Some time too late in the season I decided it was time to plant things and, with some help, dug around, picking out tons of glass, a few bricks, and a dense forest of undesirables. I remember the neighbors were barbecuing and I could smell their burgers and beer through the iron curtain of weeds that separates our small yards. One of them came over, beer in hand. "Girl can hoe," he said to my roommate, and went back without offering cold beers.
I had fresh, illicitly acquired seeds and a bag of expired-back-in-'03 seeds. I decided to plant the new stuff, but was still so impatient and so paranoid that nothing would come up that I planted as if I were a little, seed vomiting smurf. Instead of sensibly spacing everything out and dropping one seed, maybe even two, into each carefully hollowed soil pocket, I walked along the rows and dropped air raids of seedlings here and there. I planted squash, zucchini, cucumbers, sweet peas, carrots, brussel sprouts. I was shocked when things started growing; keeping things alive is not my forte. I was a little embarrassed at how patchy said things were growing; instead of rows of plants, I have clumps.
This is what it looks like now:
I'm thinking I should thin the plants out and make it a little more livable for them, so that they are not sitting on top of each other and competing for nutrients and room when there's so much to go around. But I am a little afraid to spend too much time out there, because every time I do I get attacked by mosquitoes.
This is what that looks like:
No comments:
Post a Comment