FOOD!
HOLY FUCK! THERE IS FUCKING FOOD GROWING IN MY BACKYARD!
This fact, from time to time, when I really think about it just blows my tiny little mind. I don’t really know why I think it’s such a big deal, but I’ve been examining that tonight and I think it’s the whole “not being dependent on the grocery store” thing. And maybe the fact that I nurtured these CRAZY HUGE PLANTS from teeny tiny seeds since March, not really knowing what was going to happen. It’s not like my frontyard garden where I scatter seeds, let them do their own thing out there with very little help from me except watering them twice in the beginning and then I know more or less what’s going to happen to them. They are going to grow into purple, pink, white, blue and sometimes yellow flowers that grow into this one gigantic bush that people walking past marvel over.
And here’s where I might as well segue into what some of you will see as bad news: this is the last year I’m going to do the Keep Off the Lawn Project (which is just a stupid name for my wildflower frontyard garden for those not in the know). Blake’s going to weed whack the garden in a couple of weeks before everything starts going to seed and next year instead of spreading wildflower seeds we’re going to be spreading grass seed or laying down sod. :o/
Here’s the fact of the matter: I love my frontyard garden, like really really love it, but at the same time it gives me massive anxiety and this week, after I went out and took pictures of it and noticed all the weeds and fretted over the seeds that never grew or the fact that the back half of the garden is all bachelor’s buttons and the front is all cosmos and it should be the opposite because cosmos are taller that bachelor’s buttons. Also, the bachelor’s buttons bloomed in July and started going to seed at the beginning of August while the cosmos just started blooming a couple of weeks ago so the whole thing looks uneven ad unkempt, like in a bad way. And unless I spend hours and hours and hours out there transplanting, there’s no way to fix it (and even that probably wouldn’t even be possible, everything’s way too close together).
And here’s the thing, which I’ve explained before: I can’t spend hours and hours and hours out there. I can barely spend the few minutes out there it takes me to take pictures of the garden. I feel like I’m being watched and judged by people n the cars going by and I’m terrified of someone walking down the street talking to me or worse, my neighbour who I barely know and our relationship is super awkward for a million reasons I won’t go into right now. So I sit here and fret about the weeds and how REAL gardeners walking by are judging me and my garden. I paid the kids twice this summer to weed the garden (and again to deadhead the bachelor’s buttons), but kids aren’t very good weeders, they aren’t very strong and I can’t be out there telling them what to pull or what to leave or how to do it. I mean they do their best and really weeding the garden is just an excuse for me to give them money anyway, but that doesn’t help my anxiety over weeds.
Wayne & Judy’s house, well “old house” I suppose, on the left of us is for sale right now for only $99,999.00 (it was purchased for $150,000!) so it’s getting a craptonne of people looking at it and they make me nervous as all hell. Wayne & Judy’s backyard and back deck, as I’ve explained before, overlooks both our front AND backyards so there’s absolutely no privacy ad lately every time I’ve gotten up the courage to go out and do something in either garden, there’s been some stranger either touring the house with the real estate agent or ever crazier, people have been pulling over, because the price of the house is advertised right on the “for sale” sign, and have gotten out of their cars to look in the windows and come right into the backyard and look around. To even GET into the backyard you have to open a latched gate! I don’t get the nerve of these people!
AND WORSE! GET THIS! Two weeks ago some creepy balding guy knocked on my door and wanted to know if I knew anything about Wayne & Judy’s house! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, RIGHT? I just about had a goddamn heart attack right there, I swear to god! And I was SO STUPID about it too. When people knock on our door, the dogs generally bark like crazy until they sniff whoever it is (no matter who it is) and then they go lay down. This guy knocked gently enough that he didn’t set off the dogs, which I always see as a good thing (I’ve trained just about all delivery people to do that because the barking makes me crazy and I don’t know how to make them stop – anyway, totally different topic…) so when I answered the door, I actually stepped outside and closed the door behind me. So the kids didn’t know I was interacting with this stranger and the dogs didn’t know and what if he was a crazy stalker person who wanted to kill or abduct me? No one would know I was gone or hurt or dead or whatever! In hindsight I was just like, what, are you fucking retarded? That was so stupid! Anyway…
So this guy, who again, was totally twitchy and creepy and I just got a seriously disturbed vibe from him, asked me if I knew about the house and I said that I could probably answer any question he had and he was just like, “well tell me about it” so I told him the downsides: electric baseboard heaters, no place for a normal furnace if you wanted to upgrade, because of the electric heat and the fact that it’s a seriously old house with no weather-proofing, Wayne & Judy had like, $400-$500/month hydro bills in the winter. You can’t get a queen-sized boxspring upstairs because the stairs are at an angle where you can’t get it around the corner, so if you want a queen-sized bed, you’re getting a mattress on the floor. One bedroom doesn’t have a window or a door. Mice. Lots & lots of mice. No basement. Living room carpet was pissed on so much that it needs replacing and the house stinks of dog pee (unless the owner replaced it, which I doubt). Blah blah blah. So I told him all this and he starts telling me about how he’s going through a divorce and “the bitch” is getting half of their $400,000 house and she took all of his “fucking” retirement money and he’s like, telling me all these details about his divorce, like the fact that he’ll be paying $1100/month in child support and I’m thinking “dude, what the fuck” but just nodding and hoping like hell that this creepy as fuck guy will not be my new neighbour…then two days ago I was in the backyard checking on the veggies and there that creepy guy was on the back deck of the house with the real estate agent. The house still has a “for sale” sign on it and a lot of people have been through since I saw that guy so I don’t know anything but man…I hope this dude doesn’t move in next door. I mean, he kinda leered at me when he was with the real estate agent. So creepy.
Wow, did I ever go on a tangent there.
My point is that the frontyard garden stresses me out more than it gives me pleasure so after talking to Blake about it, I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m still anti-lawn, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have to deal with grass. Mowing is Blake’s job. There *are* two flower beds in the front where I will plant flowers, I don’t know what kind yet because the beds are in a shady area and I don’t know what to plant, but I figure I’ll let the kids have one of them each to grow whatever they want from a list of what will grow there and they can start their seeds in March when I start mine for the back garden.
Speaking of the back garden, Blake & I are considering expanding it next year, although we haven’t decided definitively. Our neighbour on the right (named Frances, I haven’t written about him much because there’s nothing to write about), whose house is also for sale, never goes in his backyard EVER so I don’t have to worry about making small talk with him because we have no privacy. I will have to contend with new neighbours once Wayne & Judy’s house sells but I’m going to treat this as immersion therapy and try to just ignore them. God help me if they’re friendly, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
So that’s the plan.
Out of everything we planted in the back garden, which was a lot, the only things that thrived were sugar snap peas, burgundy beans, bobcat tomatoes, sugary cherry tomatoes and green and purple peppers. The tomatoes and peppers were started indoors in march and the bobcat tomatoes out there are fucking ridiculous. There are 3 plants, that are more like BUSHES, that have grown so big it just looks like one giant tomato bush. The tomato cages were useless because there were too small, so the tomatoes grew tall enough it pulled the cages right out of the ground and they’re all supported by leaning on each other in like, a tee-pee formation. Only one of my cherry tomato plants thrived, which sucks because they’re awesome, but the cage was useless with that one too because of it being too small. I had no idea how big tomato plants could get so I got the small 99 cent cages instead of the bigger $4.99 ones. Next year we’ll get the bigger ones.
And I guess that’s enough of my crazy talk, I’ll just get on with the pictures.