Small Projects
You may wonder why my garden is limited to six plants and a few hangers-on from last year. It is because I had a bad experience with my gardening a few years ago.
My garden, at that time, was much more ambitious. I had a variety of edible peppers that included bells, habañeros, thai and jalapeños plus a variety of other vegetables and I was taking care of our citrus trees: orange, lemon and mystery, survivors of the twenty year period the house was rented out.
I didn't devote a lot of time to my garden, not much more than was required to provide water to everything and to keep the weeds in check. But the time I did put into the garden relaxed me.
It must have annoyed my wife. Either that or she figured that if a little garden made me happy, a big garden would make me really happy. One day she drove up with her van stuffed full of plants ... but not the kind of plants that interested me. There wasn't a vegetable among them.
She went on and on about how expensive the plants were that she had gotten free or nearly free. She parked them where I had my plants and insisted I take care of them.
I didn't.
I stopped taking care of my plants, too. It wasn't relaxing any more. It was work, nonproductive work.
Her plants more than doubled the scope of my project. They didn't produce anything. They couldn't stand the heat or the direct sunlight in the area where I had my garden. They were simply inappropriate.
I didn't have a garden the following year. Nor the year after that.
Last year I had a small garden project with three kinds of tomato plants. I had two of one kind and six each of the other two kinds. I stuck some garlic bulbs in the ground near the plants. I was overwhelmed with fruit. There was more than we could consume.
I have another small project this year. I am prepared to walk away from it if it gets out of hand, but I don't expect that to happen ... because Cathy has started gardening.
Cathy wanted a lawn in front of the house, something I have managed to avoid for years. She finally planted one and, while it is a bit ragged in places, she has what will pass for grass growing where there was bare adobe and weeds before. Now she has started trying to grow herbs in pots.
Delia can't dump a bunch of plants on Cathy. Cathy would object strenuously and would probably end up trashing the new plants, instead of ignoring them until they died like I do.
Delia doesn't do gardens, she gives orders. The rest of us aren't very good about taking orders.
Comments (2)
The garden is always a point of contention between my husband and me. He always buys the seeds and plants to put in a big vegetable garden, which is lovely - nothing better than fresh veggies! He does not like to weed it or harvest it though, so many years the whole thing goes to waste! I do not like to garden, plus I have a back problem that makes gardening very difficult for me, so I cannot take care of it. It's the subject of many "discussions!"
Hopefully I'll have the time to start my salsa garden in a few weeks.
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