Welcome, My Lovely White Flowers!

Perhaps my favorite part of spring is watching plants appear to "come back to life" and burst into bloom.  Azaleas are one of the earliest and showiest harbingers of the flower season here on my little plot of land. 


My white azaleas just opened fully a few days ago.  I recently discovered that I have a "thing" for white flowers surrounded by green foliage.  Nearly all of my azalea bushes are white -- my first choice, which I did not even have to make because the bushes were already planted here when we bought the house!  (I do have a few azalea bushess in the dark fuschia and I've added a few of the dwarf variety in light pink.)  I also love the white blooms on ligustrum this time of year. Can't wait for the gardenias to follow up with their fragrant white blossoms later this summer!

Perspective

For some reason, I knew starting this growing season wouldn't be easy.

In the 2 week period of waiting for little green signs of life, disaster struck.  A natural disaster. We were in the direct path of a line of violent storms that passed through the South, killing people and damaging millions of dollars' worth of property.  I had hoped we would only catch the edge of the storm, or that the North Carolina mountains would slow or break up the system, but no such thing happened.

At our house, the storm approached slowly and dramatically, with a build-up of winds and dark clouds.  Once the most violent part of the storm arrived, it passed through quickly.  Sheets of rain and hail, carried by the extreme winds, slammed into our house, and I noticed our drainage ditch next to the road completely filled with water just after the storm had started.  A large tree came down in our neighbors' yard, and the arbor supporting my wisteria began to tilt significantly.  At one point during the storm, we became worried about the level of hail and the wind strength and retreated our walk-in closet.  We lost power and it remained off for nearly 6 hours.

My two raised vegetable garden beds lay behind our storage shed, which faces west, so I hoped they would have some protection... but even if they did, it wasn't enough.  They both filled with water, and the additional spurts of rain we received after the storm ensured that they stayed filled with water for the remainder of the day. The rows containing cucumber seeds had small mounds of dirt peeking through -- so there may be some hope for those seedlings! I believe the rest was washed away or drowned.  I had just seen small shoots coming up the day before, so whatever was growing was likely too fragile to survive.

Although I'm disappointed that my germinating seeds may have drowned, I will replant.  This storm was devastating to others in our community -- several people have damaged or completely leveled homes, and dozens of people in the South, including several in NC, have been killed.  I am extraordinarily grateful that we made it through the storm safely, and our home had no damage.  We have many blessings, including the opportunity to try again.

Timing is Everything

I've discovered that my timing, in multiple aspects of life, is NOT impeccable.  When it comes to the garden, however, I'm not quite sure yet whether sowing this weekend was a good timing or terrible timing. 

On Friday evening, after a delivery of topsoil on that afternoon, I worked the soil of both my existing 8x8 garden bed and my new 10x10 bed, blending in compost to the new bed.  The weather was in the mid-60s here in lovely central North Carolina, with a forecast of several warm days as well as rain over the next week. That night, I planted three rows of green beans, one row of dill, and one row of onions in the 8x8 bed. 

I knew rain was in the forecast for that evening, and again for Tuesday evening, so I thought my timing would work perfectly, requiring little monitoring and minimal watering over the next few days.   Later that night, all cleaned up and relaxing indoors, I heard the rain approaching... and it did, indeed, start raining.  In fact, it started pouring, with the full torrential fury of a spring thunderstorm.  I wondered how deeply the downpour would move the newly worked soil, and hoped my seeds weren't being pounded right out of their carefully plotted layout.  While I didn't expect the full-out thunderstorm, I wasn't completely surprised, either.  After all, what is a garden without a little worry, right from the start?

Yesterday (Saturday), I checked on the existing garden, concluded (hoped?) that the planted seeds probably weren't drastically affected, and proceeded to plant two rows of cucumbers and a row of carrots in the 10x10 bed.  The forecast for yesterday had called for a chance of showers in the morning, so I waited until late afternoon before I even went outside. Not a drop of rain fell all day.... until, literally, as I was dropping the first few cucumber seeds in the first row of the new garden bed. 

