A few more gardening thoughts
Apr. 19th, 2009 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieToday was another shared-gardening day with Jake, at her place this time. I was due there at 10:30 a.m., which gave me time to make a nice Sunday morning breakfast for myself and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fisherbear before heading out the door. Being me, and it being a gloriously sunny morning, I also squeezed in a little time to look over my own garden before heading out the door. There wasn't time to do much, but I did enjoy just looking about, admiring all the work I'd done yesterday, and enjoying the spring flowers. Specifically the tulips, which are in full spate with more on the way.
Which is rather surprising, really, given that I did not plant *any* tulip bulbs last fall, except for the species tulip along one edge of the rockery (which are supposed to naturalize and are sunny yellow and terribly cute and almost impossible to notice, being all of an inch or two tall). All the others are enormous, tall, classic tulips, mostly singles with a few spectacular doubles, and are all repeats from two years ago. Which is practically unheard of. Daffodils and hyacinths and crocuses and grape hyacinths and lilies and gladiolas and irises - these all habitually return faithfully year after year, and in many cases multiply and naturalize. (Particularly grape hyacinth, which really will take over the world someday.) But tulips? You're lucky if you get one good spring out of your tulip bulbs, with some intermittent blooms the second year before they all go kaput.
Except, apparently, in my yard. I have several patches of tulips along my fence that have faithfully bloomed every year since I chucked them into the ground seven or eight years ago. And now I have a spectacular display in my rockery - even better than last year - that I did nothing much to merit. No bulb booster, no special treatment, nada. And there they are, blooming their fool heads off, and they are beautiful.
So off I went to Jake's, and we spent a very pleasant, sunshine-filled day in her enormous vegetable plot. Jake let me take over the rototilling for a while, trusting me with it (brave woman!) I wish to reiterate for the record that rototillers are awesome. Yes, they're noisy, particularly if (like Jake's) they are gas-powered. I can't say I love the fumes, or the way that the vibrational load eventually numbs your hands. But oh my goodness they do WONDERFUL things for the soil. Light and fluffy and any weeds totally destroyed. Very, very cool.
Anyhow, between the two of us we managed to till and hoe and plant vast quantities of onion sets and seed potatoes, not to mention stake out what seemed like miles of soaker hose, and distribute two full bales worth of straw over everything to act as mulch. It was an impressive amount of work, and once again Jake and I had to congratulate ourselves for coming up with the idea of cooperative gardening days. We're getting FAR more done together than either one of us could alone. What we did today was, in Jake's estimation, at least three days worth of work if she'd been tackling it on her own. Certainly what we've managed to accomplish in my yard is easily that, if not more so.
We also had to wonder why the heck we hadn't done this years ago. Two heads (and backs, and arms, and garden experience) are definitely better than one when it comes to getting the heavy work done in the garden, not to mention how much fun it is. We'd talked about doing this before in years past, but never gotten around to actually doing it. But hey, at least we're doing it now, and we've got the next two sessions scheduled. Woot!
fisherbear before heading out the door. Being me, and it being a gloriously sunny morning, I also squeezed in a little time to look over my own garden before heading out the door. There wasn't time to do much, but I did enjoy just looking about, admiring all the work I'd done yesterday, and enjoying the spring flowers. Specifically the tulips, which are in full spate with more on the way.Which is rather surprising, really, given that I did not plant *any* tulip bulbs last fall, except for the species tulip along one edge of the rockery (which are supposed to naturalize and are sunny yellow and terribly cute and almost impossible to notice, being all of an inch or two tall). All the others are enormous, tall, classic tulips, mostly singles with a few spectacular doubles, and are all repeats from two years ago. Which is practically unheard of. Daffodils and hyacinths and crocuses and grape hyacinths and lilies and gladiolas and irises - these all habitually return faithfully year after year, and in many cases multiply and naturalize. (Particularly grape hyacinth, which really will take over the world someday.) But tulips? You're lucky if you get one good spring out of your tulip bulbs, with some intermittent blooms the second year before they all go kaput.
Except, apparently, in my yard. I have several patches of tulips along my fence that have faithfully bloomed every year since I chucked them into the ground seven or eight years ago. And now I have a spectacular display in my rockery - even better than last year - that I did nothing much to merit. No bulb booster, no special treatment, nada. And there they are, blooming their fool heads off, and they are beautiful.
So off I went to Jake's, and we spent a very pleasant, sunshine-filled day in her enormous vegetable plot. Jake let me take over the rototilling for a while, trusting me with it (brave woman!) I wish to reiterate for the record that rototillers are awesome. Yes, they're noisy, particularly if (like Jake's) they are gas-powered. I can't say I love the fumes, or the way that the vibrational load eventually numbs your hands. But oh my goodness they do WONDERFUL things for the soil. Light and fluffy and any weeds totally destroyed. Very, very cool.
Anyhow, between the two of us we managed to till and hoe and plant vast quantities of onion sets and seed potatoes, not to mention stake out what seemed like miles of soaker hose, and distribute two full bales worth of straw over everything to act as mulch. It was an impressive amount of work, and once again Jake and I had to congratulate ourselves for coming up with the idea of cooperative gardening days. We're getting FAR more done together than either one of us could alone. What we did today was, in Jake's estimation, at least three days worth of work if she'd been tackling it on her own. Certainly what we've managed to accomplish in my yard is easily that, if not more so.
We also had to wonder why the heck we hadn't done this years ago. Two heads (and backs, and arms, and garden experience) are definitely better than one when it comes to getting the heavy work done in the garden, not to mention how much fun it is. We'd talked about doing this before in years past, but never gotten around to actually doing it. But hey, at least we're doing it now, and we've got the next two sessions scheduled. Woot!
