Stylized line drawing of mark playing the flute

The urge to grow things

I spend the bulk of my time every week building things that don.t actually exist.

They (mostly) have value. But there.s something wonderful about having a physical object to put your hands on.

I like the idea of building things but I haven.t put in the time to learn. So I compromise by growing things.

I don.t care about decorative gardening and I don.t care about having a well-manicured yard but I love growing things to eat.

The magic of putting seeds in dirt and having them slowly turn into food.

This year I planted:

In the back garden bed:

  • Carrots
  • Rosemary
  • Basil
  • a small pine tree
  • a blackberry bush

I'm especially excited about the blackberry bush. I long for the back corner of the yard to be taken over by blackberries. When I was little, our yard had a giant blackberry bush instead of a back fence and I remember playing and eating berries.

Every year, I try planting a blackberry bush and every year it dies. This year, it.s planted in potting soil in a raised bed instead of the hard clay of our yard so I.m hopeful.

In the new garden bed:

I want to have less lawn so I built a small 5'x5' bed near the house and planted:

  • More carrots
  • Squash. I don't know if I planted these properly because nothing is sprouting yet. For some reason, it surprised me to see that the seeds looked just like pumpkin seeds.
  • Mint
  • Three kinds of tomatoes
  • Sweet peppers
  • Spinach
  • Lettuce
  • Corn! The corn is already over 2' high. There are four rows for cross-pollination.

###In buckets:

  • Basil
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Strawberries. I drilled nine holes in the side of the bucket and filled it up with potting soil, adding plants to the holes at each level. The plants on the bottom all died but the top two rows are all starting to flower.

We have a dog now and I have high hopes that he.ll keep the squirrels away. Of course he got into the bed by the house and dug up the onions and lettuce I planted so now the whole thing is wrapped in chicken wire.

I'm a lazy gardener. I plant and I forget. Sometimes I water if it gets hot, sometimes I don't.

But things are growing and it makes me happy to watch them.