Not Daily Anymore

I'm trying to get back to doing a "daily bed post" - might get there yet. I could go back through all the beds and make sure I noted varieties, spacing, what worked and what didn't. That could be useful next year.

But next year is the problem. I have already lost interest in this garden. Not that it's a disappointment; it has done better than any garden I've ever tended before. But it's not enough. It's too small, and any expansion would run into droughty saline soil, or shade, or resistance from Garth. It needs more water supply, and that means a new roof, and when I think about the new roof, I want to change the roof to expand the house (and put in a cistern, too), and that means permits and planning and way more time than I can realistically imagine finding in my life.

So instead I dream about climbing an even larger mountain - moving back to the hills, where there are rich moist low areas just waiting to grow food. There's just the small problem of a house. And an agreement from Garth. He worries about disagreements with my family over land use, so he'd rather buy his own land. So, then, we would have free rein to do whatever we wanted with the land - and no money to do it.

Lettuce Update

The Cimarron Red Romaine in the foreground is still okay, but better if mixed with other greens. It was planted around June 8th, a little later than the now-bitter leaf lettuce in the background, which is about to be pulled for mulch or compost. I hear that Garth gave away several pails of it.


And here's my current delight: a couple of rows of fresh lettuce, just coming into their own. I planted these on July 3rd, under the mulch, and kept peeking underneath until they appeared, just five days later. Then I parted it gently to let them out, and away they went. The soil was cooler under the mulch, and this part of the garden is shaded for part of the day, which may have helped too. Next year I want to pay more attention to successional planting, but for this year, with so many of us away in the latter part of July, it worked out okay.

Now it's a maze

Here's the spaghetti squash again. And the pumpkins, and the "west squash," all blending together. There used to be a path through the middle there. No more walking the labyrinth these days, but it's fun to pick my way through there and come across startlingly large squashes swelling under the leaves. Just a couple of weeks, and I'll start pinching the vines back.