Notes from the garden

Exciting news! Our first vegetables have been planted! Three kinds of lettuce were sowed today: a kind of romaine, something called salad bowl and another called Ruby Red which looks very pretty on the seed envelope. I hope I did it properly - the seeds are so very small and vulnerable looking. I guess we'll find out in 45 days. Also planted today was a patio tomato and a collection of herbs. The tomato sits out back where it will soak up the sun all day long, growing big and producing many yummy fruits. The round lettuce container sits by the front door where it is cooler. J and I were dismayed weeks ago when we went to the "grow vegetables on your patio" seminar to learn that lettuce is a cold weather crop and we should have begun our salad adventure back in April. Oops. Hopefully the tiny seeds now taking root in the soil wont hold our ignorance against us, and still provide us with plenty of green goodness in the months to come. The herbs (so far basil, rosemary, thyme and oregano) are also on the front steps, very handy to the kitchen for frequent harvesting.

And so, garden work is well and truly underway. The grass was mowed into submission on Saturday, and today, J spent hours and hours uprooting dandelions from the patch of mushrooms and clover we like to call our front yard. Even now, she sees the yellow terrors with her waking eye. I undertook some weeding of the front bed, using the garden tools I bought last summer. At Schmapters. Reader, it is not a good idea to buy tools at a book store, unless you mean to keep them on display on your own at-home book shelves. In attempting to dig up some roots, I bent the tines of the fork-like tool completely out of shape. So while at the President's Garden Centre, I bought a stainless steel replacement, which looks like it belongs in Freddy Kruger's arsenal. Bring on those roots, baby! Except for the plant growing up around our verbena tree, which has a root structure like a prehistoric don't-mess-with-me weed which could probably prevail over flame throwers and leave bulldozers weeping into their buckets. So we attacked that one with sheers, cutting it down to size but conceding to leave it in place.

It's odd, really. Our yard that is. While it's true that SOHOE is the garden of our fair province and everything seems to grow with lushness and variety, we are still amazed by what we find growing here. In the grass of our lawn (I should say 'grass') is pumpernickel (mom calls it pimpernel but it's actually called something else with a 'p' causing me to only be able to think of the dark bread. Sorry), forget-me-nots, little white star-like creepers, mushrooms, clover, several varieties of mosses, and something else that looks like cress. It's fascinating. We just might have the makings of a fine salad growing right outside our own front yard!

How does your garden grow?

*Please excuse me: I've just been informed that the 'p' growing in our front 'yard' is periwinkle. And I kept calling our flowering tree verbena, but I think it actually is vibernum.