I swear there will be gardening this year

I tried really hard to garden last weekend. Just to pull a few weeds, get things cleaned up. My garden is a mud bog and  has been for at least 10 days, so that just didn't go very well.

Forecast for today: Rain
Forecast for tomorrow: Rain
Gardening prospects for the weekend: Slim to none

Forecast for next Thursday: Rain
Forecast for next Friday: Rain
Gardening prospects for next weekend: Need you ask?

Nonetheless, I'm excited about the Perennial Plant Society's sale this Saturday. Now at the fairgrounds after a number of years at Ellington Agricultural Center, this event is the best way I know to get great plants really cheap. I am going to FINALLY remember, after years of attending, that the way to really rack up here it to show up with your own wagon. The more plants you can carry, the more you can purchase.

Now, as to when things will dry out enough to plant? Sigh. Last year we had drought, this year endless rain. Next up, frogs and locusts, I guess.

Time for Gardening!

Dare I type it out loud, but we may have had our last frost here in Nashville. Last year, of course, we had 2-3 nights of temps in the teens in mid-April, damaging lots of trees, shrubs and emerging crops. I still have one bush that's limping along from that episode [not the one I wanted to die, of course].

In Nashville, our last frost is typically in early April. But the 10-day forecast looks like late spring weather for the next couple weeks, pushing us well past our typical last frost. Surely we won't get burned two years in a row??

All this just points to what I have not done yet:

1. Cleaned up the garden
2. Weeded my flowerbeds
3. Built paths in the garden
4. Bought a compost bin
5. Planted early spring crops like lettuce and peas

I can tell ya now, we're leaving 3 and 5 by the wayside for the time being. 1 will have to happen of course. 2 and 4 shouldn't be too hard, and I therefore need to get on the stick. Meanwhile, it's 9 p.m. and pitch black, so I can leave off worrying about all this til tomorrow.

The Perennial Plant Society's sale is next weekend...I just have to be ready by then!

What is this flower?

  I can't place it.

This beautiful flower is blooming on the shrubs at the 2yo's day care. I know it's a bit out of season, but what is the flower? The shrubs don't really look like forsythia, nor does the bloom to me, nor like jasmine.

Ideas?

Between seeing these flowers every day for a week now and our spring-like weather, I'm ready to get started on my garden again. Alas, our temperatures will be in the balmy 40s [ugh] the next few days.

I planted a tree today

  Newest resident at our house

So this afternoon I got back from being out of town overnight to find my redbud tree waiting in the driveway!

Each year, members of the Metro Council receive some discretionary funds. Now, say what you will about the idea of a discretionary fund -- and on the whole, I think it's ridiculous --but don't take my word for it. Read S-town Mike's blog for ongoing coverage -- but in East Nashville, we've been the beneficiaries of some community-minded council members. For instance, council discretionary funds helped build the neighborhood/school playground at Lockeland Design Center on 17th St. four years ago. And this year, they funded the East Nashville Tree Project.

Councilman Mike Jameson notified ReDiscover East, an umbrella neighborhood organization, that he'd have discretionary funds this year, and asked for suggestions from the neighborhood groups within RE on spending those funds. The redbud project was the winning suggestion, among many I heard about.

Particularly appropriate in a formerly shady neighborhood that lost hundreds of mature shade trees during the April 1998 tornado, this effort has put 250 redbud trees into the yards of East Nashvillians. [Incidentally, there have been 2-3 other large scale tree planting events that I know of in the years since 1998. There are a lot of really healthy, rapidly growing 7- and 8-year-old trees in this neighborhood.

My new redbud tree joins a much-older redbud and a very old dogwood in my front yard. The older redbud in particular was badly damaged by last spring's late freeze and this summer's extensive drought, but this fall I discovered even some of the worst branches were budding again. Here's to spring!

We grew this in our garden

  I don't really know how

I don't really have any other comment...I just think it's worth sharing.

A shirtful of tomatoes

  It's not really so good for your shirt, though.

In case you're wondering how many tomatoes fit inside a shirt, the answer is 22.

It seems to help if you have a bunch of plum tomatoes [the yellow ones on the bottom] ripe when you are ready to fill up the shirt.