Oh well, the ground is already soaked, and today (Sunday) and tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be sunny and warm -- in the 80s, and perhaps reaching into the high 80s tomorrow afternoon before cooling down to the more seasonal low 70s for the rest of the week.  That should make for a nice warm, moist bed for germination, and give the now-soaked beds a chance to dry out just a little bit.  Except...  it's now noon, the sun disappeared not long after sunrise, ne'er to be seen since, and it's barely getting out of the mid-50s at this point.  Can the temperature even reach the average high for the day?  Sun... hello?  Where are you??? 

A planner at heart, I don't always find myself very flexible in changing my actions based on the weather.  (Clearly, I am still rebelling against my roots in the snowy Upper Midwest.)  Also literal by nature, I don't appreciate the surprise of discovering the weather forecast really isn't all that dependable.  (Again, experience doesn't seem to be having an impact here either.)  However, I can't do anything now but wait and hope the garden is off to a good start, despite the conditions. Who knows -- we haven't had extreme heat or cold or damaging hail, so the timing could have been perfect, despite my worry.  We'll find out in a couple of weeks!

Commitment

Tomorrow is the big day.  I’ve been planning this event for weeks, thinking about it for months.  Tomorrow I will plant the first seeds in my vegetable garden.

This year’s attempted crop will include:

·         Carrots

·         Green Beans

·         Onions

·         Dill

·         Cucumbers

·         Tomatoes (with marigolds)

I’m also contemplating watermelons (I am starting those seeds indoors), and I’m planning to plant squash as a late crop, after the carrots are finished.  Tomorrow, I’m sowing the carrots, green beans, dill, and cucumbers.  I’ll plant the onions next week and buy and plant small tomato plants near the end of the month.

Placement is key.  Recently, I’ve been attempting to learn more about companion planting – which types of plants benefit each other and which ones do not get along.  For example, as I was reading through a list of ideal and not-so-ideal companion plants, I learned that carrots and dill should not be planted next to each other.  That set me on a path of even more vigorous research and planning, because I had planned to plant those two next to each other on one edge of the bed. 

Also, there are variables to consider.  My two biggest concerns are soil acidity and squash bugs.  First, I have had a persistent problem with growing cucumbers in odd shapes (such as a softball shape, which tends to complicate pickling).  I believe I have identified the problem, which is likely acidic soil in the area I was trying to grow the plants (perhaps due to over-fertilizing), and the best solution would be to add lime… in the fall.  Oops.  So, I need to plant the cucumbers in the new bed I’ve added this year (and I need to renew my vow not to use too much compost this year).  Secondly, I’ve begun to experience problems with the evil squash bug.  Previously, squash had always been the reliable workhorse of my garden.  If all else failed, I could always have my summer squash and zucchini – in fact, two years ago, I was practically giving it away on the side of the road—and then last year, suddenly, the plants were withering away just after blooming.  I found the culprits, but it was too late.  This year, I am going to make a few attempts to overcome the squash bug without the use of chemicals (primarily through companion planting, placement and sowing later in the season). 

Because of my increasing obsession with companion plants, and the different variables I needed to consider, I went straight to my comfort zone…  I made a spreadsheet.  Ha!  Next -- graph paper to plot locations.  Once a nerd, always a nerd...

However, I’ve realized why I have been relatively consumed with planning the garden in recent weeks. It’s the commitment that the whole thing requires. Once I’ve started, I can’t change my mind. Even if I learn more later, I may not be able to fix the mistakes I make at this stage. I have to be willing to actually make mistakes in the first place.  And I feel pressure to get this right in order to have a fighting chance for results in the coming months (especially with my track record!). The planning, the spreadsheets, the research… I do what I can to reassure myself, but ultimately, I have to just go for it. (Hmmm, a little like starting this blog...!)   Spreadsheet and plotted graph in hand -- I'm ready!

