Life Among the Ruins

I still haven't redone the fountain.  I'm waiting until Roommate Smurf moves out so that, when the landscaping inevitably turns from a two-day project into a two-week one, there aren't piles of dirt all over the yard for her dog to get into.

Meanwhile, stuff keeps growing in the garden.  I don't have so much a laissez-faire approach to gardening as a lazy-ass one.  I plant stuff, water it, fertilize and pest spray as needed, and trim off the dead parts when they start to dominate.  If/when plants die, I sometimes pull them out and sometimes just chop them off above the surface.  That turned out to be the right thing to do with the artichoke, so I have kind of applied the approach to everything edible.  I almost never pick up fruit-fall or something an animal has partly eaten.  And I have stopped pulling weeds until they grow big enough to tell what they are.

As a result, I now have a new cherry tomato plant!  It was probably seeded from a ripe tomato that a bird half ate and I didn't want to touch.  My theory is that stuff like that becomes compost if you let it biodegrade.  It's in a terrible corner where the roots can't get very deep.  I'll put it in a pot while we're working and hope it survives.

I never got around to ripping out Tommy and Brad either, and both have rebounded.  Tommy is thriving as a plant, but has yet to produce a tomatillo.  Still waiting for Brad to bloom, maybe next week.  Considering I thought he was dead not that long ago, I'm not disappointed.

My onion farm

My green onions from last year keep trying to return.  While digging some out of the cracks between rocks to use in a tuna salad, I came to the realization that several bushes on that side of the fountain are actually enormous clusters of ornamental green onions planted by my mom many years ago, and I never had to plant my own in the first place.  If I had ever gotten around to controlling their spread, I would have figured it out from the strong onion scent.  I did some research to make sure they were edible, and they most certainly are.  They are far more pungent than their grocery-store cousins, so I only have to use half as much whenever I need some.  I suspect I will never have to buy green onions again.

Now I'm curious to see what other surprises await when I actually do fix up the garden.  That is, aside from the many worms and pill bugs I already know make it their home.  I have to keep reminding myself that it's a good thing which keeps the soil healthy.  Worms gross me out.