Sorry I can't say more. I have to go put up more tomatoes now.

Summer doldrums

So I should be out bushwhacking my garden, which is threatening to bust out of the back yard and make a run for Eastland Avenue. Or even just cleaning up a bit.

But I find that since returning from vacation, I landed in the Bermuda Triangle of summer: the doldrums. I have a list of chores a mile long, but I can't bring myself to start tackling them. I mean, if I get the garden trimmed up today, it'll just be back by Tuesday. So why bother? And surely as soon as I weed that last flowerbed, the rest of them will roar back. I can already tell you from experience earlier this week that even the kitchen is unable to stay clean on its own. And it's not growing anything.

So I've been seriously considering throwing in the towel. If it weren't for the fact that the killer okra would then eat me and the children alive, I'd do it.

UPDATE: 10 p.m. Apparently confession is good for the work ethic. I cleaned up outside, and cut back the basil. A good start on the garden, anyway. And then I made pesto!

First big batch of tomatoes

  There are more coming soon 

Woo hoo! The garden has just proven its worth. I was convinced when we left town July 2 that we'd return to several rotten tomatoes. A couple of these large ones perhaps could have been picked Friday instead of Saturday night, but all are more than edible.

Understatement of the year from the 8yo: These are so much better than what we get at the store.

We had another of the ginormous ones for dinner -- it was almost more than the Hungry Toddler [a well known tomato fiend], the 8yo and I could eat together.

Garden is coming along

  Garden, June 23

Here's a photo of my garden from June 23. I can't believe how much it's changed in just a month [and especially from two months ago]. I am liking having the photo record of it.

I finally got the trellis built [see the green post and string, far left side of photo?]. I ended up having to buy a post driver but I'll use it again next year.

I have also made myself two notes for next year:
* Get compost delivered in February.
* Bury the soaker hose in February, before I plant anything.

Maybe it's just because it's new, and this will all work itself out shortly, but the dang thing just curls up and thus impedes the water flow. As well as looks awful. I finally got water running through most of the length of the hose with some strategically placed gravel to weigh down some of the curves, but it's still tons messier looking and acting than I would like.

On other garden fronts, the beans [far left this photo] are going gangbusters, and the okra is really taking off [center front]. And I have many, many tomatoes ripening up. Woo hoo!

It doesn't LOOK hard.

  It doesn't LOOK hard. 
  Originally uploaded by lcreekmo.

As previously noted in this space, I was foiled by my sprinkler and hose this weekend. I normally keep a wand on the end of my hose with various spray options, and I use it a lot around the back yard. But I needed to sprinkle the garden due to our incredible drought here the past few weeks. Once I finished, I couldn't get the hose back off the sprinkler.

Here's what I did:
* I tried really hard.
* My sister tried really hard.
* I got the pliers out and we tried to unscrew it with them.
* I sprayed WD-40 on the coupling.
* I tried again.
* I tried to bust up [go away, grammar mavens. I'm from the South and we like to bust stuff around here.] the sprinkler with a hammer.

For the record, I highly recommend Nelson sprinklers. They are impossible to destroy, even if you're really trying. And even if you previously just left them sitting in the yard all winter.

I briefly considered rolling over the sprinkler with my car but quickly decided I was more likely to puncture a tire than I was to separate the hose.

This morning, the guys came to mow my yard. [No, I'm not really the kind of person who hires out her yard. I actually like to mow. But when I realized about 5 years ago that I was spending half a day every weekend to keep the yard up, and I'm a single mom who only gets to see her daughter every other week, it was an easy decision.] When I got home tonight, I noticed the sprinkler was separated from the hose, which they must have needed for something. I had actually considered asking them to take a look at it, but didn't, since that's really not what I'm paying them for.

That's when I noticed something peculiar: Part of the hose was still on the sprinkler....except not really. In all my efforts Sunday, I'd actually been trying to take the sprinkler apart, not remove the hose! There's a coupling on the sprinkler that I mistakenly thought was part of the hose, since they were made of the same color metal.

Doh. Now I'm REALLY glad I didn't ask the yard guys to do that. How embarrassing!