I just want to share a little project I’ve been working on ever since we first started getting a few sunny days around here: gardening.

We have a nice big patch of very healthy soil in the back yard of our apartment building, full of earthworms and salamanders. I’ve been wanting to put in a garden of my own out there for years, but never got around to it. For a while, too, another neighbor was gardening there and I didn’t feel like sharing.

Since she moved, though, the garden had gotten to a state of jungle-like overgrown wildness. It was pretty darn intimidating. Also, our landlord did some remodeling last year and dumped a big pile of dirt and concrete on one side of the garden patch, which now needs to be moved. It took us about a week to clear all the accessible weeds, but we’re still not through with the massive dirt pile.

In the meantime I’ve been babystepping my way into gardening. I used to help my grandma weed and tend her roses when I was a kid, and I’ve read a lot about gardening, but other than a few houseplants and such, I have no hands-on experience with what I’m doing.

Fortunately, our garden does have some lovely plants that survived the weeds and make the place look less bare in the meantime. We’ve got 2 rosebushes, a HUGE jade plant, an even HUGER cactus (which is currently blossoming), mint (which recently got invaded by caterpillars, but I think we’re beating them back), an oleander (which I hate but am willing to keep until we need the space for something else) and 2 or 3 other plants I haven’t identified as of yet.

So far, I’ve planted a small lavender and a bell pepper plant (both of which weren’t looking that great for the first couple weeks, but have now suddenly decided to GROW), as well as 3 basils–1 of which died, 1 of which is barely clinging to life, and 1 of which may just pull through. I tried sowing some radish seeds straight into the soil, but I think the slugs or snails got them before I even saw them. So now I’ve started a bunch of different seeds inside, and so far so good.

Soon I’ll share some updated pictures of the garden, including the potato tower, as well as what we’ve been doing to combat the neverending tide of snails!

garden, gardening This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 3:58 am and is filed under Pano-pol-blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.