Remembering Garden

My mom died suddenly on April 15th this year. 

Grief can be overwhelming. 

I brought home plants and flowers from the funeral that so many kind people sent in mom's memory. And my church community, knowing me well, gifted me with even more plants for a remembering garden. I cried almost every time I put a plant in the ground, pressing the soil firmly around the roots, making my shady, quiet backyard a place to rest, to grieve, to remember. 

I noticed yesterday with a shock that my caladiums had broken through the surface. I had all but given up on them after a month of waiting. Having never planted bulbs nor seen how they grow, I'm awestruck by the way they spiral out of the ground. 

My teacher friends gifted me weeks later with memorial funds that I used to purchase two Japanese maples.

Eve holds the "Shaina" we selected.

"Brilliant red leaves in spring change to maroon and then a new bright red flush of new growth in May"

Metro Maples

Acer palmatum ‘Fireglow’

"An upright red leaf Japanese maple that holds its red color in the heat. Brilliant scarlet in the fall." 

A friend once told me cheerily that my backyard was "like the woods." I still glow when I think of that. Another person might simply think I'm letting it go, so I suppose it's all in your perspective. For awhile I faithfully pulled up the "weeds" to make room for the bermuda that was struggling to grow. But at some point, I realized I was removing lovely, soft ground covers that grew effortlessly, carpeting the ground where only dirt or scraggly grass would otherwise be. Now I pull up only the growth that promises to be prickly and (trying out a permaculture technique recommended by a friend) let it decompose on the surface. Everything else gets to grow as it will.

Planting It Up

I established my new planting space beside the garage this weekend, a soon-to-be-vertical bed of sugar baby watermelons and delicata squash. Half the advice I found listed squash and melons as good companions, the other half insisted they be planted as far away from each other as possible. Which means -- I get to do whatever I want, since planting spaces are at a premium around here. We'll just have to see how things grow.

Evan is justifiably less than thrilled with my placement. The new bed is going to make use of that gate irritatingly awkward. But again, space is at a premium. I can't move the sun. And this has got to be better than breaking up the driveway. (I have to remember that line of defense.) I DID move the composter, for the 567th time, to make a better path. I can't have people clambering over my melons after all.

At some point, I took a break for some green beans and seeded nasturtiums around the pumpkin patch.

Then I gawked at our ripening blackberries...

Gawked at my husband installing our rain barrel diverter...

Fed the compost monster...

And found my next planting project in the pantry. Whee! 

Gardening on a Postage Stamp

In 2011, we built our home on a 50x90 urban lot. Our postage stamp. After the dust settled and boxes were unpacked, my dormant love of gardening pushed its way to the surface with an unexpected intensity, and I began to learn. I have tried, failed and succeeded in (mostly) equal measures. I've learned that I prefer growing edible things in the ground rather than in containers, forcing me to be very creative with the limitations of our space. I'm discovering that there are always more potential planting sites than you think, some just take more work than others to prepare. And the work is more rewarding and healing than I ever imagined.

Here is a tour of my garden today. Bear in mind that it is always growing and changing; I add a little bit at a time all the time. I've worked around the builder's landscaping up to this point; the non-edible stuff is always lower on my priority list. See all the remaining grass? Think of it as garden-in-waiting.

To the left is my newest adventure, a vertical pie pumpkin patch. I'll be hanging trellis netting today and seeding nasturtiums. The trellis is 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide. This YouTube video was my inspiration and instruction manual: http://youtu.be/raFtcKNpGYM. To the right is our berry patch, made up of a blackberry and raspberry bush that I bought on clearance two seasons ago. You can't see any ripe fruit on it, because we're all digesting it as I type. We've been picking fresh berries every day for weeks.

We love us some arugula. So I planted the bed on the left in early spring (also known as winter) across from the berries, along with a lavender transplant. This piece of land was easy to overlook; I could've started growing greens there a long time ago. The crib section on the right is showcasing tongue-of-fire bush beans. Originally, I thought the beans would climb up my re-purposed trellis, only to learn later that bush beans don't really climb. Good to know. The beans have been yummy; we've had about a handful a day for the past week. Not enough to feed an army, but makes for healthy snacking straight off the vine.  

This spring, I tucked 3 tomato plants (store-bought transplants) and seeded sunflowers in the west flower bed. The carrots you can see along the porch line were planted back in January, and I guess they'll be ready to eat one of these days.

Here's a better view of the carrots. 

I grow herbs various places, and I have an unsightly cauliflower that is inexplicably still alive, so I'm leaving it alone. For now.

I had a notion to plant scarlet runner beans in front of our main porch columns this spring. I'm thrilled with the result. It's hard to capture how dramatically beautiful they are, and how fast they climb! I think these will grow several more feet in the next few weeks. You can also see my upside down tomato bags in the following pictures; they're not very attractive, but have worked well for me three years running. They're housing black cherry tomato plants this season, a variety that was incredibly productive for us last season.

The east flower bed gets a lot more sun and heat, and things grow completely differently there. I wedged a sweet potato bag and re-purposed drawer-raised beds of eggplant and bunching onions in among the landscaping. There's also a big rosemary plant behind the crazy crepe myrtle. I really need to prune those...

I grew these sweet potato slips from one Trader Joes's organic sweet potato. (They're a little hard to differentiate from the runner bean leaves in this picture.) We'll see how they turn out, but so far so good.

The Turkish eggplant is pretty pathetic right now. See that tiny bud toward the front? And the bunching onions toward the back aren't a lot better. I might be over-watering them. At Evan's encouragement, I'm trying to give them some time. Not one of my strengths, that. 

I'm growing a mix of lettuce under a tree. Because you can do that. This picture features lettuces still remaining after several harvests and salads, as well as the hated bermuda grass that a person could weed out all the live long day and still not eradicate. You can see my asparagus raised bed and stair-step tomatoes in the background.

This is my long-awaited 18-inch deep asparagus bed. The one I dug into the slope, built board by board and installed almost completely by myself. Yes, I'm proud and will accept compliments. It was hard work. I did have generous help from my husband, kids and a dedicated friend in filling it up with one cubic yard of rich soil. I can repay them all with asparagus in about three years. :) I seeded morning glories in front of the bed for now, but will eventually put strawberry crowns there. 

I grew these five gorgeous tomato plants from seed: two nyagous, two yellow pear and one sweet pea currant. They're getting ginormous. I'm already regretting, as I do EVERY YEAR, that I didn't put them in better cages. 

Here grows the current incarnation of my reclaimed back fence garden. I've had to clear a LOT of overgrown vines to prepare this space, and I still have to be vigilant about pulling up the invasive former occupants. They may never be convinced that they've been evicted. Up until a week ago, I had awesome pea vines growing back here. We picked peas to our hearts content for a month until it just got too hot for the vines. I've now seeded spaghetti squash, zucchini, basil, and chard, and put in a lot of pepper transplants - half that I grew from seed and half that I bought from Elizabeth Anna's Old World Garden. (If you live in Fort Worth, you really must visit her urban farm. Bring the kids and walk around. Prepare to be inspired.)

 

This is the future (read: days away) site of my vertical sugar baby watermelon and delicata squash patch. It's directly south and across the driveway from the fence garden. The trellis there will be 7 or 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide. 

So that's my garden right now. Lots of possibilities in very small spaces. Learning to grow food has given me endless appreciation for our varied and over-abundant food supply. I really don't know how farmers for the masses do it, but they deserve way more recognition than they'll ever get.