I was sitting there on the title box, wondering what to title this blog entry. I thought of the "Chicken Soup" type titles "Rediscovering myself, and my garden" and other sappy crap. Then I thought of the dry toast titles like "gardening again".
Here's the backstory. I grew up in Northern Virginia, zone 6. We had a huge yard with dozens of beautiful shrubs and trees. One year, we had a fantastic vegetable garden that set the bar for my garden expectations. We also had a monster compost pile. Jumping in the compost pile used to be a fun activity (for everyone but me, the jumping part terrified me). When we moved to CA, Mom always had a huge flower garden with perennials, annuals, and bulbs. I used to talk to her as she'd work in the yard.
In Januaries, I get manic for gardening. At my first place in CA, the balcony didn't get any light at all. I could barely eke out a few sugar snap peas. I yearned to grow roses and succulent vegetables. It didn't happen - not for 7 years.
When we moved to Texas, the weather was perfect, the sun was abundant, and I ached to get planting. Lease restrictions said "NO PLANTS" outside. It made sense, poorly tended container plants can really make the place look bad. I looked around for a community garden but they all involved multiple bus rides and hours of transit.
At my third place, I lived in a third floor apartment with a balcony. No restrictions (we had multiple drug dealers in the complex), and I had wonderful southern exposure (lots of sun). I'd buy bags of potting soil and 15 inch square pots, and lug it up all three flights of stairs. I'd plant my treasures, hand-carry water to them, position them where they'd get the best light, mulch them, and basically spoil them rotten. I even made small amounts of compost in a bucket. My "Marie Pavie" rosebush got so huge I had to give it to my father in law. He planted it in his garden and it's doing great. I had a "thing" with giving him a different fragrant rose every year (Iceberg, Don Juan, Cramosi Superior), until they got to be a little much for him. He loved them. I didn't get quite enough light for tomatoes, curse them. I still had a lot of fun, until my (?!?) neighbor downstairs screamed at my husband one night. He (the neighbor) liked to wash out his underwear in the bathtub and hang them over the balcony railing to dry. Every day. I didn't know that and how was I supposed to deal with it? I was watering my plants, and the runoff would "mess up his drawers".
He was not supposed to hang laundry on the railing, but the management wasn't interested in enforcing violations as long as you paid the rent every month (I'll remind you of the drug dealers here). One night, in a fit of rage, he came up the stairs and ripped all the leaves of my elephant ears. We were almost at the end of our lease by this point, so I began watering the balcony plants (inaccessible to the neighbor) with fish emulsion fertilizer. It has an incredibly pungent, rotten fish aroma. I felt avenged.
We moved to place #4. It was a decent duplex in a marginal neighborhood. I had enough sunlight and outside space to improve on my container garden. I mainly had roses and some annuals. One of my roses outside now (Reine de Violettes - a wonderful fragrant, purple, indesctructable rose) is actually one I had growing outside in a pot for years before I planted it in the ground. The neighbors were poor respecters of property and some of the neighbor kids were pushy and rude. They used to throw rocks at my cats, so I went with plants that could defend themselves from assault (ie roses). If a nice kid (non-rock-thrower at my cats) admired a rose, I would give it to them.
Then someone there poisoned one of my cats the day we moved into our house. To backtrack a bit, when we looked at the house I spent a fair amount of time (about half of the tour) outside in the yard. I loved the large (4000 square foot), sunny yard. Sold! The "garden tub" and the abundance of natural sunlight in the home were the clinchers. We already knew the neighborhood was great because we'd been seriously interested in another house in the subdivision.
I didn't plant anything (other than my purple rose) for about a year. In 2005 I started growing vegetables in containers. I also started a monster compost pile. Let me tell you, you can grow fantastic cucumbers (lemon, marketmore, and straight 8), tomatoes (the red pear, yellow pear, and Matt's wild cherry were the tomato all-stars). I grew a watermelon (sugar baby) and a canteloupe (Hale's best). The only problem, all those pots had to be watered, every day. God help you if you miss a day, in Houston Texas, watering a container vegetable. I liked the rainy days the best, God would give me the day off. I collected some soil and mailed it off for a soil test.
I used these guys http://www.txplant-soillab.com/ . They're great. My soil came back with "unusually high organic content" for unimproved soil. I found out why about a year later, when a neighbor told me "Oh, yeah, the first people who had that house raised pit bulls out back. They used the whole back yard for a dog run." Dog manure, well aged for 5 years, makes excellent soil improver. Aged years, I repeat. I found out my soil was basically fantastic and all it needed was a little calcium, magnesium, and potassium (easily remedied). I dug the compost into the garden beds I'd prepared (I have five beds, each 4x4 feet).
In 2006, I started a well planted and thought out garden. I had a collection of peppers, tomatoes, onions, and salad veggies. I had an incredible harvest up until June... when I got depressed. It was hideous. I was plagued with constant thoughts of suicide and had a hard time getting up the energy to shower. The garden went to hell. Last year, I wasn't much better, but the garden was a lot worse. My symptoms were all over the map, I couldn't think, much less get up the energy to tackle the major clean up I had on my hands.
Which takes me to my next entry.
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