Breaking Ground

Have you ever wished you were good – or even really great – at a certain skill?  Then, as you attempt to acquire the skill -- strong in resolve and certain of success – you discover that despite your best efforts, your technique is merely mediocre?

I am 30 years old, and I keep repeating this experience, in relation to…. gardening.  Honestly, I grew up with a strong agricultural background, so I have little excuse.  And, I find it frustrating, at best.  My grandparents, and generations before them, made their living (some of them very successfully) by raising crops and feeding livestock on their land, and I can’t even grow a cucumber in the proper shape.  I have had some limited success, but practically speaking, I know very little of what my grandparents knew about growing.  I do, however, have an ongoing love affair with horticulture that I’ve concluded must be innate.  The contentedness that comes with sinking my hands into the soil, that protective feeling I develop over a bed of vulnerable blooming plants, the satisfaction of scrubbing dirt from under my fingernails after a productive weeding session … all are sensations that can’t be reproduced, and, I wonder, may only occur to those with an instinctive connection to the land.

Because I grew up in a family with a rich farming heritage, and subsequently married into one, I am familiar with several rural sayings that are supposed to give us guidance, such as why corn needs to be “knee-high by the Fourth of July” (in order to harvest before the frost); how March, if it “comes in like a lion, will go out like a lamb” (and vice versa); and that “when the new leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear, the suckers will be running” (OK, that last one might mean different things to different people, depending on perspective!).  I also appreciate how farmers can seemingly predict when it’s going to rain or storm, when a winter will be especially cold, or when the last frost has yet to arrive.  It seems like magic, but it’s developed through observations and a level of experience with which many of us are somewhat out of touch.   While I am very grateful for my current position in life, sometimes I wish I weren’t quite so far removed from the necessity of knowing that information.  

Luckily, in my pursuit of such knowledge, not only do I have the world wide web at my disposal (one absolutely key advantage), but I also have advice and stories from my dad, which I plan to share on my blog.  I’ve also noticed that I may have some flickering remnant of my grandmother’s green thumb (with select flowers only so far).   I’ve done a little experimenting in the last couple of years, and I plan to take steps to learn more in the next year or so, documenting my experiences and observations along the way. 

I am not planning to write a “how-to guide” to gardening, nor am I making any claims of expertise on anything I discuss.  In fact, this blog will be quite the opposite –it’s meant to be an exploration of what I don’t know, a discovery of what I want to know, and, primarily, the general application of what I love most -- learning.  God did not find it appropriate to give me the natural aptitude, resources, and – most of all – the patience – to be a farmer or even a successful gardener, but He did decide to give me curiosity to learn, which I get to exercise frequently in my hobbies, and fortunately, in my real-life (paying) job.

While I don’t plan to exclusively write about gardening, I believe it is through cultivating my vegetables, flowers, and herbs that I can more appropriately appreciate my circumstances and reflect upon stories of the past.  The name of this blog represents two parts of a plant – the new growth and the established core.  Each of us is like a small branch – little offshoots from a larger organism, each reaching out to make our own pathway into the sunlight.  However, we wouldn’t exist without a deeply entrenched foundation.  Remembering my roots, horticulturally speaking, may even provide me a fresh perspective on more than just plant life.

Lastly, I am writing this blog partly for myself, but I am also writing this blog to connect with others.  In general, I am a rather private person, who feels somewhat uncomfortable with the over-sharing that social media encourages.  However, I am a writer at heart, if not in talent– a writer who is finally admitting she needs to get out and practice her craft outside of her little cubbyhole in the world as much as she needs books and reading and wordplay.   And I need constant reminders that readers need to find material interesting and relevant – therefore, a blog seems the most sensible next step right now. 

Feel free to drop in on me now and then to see what I’m up to, or make suggestions about similar topics you’d like to read about. My hope is that, just as these tulips broke through the weeds to bloom in my rough and messy flower garden, this blog will push me forward as a writer into new (and enjoyable) territory.