And Boy Are My Arms Tired

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Did some gardening yesterday. The nice thing about gardening on a mountainside--at least when the garden is lower down the mountain than your driveway--is that when you're hauling bags of fancy farm dirt down to your plot, you can let gravity do most of the job. I lug 'em down to the backyard and then just pitch them down the couple of terraces to my plot, cutting the Gordian knot of going around the fence and down several flights of stairs of varying stability and levelness. I suppose if I had any plants down there that'd be a bad plan, but as it is currently just dirt, I figure I'm pretty safe.

Also, about a fourth of my plot is at a 45-degree angle in order to hold up those terraces, which makes soil-turning, root-yanking,* and compost-spreading into a serious exercise in spade- and rake-wielding parkour. It's ... well, it's interesting.

The plan this year is to try out the old Corn, Beans, 'n' Squash gardening style, with mounds for the corn and the squash. I'll probably wind up doing some marigolds and nasturtiums and sunflowers, too, because they are good companion plants and also the sunflowers can act as bean poles! I also have a blank spot on the side of the little deck Dad built where I'm gonna try to do a tea herb garden. Mom's taking care of the tomatoes. And of course Dad's doing the grapes.

I have been trying to drill into Dad that we do need some dandelions growing this year. One of my soda books has a great-sounding recipe for Dandelion Not-Wine. If I can keep Dad from getting weed-whack-happy, I should get a pretty good crop.

Of course, it's supposed to snow in the next couple of days, so gardening might take a break for a while. I'm okay with that. Hauling those compost bags was enough for now.


*The terrace above mine has a line of aspens. Quaking aspens are beautiful trees, but good lord their various reproductive strategies seem designed to make gardening as difficult as possible. They have fuzzy catkins that glow ethereally in sunlight, but they sure do make a mess in the garden. And that's not even mentioning the tentacular root colonization. They wish to crush the world in their woody grip.

Comments

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the weather you're having is at least somewhat similar to what we're having here in Stockholm - warm-ish, but still with a risk of the odd snowfall or frost night. This is pretty annoying, since I have a bunch of seedlings (morning glories, sweet peas, and hollyhocks), that are ready to go out, but I don't feel like I can risk it just yet. I also started some dianthuses today, with which I hope to keep my lime green licourice plant in check (well, I can dream. I didn't know how big it could get when I planted it last summer...).

And then there are the tomatoes. I have one that didn't get big enough to go outside before the cold set in last year, and it has wintered in the kitchen window without growing particularly big or producing any flowers. Can't wait to see what it does when it gets to bask in the sun out in the front yard. And I started some yellow cherry tomato seedlings yesterday. I had some of those last year as well, and ye gods, they're delicious! As they are, or with a tiny bit of olive oil and salt. Nom!

Also, speaking of aspens, I assume you know about Pando, the 80,000 years old clonal colony of aspen that's one of the heaviest living organisms in the world, and lives in Utah? And also catkins is a lovely word that I hadn't encountered before today. The Swedish word is videkatt ~ willow cat. :3

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I wish you the best of luck with the seedlings. I haven't had very good luck myself with starting them indoors.

Mom's doing the tomatoes this year on the south side of the house, along with some basil, peppers, and zucchini. I especially like the Supersweet 100 strain of cherry tomatoes.

I did indeed know about Pando! It's a bit to the south of where I live, but not too far. Utah is a weird place as far as people go, but its natural wonders are pretty darn awesome.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

One of the best parts of the community garden downtown was seeing cucumbers dangle from sunflower leaves.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

If I had my way, all members of the populus family would be gone from the face of the earth. Between their lint, their 10305 baby seedlings, their tentacular root colonization and the fact that cutting them down just makes them spread, they are the giant weeds from hell. Poplar, cottonwood, aspen (although I do love the look of aspen) and all the rest of them.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Aww, but I like the populus trees! Even though I'm allergic to them! They're annoying in a garden, but they are sort of holding my house on the mountainside, and their biology is pretty cool. Sure we have to battle for elbow room, but so it goes, I guess.

Although when I was working at the library it would get a little obnoxious when the cottonwood fuzz actually looked like snow cover. Oh, the sneezing.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

I'm allergic to them, too- allergic to the pollen early in the year and then, later, when the fuzz gets on my skin I break out in a red rash where it touches me. Which is bad, because like you say, it can look like a covering of snow, except I have to mow under said fuzz- which means I'm moving through a tornado of allergen. Gah. Although I think one of the things that upsets me most is the fuzz germinating everywhere in the garden, and if a bunch of it lands in a potted plant it rots the plant.