Taking the Plunge

Since I moved into a house as an adult and had a garden, I've come to enjoy gardening. I love seeing bulbs come up in the spring, and I love trees, and seeing flowers through the season.

And I try to be at least moderately ecologically careful.

With that combination, you'd think I'd garden veggies, for sure, right? Except I don't, because I don't like to cook. Now, I'm perfectly happy to eat a salad. I'm pretty much happy to eat anything (except raw tomatoes, because they taste slimy). But cooking stuff, not so much.

I do like to bake cookies and occasionally bread, but cooking to cook, just doesn't strike my fancy. So having loads of healthy fresh greens and such, which appeals to people who like to cook, leaves me befuddled.

But yesterday, I was weeding. There's this one patch in my back yard, about 4' by 4' (with a bit more along the side of the lawn) that gets great sun, and grows weeds like nobody's business. And as I was weeding that patch, I finally thought to myself, "self, you should put something edible here."

Now, there are a few veggies I love, artichokes especially. And with my friend's help, I've got some artichoke plants in pots around the deck right now. (Cross your fingers for me.) To be honest, I could live on artichokes pretty much every day, just steamed with mayo or melted butter.

But other than that, I'm happy to eat whatever veggie-wise, but not so excited that I want to cook veggies or make them into a salad. I recognize that this is a horrid personal and moral failing.

I feel pretty good about asparagus, though, and will cook that if I remember that I have it.

And I love strawberries.

So I called a friend, and she sent me to the farm supply place she recommends and likes, and I got about 20 strawberries and 6 asparagus roots.

And then I put fertilizer and compost in, and planted. I got about half-way through the strawberries yesterday afternoon, before I was tuckered out. Only later did I realize that it was nearly 90F here, and so the dripping sweat wasn't just me being especially whussy. (I sweat a lot on my bike, but since I'm moving, it doesn't tend to drip onto my dark glasses. Sweat drops make it hard to see clearly, in case you didn't know.)

I got up and planted early this morning (I started about 7am) because I wanted to be done before it got so hot. But it hasn't really gotten hot today, just really, really windy.

Surprisingly, the plants I planted in yesterday's heat seemed to have perked up by this morning when I watered them. And I've watered the ones I planted this morning again this afternoon (since the wind is really drying). (It's almost as bad as the Sta. Annas, and those are horrid.)

Wish me luck in my new foray into food farming, even if it's only a little area. (My strawberries went far beyond my little patch, and are now intermingled with other stuff where I had some room. Mmmmm, strawberries.) It's supposedly going to take me til the year after next to really get some food out of either planting, but I can hope, right?