The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Greenthumb Sunday

There’s a storm raging outside my window at this very minute.

So, it’s not looking very good for Green Thumb Sunday right now.

This storm is supposedly a weaker version of the 50-year-storm that visited a few weeks ago, but it’s sounding pretty fierce nonetheless.

Well, here’s a picture I took a couple of days ago of at least five different types of calendulas mixed in with some volunteer fava beans, some snow drops, hot lips sage and a plastic bag.

Damn, why didn’t I take that plastic bag out before I took the picture?

Spiral Garden Progression

Thanks to some nice weather, I was able to layout part of my spiral veggie garden. Here are a couple of photos of my progress. BTW, we have had an inch of rain in the last two hours with two stronger storms coming along in the next couple of days.

Yipee.

I can’t wait to see what my septic system does.

To see the before picture, go to Feel Good Gardening.

Stumble It!

Honeymooning Newts News

They were a little late for Valentine’s Day.

But yesterday, the local amphibian world was one giant orgy of love. My neighbor Jacqueline called me and got very excited when telling me about the newts that were spawning in our nearby lake. She told me they were everywhere and it would be worth my while to take my boys and check it out.

One of my boys has been down with the flu for several days now so I grabbed my youngest and we went down to the lake to check it out. My husband came with us and took some fabulous photos of the honeymooning newts. I realized when I came back home and compared our photos that I need a new camera.

Greenthumb Sunday

Tanks and Tables

Today we’re getting our septic tanks pumped—yeah!

Those of you who don’t live in the mountains don’t get to experience the joy of the backed up septic system. That’s right folks, it backs right up into our house. What an adventure.

We had ten inches of rain in two weekends, two weeks apart, and our poor little septic system just couldn’t handle it—even with the two 1500 gallon tanks and the hundreds of feet of leach lines. Oh, nay, nay, it just backed right up. I don’t really know why, after all our water system isn’t working correctly either, and neither are our phone lines for that matter. Oh yah, our heater is broken too.

When it rains it pours, so to speak.

Feel Good Gardening

Today was not a good day.
It’s hasn’t been a good month and January wasn’t much better.

I’ve got troubles just like everybody else in the world and I won’t bore you with the details. But today some of my most pressing problems came to visit and settle right on my shoulders. You know what I mean, that stiffening pain that sort of moves from your upper back right above your wing bone up into your neck and the back of your cranium giving you that annoying tension headache.

There is one thing that I have been neglecting, one thing that makes me happy, something that I love to do more than almost anything: Gardening.

Oh my, I almost forgot my therapy, my drug, my meditation: Gardening.

I am planning a spiral veggie garden. O.K., I know. It is not practical, but I’m not always practical. Sometimes I just do things that make me happy and I haven’t been doing things that make me happy lately.

So I spent a couple hours in the garden, pulling weeds and laying out my spiral veggie garden.

I feel better.

Here is the before picture of my new veggie garden.

Stumble It!

Greenthumb Sunday

The first tiny daffodils of the year.

Stumble It!

Greenthumb Sunday

Yes, O.K., alright, I bought another orchid. It was so pretty and all, I just had to have it.

Stumble It!

The 50-year Storm, Part Three. {A polite old tree.}

Continued:
My boys, meanwhile, had finished their art projects an hour-and-a-half before I did, and were now in the carpeted cave on the floor of Petroglyph watching Shrek 2. The movie ended just as I finished up and we were soon driving up the hill back to my dark house, after my bowl was finished.
We drove up the mountain and over the muddy highway to the road that leads up our hill. As I came around the bend, I noticed that my neighbors had lights. And—not just candles—they had electricity! That meant that we had electricity. Didn’t it?
Nay, nay. When I turned down our street, I saw our dark house with a faint flickering of candlelight in some of the windows.
Wait.
How could my neighbors have power but not us?
I walked inside and whined to my husband. He said I want to show you something. He said get your coat. My coat? I don’t want to go back outside in the rain.
Trust me you’ll want to see this, said he.
He instructed me to get a flashlight and follow him. We walked outside and up to the top of our property and down the other side. It was pitch black outside, except for the light coming from my neighbor’s houses. We walked down a muddy driveway, the light from our flashlights barely illuminating the way. I could tell we were close to our old barn when I heard my husband say “Look at this.”
He shined his flashlight up, and there it was, looming over my head: one of our 100-year-old oak trees. A tree whose trunk once stood 60 feet in the air now leaned over at a 45-degree angle. My husband said that when the electricity went out for the second time it was because this old tree that fell over and took out the power lines. I couldn’t see the full impact that the tree had on our property because it was so dark.