Welcome to the Jungle! That’s what Bernie calls the garden now, which I take as the highest of compliments. Man, I never thought anything green would break out of the ground, let alone transforming into a full-fledged vegetable mosh pit! It has gotten really quite jungle-icious out there. (Yes, I have created a new word with jungle-icious. You read it here first, folks!) Now I understand what Jack in the Beanstalk was dealing with and have much more compassion for his panic at the manic growth of his bean plant. Man-o-man, when those beans get into a growing frame of mind, they sure aren’t kidding around. Yes, that’s a great problem to have!
Here are sugar snap peas below, ready to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in a single bound. As they’ve grown, I’ve used a whole bunch of things as trellises, but they have steadily and rapidly outgrown each one. Somewhere swallowed up in this lovely leafy abyss are two small wood trellises, a croquet mallet, and Sam’s small rake. I even had to go out and get taller poles to use – twice. They are now over the top of those poles as well. As of late they have little white flowers, which means that they are about to start making some peas.
Here’s another view of this raised box gone wild. In addition to the sugar snap peas, there are radishes, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, yellow green beans, carrots, and beets. (I think that’s it.)
Below is a close-up of the lettuce below running along the front row. It is so wild to go outside with some scissors and cut off some greens for a salad. And once snipped, it grows right back and is bigger than ever. It is certified 100% organic and pretty tasty!
Down below is one of the wild and wonderful zucchini plants with a broccoli plant in the faded green next to it to the right. Before this, I’d never seen a zucchini or broccoli plant – or at least never paid attention when I had the opportunity. Now I have. Thank you, Sam Walmart, for the 50 cent seed packets! The beets are buried below so you can’t see them at all. The poor things have been literally overshadowed. Next year I’ll have to do a better job arranging everything so the smaller plants are in the front when the sun hits. Another lesson learned, add it to the list!
And below you will see the official bouncer for the garden, the high-tech Scare Crow. It’s got a much bigger brain than that Wizard of Oz scarecrow for sure — it is omniscient, sensing anything moving within its range. This is something you don’t want to mess with because it’ll douse you with a torrent of water before you even have time to scream or move a millimeter. So far we have been the victim of it more than any other animals. Yes, once again that is a good problem to have. Man, that water is shockingly cold and just plain old shockingly shocking when you least expect it. It’s a motion-censored sprinkler, so anything moving around within its little fiefdom will set it off to whip water in a 180 degree semi-circle. It is intended primarily to scare off deer, but has done an excellent job scaring me off because every once in a while I forget to turn it off before approaching it. Oopsy!
The flowers up on the back porch are doing really well. (That is, those that have survived this far. Trust me, there are plenty up in flower heaven right now blooming away in better pastures.) Below are some wildflowers, which means they are still an unraveling wild card. There may be some lilies of the valley coming in. It’s amazing — Sam and I just planted these seeds in mid-April during spring break. Crazy! And to think the seeds came from the Target $1 aisle. Talk about some bang for your buck all right!
Here is the one surviving-n-thriving zinnia, surrounded by small marigolds. Looks like this little gang will need some re-potting soon. They’ll be movin’ on up, but not to a deluxe apartment in the sky/the East Side like the Jeffersons. They will get their piece of the pie in a bigger pot, though. (Ah! Here I am dating myself back to the good ole fashion-don’t ’70s. There’s no denying it’s on the hard drive of my brain along with some serious Saturday Night Fever disco moves!)
Bring on summer! How about you? How does your garden grow?
LibbY
