GARDEN DIARIES
Cindy Maddera
There really doesn't seem too much to gardening once the seeds are planted. Once the seeds are in the ground, all that's really left to do is to wait and hope and pull some weeds and wait some more. That seems to be where we are now. We had this rush to get the new boxes up and filled with soil. There was a panic to get seeds in the ground and the worry that I didn't get them in the ground early enough. Then we realized that the lure of garden boxes of filled with dirt was too much for Josephine and we'd find her in the middle of a box just a digging away. So, we rushed to put a fence around the garden.
Now, everything has sprouted. There was the few weeks of worrying that none of the seeds would sprout. I'd look out the kitchen window and stare at the dirt. Michael would stand outside and look at the garden while shouting "GROW! GROW!" But then everything sprouted. There's even a couple of bonus tomato plants growing in the side garden where I've planted (probably too much) squash and zucchini. They came from the cherry tomato plant that was in that garden last year, a cherry tomato plant that grew tomatoes faster than we could pick them.
Now, we wait. This morning before the rain set in, I went out and weedeated all around the garden and pulled the few weeds that had invaded. There really wasn't much to do, which was good since the sky turned dark with thunder and started to drop buckets of rain. Our hopes have changed from hoping seeds will sprout to hoping that those plants will fruit and that we will be able to eat those fruits. I feel I've watched the giant lima beans sprout in slow motion, watching the leaves unfold from bean. With any luck we'll have bowls of giant lima beans and purple hulled peas. Maybe this year I wont need to buy boxes of tomatoes to roast. For the first time ever, there's spinach growing. I've had spinach sprout and then disappear. Something other than me has eaten it or it just didn't like the spot where it had been planted. We've planned a salad for Thursday night with roasted mushrooms from the salad greens that are thriving next to the spinach.
The salad days have begun.