Sigh. What a beautiful sight. No longer barren and half-dead, my garden blooms with life once again. Fall, a time when many areas are closing down for the winter, here in Florida, I get another shot of bloom. My corn is sprouting, my beans are flourishing, my onions are packed in for the long haul to spring and there are my tomatoes — flourishing — right along with their sweet pepper cousins!
Which requires the utmost vigilance. I’ve already removed TWO tomato hornworms from them; one before he managed any damage, the other after he ate the top of the plant! Argh. And two black caterpillars. Don’t know what they were but certain they were up to no good.
My peppers had a better go of it on the screened patio, protected from the onslaught of scavengers now trying to devour them out in the wilds of the free, open space of my garden. But I’m there everyday, spritizing and plucking and shooing the insects away, so they should survive.
A wasp has landed on my bean plant. Not sure if he’s a friendly, but any bug carrying a stinger automatically warrants a “friendly” status in my garden. Translated: I’m not going near him. Besides, he doesn’t seem interested in eating the leaves. Only perusing them.
And that’s okay. They ARE gorgeous and heart-shaped leaves. What bug wouldn’t want to land on those pumpkins!
But I digress. Back to the garden. Here we extended the garden by about twenty feet. I’m sure my husband won’t mind if I liberally use the word “we.” I did supervise. Well, not actually in person, but I did direct the expansion. I have four more rows and now we’re growing pumpkins — real pumpkins — and they need space. While I realize it’s a little late in the season to get started on pumpkins, my first sprout was lost to, uh, shall we say, “early expansion efforts.”
Okay. My husband missed it upon first clearing.
My fault, of course. I mean, who plants a lone pumpkin in a small cleared space at the edge of the garden then asks for the adjacent area to be cleared? With a tractor?
Perhaps in hindsight, it wasn’t one of my better decisions. But I’m an action-oriented kind of gal and that sometimes means, do first, think it through second. Ugh. It’s a curse.
Did you see the rogue sweet potato down in the corner? Avid growers these sweet potatoes, so I simply let them be. We’ll see how Mother Nature’s vine does compared to mine.
Granted everything is small at the moment — particularly these carrots — but in a month’s time my entire garden will be full and lush and headed well on its way toward harvest!
Sheer heaven, it is. Sheer heaven.
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