Frenzied Daddy

So, I’m cooking dinner. The kitchen window looks out over the deck, the back porch, and the grassy knoll we call a back yard. It’s lovely. Not quite weed-infested, but it will be before autumn. The TT is amusing herself by letting Perrin out onto the porch and picking him flowers and trying to get him to eat them.

She comes into the kitchen ( she comes through the back door, through the adult’s room, through her room, through the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen) with a bright yellow flower from the yard. She presents it to me like it’s a treasure. Of course, it is a treasure. It’s also a dandelion. “Oh, honey, what is this? Thank you”… She tells me it’s a flower. “Ok, this particular kind of flower is called a dandelion. Can you say dan-de-lion?” (drmrffleon). “That’s great. ”

In all honesty, I’m trying to get the cheese grated, the spaghetti noodles cooked and the sauce properly tomatoey. I’m not totally focused on accepting her gift and giving her a learning moment.

She runs back out the door ( all the way through the house ), runs back outside, and I stir the sauce as I watch her bend down and pick a single flower and come running back into the house, into the kitchen. She breathlessly presents me with … I don’t know what sort of weedy looking flower it is; it kind of looks like baby’s breath, but stringier.

“Oh honey, this is lovely. I’ll put it here with the dandelion. I don’t know what this one is called though.”

“Daaaaa-dddd-dd-d-dddy, ” she announces, “It’s a flower. Can you say ‘flower’ ? ”

“flower?”

Are yummy delicious blueberries still considered healthful when baked with …brown sugar, oats and butter and served with vanilla ice cream?

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood; a beautiful day to be neighbors. It’s the second year since we moved in eleven years ago that I mowed the back yard in March. I found grass, blackberries, and dog poo. Lots and lots of dog poo.

We also planted flowers- some little yellow ones and some pansies and some strawberries. Just a few to make it a little more sunny in the yard. Something about bright yellow-orange flowers appeals to me and makes me feel summery. Like marigolds. I planted marigolds in a little patch when we lived in Fort Richardson and took them to my teacher. I also love sunflowers; their silly size makes me giddy and their yellow glow makes me warm.

Dandelions, however, I’m not too fond of

With weeds and bugs, and bits of mugs.
bountiful tomatos and flowering potatoes,
with beans, spinach, and nettle-itch.
That’s how our garden grows.

I don’t consider myself much of a gardener. I just plonk the plants in the dirt, throw some water at em, and wonder later why they don’t have any fruit. But I have been doing this garden-thing for about five years now, and I have to admit, maybe I’m getting the hang of it.

For instance, on the paper route, one of my customers has a small raised bed, and I walked past it last week and said “Hey guy, you let your red sails go to seed.” As if I knew! Well- I’ve let my lettuce go to seed often enough to recognise what it looks like, and red sails seems to be the most common kind of red leaf lettuce grown ’round these parts.

When I plant, I hate having to weed- and my response to that is usually just to plant closer together. However, this year I put grass clippings on the dirt around the zucchini plants (no seeds in the grass) to “mulch” the dirt. Last weekend, I happened to be delivering the Sunday Paper and it was light enough for me to see a customer’s tomato plants. They had put brown hay - or maybe dead grass - around the base of their tomato plants. Not much, just some. Which reminded me of the description of mulching I had read in one of my gardening books: that if you mulch with green mulch (ie fresh grass trimmings), the mulch sucks nitrogen out of the dirt, and when the mulch turns brown the nitrogen goes back in- also the organic material is good for the dirt. So I could put some more grass clippings around the tomato plants and the cukes, et cetera, but I probably want to use the brown grass left on the patio from last week’s mowing.

I don’t consider myself much of a gardener- but I’m getting there Maybe someday I’ll actually have strawberries the cutworms (caterpillars) don’t eat.

No, these aren’t martians; they’re artichokes, and they’re six feet tall! Delicious, and nutritious, and weird looking.
This is the third year for this particular set of ‘chokes, and each year they produce more.

This little tomato is a “Thai Pink” - I think it’s a cherry type of tomato. It’s growing fast, and already has flowers. It’s only been in the garden one week!

The garden is growing like the proverbial gang-busters. It was only last week that we plunked the plants into the dirt, and now we have some definite growth here.

To begin with; I planted the zucchini in the tomato barrels this time, at Brookes’ request. They’ve already grown over the first ring in the wire basket thingie. I didn’t add anything to this dirt, but I did rip out all the weeds in March and then mulch it with grass clippings. Then, over in the regular beds, the artichoke is really liking the regular plucking and the tomatoes are growing like crazy. The spinach and lettuce seem to think I need to plant seeds, too. And the peas are going hopping mad!