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The Good Life

Constant gardener

I never thought these words would ever leave my mouth, but I think I’m actually starting to like gardening. All my life I’ve looked at this as something only old people do. People with no lives who lost their minds to some kind of mental illness, walking around and talking to plants as if they were their friends.

Well, I’m not quite there yet. Fortunately. But I do have a new appreciation of making things grow. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older or loosing my mind. Or just simply because I like eating food I grow myself. It might just be because I like seeing the results, or “fruit” if you will, of my own labor. Another reason might be because, it’s really hard to fail to grow pretty much anything in this climate.  Just stick it in, make sure it’s watered, and watch it grow. Pretty simple really.

Another thing we’ve started that’s borderline hippie, is to make our own compost. This has gotten me unusually excited, and I don’t normally get very excited about rotting food. But, also here, we’ve seen some pretty substantial results. We used to have a full garbage can at the end of the week, right before pickup on Monday mornings. It was pretty hard to even close it sometimes. After we started composting, we hardly have ANY. Maybe a bag or two only at the bottom of the garbage can.

I sense you’re not equally excited about this as I am….

4 replies on “Constant gardener”

geeking out, green thumb style…

One of the best things about my new house is the backyard and the planters filled with organic dirt. Currently we just have herbs, tomatoes and a lemon tree but there will be an avocado tree in my future….

Speaking of the joys and surprises of composting…. D & L started a compost off the side of the house with food scraps and waste from their vineyard. A week or two later they discovered that all the grapes in the compost pile were gone and a giant stack of purple bear crap next to the compost. Definitely not what they had in mind as fertilizer but effective none the less.

That is funny. No bear crap in our compost yet. I’m sure the bear didn’t want to leave them empty handed. It’s the ever famous grapes for bear crap program.

I’ve had an avocado tree once, I had it for about 15 years. I did not treat it well. No water for weeks sometimes, changed soil maby twice in all those years. I even tried to kill it! Twice!!! By simply cutting it off. Leaving it with no branches left… but, I couldn’t really throw it away. I wanted to see if it would start growing new branches and get new green leaves and stuff(?). And, it did. It was imortal. So before you get an avocado tree, prepare your self for a life long relationship. It can’t be killed!

PS One night I took the tree and drove far away and dumped it. As far as I know, it is still alive!

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