playing n the dirt

The yard at the end of our block looks perfect.  Every blade of grass looks the exact height and color as the next.  The trees are evenly spaced, the english ivy stays in the beds and the flagstone is perfectly random.  Any block would be proud to have this yard.  I just have one problem with it, it isn’t natural.

There are lots of chemicals used on the lawn, it seems like almost every week they put more on.  English ivy is not native to Colorado and can be every intrusive if it does spread and while evenly spaced the trees will be to close when they get full grown.  I really am not the jealous neighbor.  I would just prefer a yard and garden that were a little more natural.

Nature isn’t perfect and I don’t think our yards and gardens should be either.  That does not mean I don’t think we should not take care of our yards.  However there is a difference between dumping tons of chemicals on our yards and living with a few weeds.  I think our plant options need to be native to the area and not something exotic.  There is something to be said for the surprises of nature and a cottage style yard versus the perfect yard.

My husband surprised me at work the other day by sending me a live Bonsai.  This is a plant that has always intrigued me but one that I don’t think I would have ever gotten for myself.  I have lots of house plants, but they are all pretty common. 

With my new Bonsai I will enter into the world of the exotic plants.  I hope this is just the begining of a Bonsai collection.  I understand that they can be almost addictive and that you need one for each room in the house.

For me, September is about the most perfect month of the year, especially in the garden.  The weather is cooling down and most days I can work in the middle of the afternoon.  It is getting darker a little sooner.  This is good, because I feel guilty when I come inside and there is still work to do and it is light outside.

I can pretty much kick back and just pick what is ready to be picked and not worry about the weeds because in a month the frost will kill them anyway.  There will still be about a million fall leaves to deal with and the extra hot day or two and I will still have to plant the green house when all the peppers and tomatos are done.

But for now, welcome sweet September. 

One group of plants that I have not been successful growing is herbs.  I have heard they are easy to grow and in fact will grow like weeds.  Not mine, and I am not sure what I have done wrong, other than all my attempts have been in containers.

So yes I was surprised this week to discover a mint growing in a container of petunia’s in one of the garden beds.  When I first spotted it I thought it was mint and rubbed the leaves to make sure.  Sure enough, it’s mint.  I have been keeping an eye on it and it seems to be doing fine.  In fact is growing like a weed.

I am not sure where it came from, but I do recycle my potting mix.  I probably recycled a container of mix that I had tried to grow mint in and used it when potting the petunias. 

My next text will be to see if I can keep it alive over this winter.  Wish me luck.

Every gardener needs a few good good tools.  I have a pitch fork and shovel, mostly for turning compost and for making new beds.  I use a small hand held pruiner clippers and trowel for keeping garden beds looking neat and trim. 

The other day I was clipping the grass at the edge of a bed when my clippers broke.  I played with them for a while and figured out what was wrong, but I couldn’t make the little hook stay in place.  I figured I’d be done for the day and try to fix them later.  Two days later I still couldn’t keep them working and the grass really needed to be clipped. 

I finally decided I had three choices.  I could keep trying with broken clippers, I could stop and go to the store and buy a new pair or I could try and find something else to do the job.  I decided to try the kitchen sissors.  They worked.  I was done clipping the grass in no time.  I even got my husband to go to the hardware store and buy me a new pair of clippers.

In a little over a week Fort Lupton Colorado will celibrate it’s 100th annual Tomato Days Harvest Festival.  Actually, somewhere along the way, the name got changed to Trapper Days, but it still started out as Tomato Days.  I am in the mist of celibrating my own Tomato Days.  I have never had a crop like this and am begining to get buired in tomatos. 

I have decided that whatever I pick today and tomorrow I will take to work on Friday and any and everyone can help themselves.  A good friend and fellow gardener tells me that by sharing my crop I will be putting out into the universe good tomato karma.  I think he is probably right.

This spring was the first season for me to try green house gardening.  As a whole it was a big success.  I started with peppers and tomatos, because just north of Denver, Colorado the growing season is not much more than three months.

I did learn a few lessons, actually I kind of got a little greedy and forgot lessons that I already knew.  My biggest mistake was not thinning my seedlings enough.  So while I have lots of plants they are closer than they should be.  Being so close normal air flow is hindered and it does make the spread of pests easier.  I am also trying to get used to the green house being more humid.  Usually the natural weather is kind of on the dry side.  I’m not sure, but I wonder if the humidity made the pest problem worse.

I will try and remember these lessons and I am already looking forward to planting in the green house this fall once all the tomatos and peppers are harvested.

The soapy water is working on whatever type of lava got all over the leaves of my pepper plants.  The plants and leaves are looking much better.  The is some damage that can’t be repaired, but over all I think the peppers will be ok. 

I still don’t know what type of bug laid the lava, but I’m not to worried about that.  I think I did see one of them this afternoon.  It as an ugly red and black thing.  If I had tons of free time, I look up what kind of bug it is, but I have lots of other garden chores to do instead.

If I can’t be in the garden then I’d rather be reading than doing anything else.  I am the same way about reading as I am about gardening.  I don’t really care to much what I read as long as there is something to read.  It doesn’t matter to me what I grow as long as there is a garden. 

On one of my last trips to the library I deceided to wonder through the non-fiction side.  As always I wasn’t there long when a title caught my eye, “A Green History Of The World.”  After quickly checking out some of the chapter titles I decided this book would interest me, and boy has it ever.  The book is exactly what the title says a green history of the world.  The sub title is “The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations.”

In my opion this book should be required reading for every human on earth.  The good news is the last few generations didn’t “invent” bad environmental policies.  The bad news humans haven’t seemed to learn anything about the environment and how to treat it in thousands of years.

Before I decided to do this book review I went to www.Amazon.com this morning to see if they have the book available.  They do, both new and used, and not bad priced.  I may buy one myself.  If you only read one book this year, please make it this one.  Again the title is “A Green History Of The World” and the author is Clive Ponting.

My friends that don’t garden ask me what I do all winter.  While I do have some other hobbies my main winter hobby is dreaming about what I’ll do in the gardens come spring.  That means I spend a lot of time looking at websites and catologs.

In the coming weeks I’ll be putting together some resource pages that will include many of my favorite places to either purchase quality supplies or just get some gardening infomation and tips.