Garden Dreams

Wednesday, the middle of the week and I’m still here, in the same old place and at the same old time. The birds are making a springtime racket outside the window and the sun is making its first appearance on the eastern horizon, with just a pale band of silver outlining the trees in the orchard.

It’s quiet right now, but that won’t last long. The twins are asleep in the other room and they usually wake up at first light. We were babysitting last night and the twins will be heading home this afternoon. But we got a few things accomplished while they were here; one of those was to try out their gardening skills…and their grandparent’s patience. They have a full set of gardening tools, but with all of the new construction going on at their own house, there was no place for a garden. Aha! Grandpa has enough room in his garden so we dug and scraped and tilled a couple of spots to plant the seeds for Shasta Daisy’s and Bachelor Button’s. I suppose we will have to go out and water them again this morning.

Grandpa’s garden is almost complete for this year. I’m using raised beds for my tomatoes, two beds (4’x8’) and 4 tomato plants. I know…I had said that I would only plant two tomatoes this season, but the tomatoes were calling out to me and I succumbed to their cry. I’m a pushover for a tomato.

I really like the looks of the raised beds, and the fact that gophers and other varmints are challenged by them. I think I will build a few more this winter and have them in place for next year’s crop.

My garden isn’t confined to the beds and I do have Calabash gourds planted in the ground, along with some unidentified vines, survivors from my greenhouse failure. I’m hoping that some of those are melons. And I did buy a couple of melon plants at the nursery, just to be sure that I have some.

Gardening has to be the ultimate expression of optimism. I was so disappointed when my greenhouse collapsed and was immediately ready to call off the whole gardening season. But, spring arrived and the days turned warm, and before I knew it, I was digging and tilling and enjoying the dreams of the gardener. Some people accuse me of pessimism, but they really don’t know me. Pessimists cannot thrive in a garden.

Scoreboard: Gophers  0 - Gardener  2
I got another one yesterday. I used a “Bunker Buster” smoke bomb to do him in.