – about the same level of annoyance as in Chicago. It’s just our backyard.

I’m completely green (ha! ha! my first gardening pun!) when it comes to gardening. I joined the library yesterday and took out some books on Minnesota gardening. I’ve dug up the front garden and completely weeded it and turned over the soil. My next plan is to spread about 2″ of compost on the soil to let it settle in anticipation of Lucille coming next week when she and I can actually put in some plants (I’m thinking of tall wheat-y grasses, echinacea, black-eyed Susans, Russian sage, a smoke bush tree, and some purple-y groundcover stuff that I see everywhere). Any thoughts? Suggestions (we’re zone 4A)? My hope is when my mother comes in October we can also plant some bulbs

Our real world of pain, though, is the overgrown, weedy lawn. We ordered a push mower yesterday after reading a lot of glowing Amazon reviews and receiving reassurance from a neighbor that a push mower will do us just fine. It’s due to arrive tomorrow. I don’t know how long we’ll last without a gas mower and if a push mower is the ultimate in hippie hubris or what. Place your bets now.