garden details

so much of life is going by undocumented. future me does not approve. future me wants to be able to look back on the summer of my 49th year and remember.

i want to remember our garden. all the care and time mom and i spend in it. mom naps on her taut flat hammock in the afternoons, curled up in the shade. later she covers it with a blue tarp. she keeps the tarp fixed to the bed with panty hose of course. in the evenings she waters. all her beds are equipped with multiple dug in water reservoirs fashioned from cups and bottles--anything she can poke some holes in the bottom of. she is a firm believer of watering at the roots and this plus mulching with cedar bark has kept the beds weed free this year. 

mom owns the beds with some few interlopers from me. i do the container gardening. all the beds are in various degrees of shambles from rotting wood, but we've mickey moused them together with wood scraps mom has salvaged around the neighbourhood from construction sites. the shady bed under the cedar tree has garlic thanks to old crabby dave, a little english lavender bush, multiple hastas, some curly kale, some chives and a lovely rosemary tree which i forbade mom from cutting down. she's grown to like it since. 

next to this box is a partial shade bed that has become a flower bed of all sorts of flowers. its contents have expanded over time. my spanish lavender bush, poppies, listeria, were all last year's inhabitants which returned and this year, i put my extra marigolds in there and then mom filled it up with eucalyptus, petunias, lobelia (one of mom's favourites) of multiple colours, forget me nots, black eyed suzies, and others until it is a riot of colours.

in the far south west corner is the raspberry bed. it has 2 from last year and many volunteers. in the very corner mom has planted tiger lillies which are not doing much this year, beside that asters, and then right along the chain link fence are my three pots--cherry tomato, sugar/snap peas, and lemon cucumber (grows in a yellow ball).  these but up besides the bed that has been mom's biggest project--perennial flower bed.

perennial flower bed is stuffed full. holy hocks in the back, fox gloves in front of that, then poppies, then shasta daisies, and some yellow flowers and odd interesting buys in front. next to that is another cherry tomato in a pot. then izzy's garden (her burial ground) which i expanded this year and gave a wood frame and planted with flower seeds to excess. it has tons of cornflowers and cosmos with some poppies and other pretty ditties trying to poke through. mom thought i was crazy for doing it like that but i just shrugged my shoulders and expected wonderful things. which i have.

at the bottom of my stairs i made a raised bed planter from the body of a little 2 drawer dresser and planted 2 cabbages and some marigolds. on the next 2 steps up are my two heirloom tomato plants. one is a black krim and the other is a mystery. they curl their leave and look scraggly but keep growing and producing. 

across the path is mom's giant tomato patch. i gave her six seedlings from work, some grape tomato and some beefsteak. they are all giants with tons of fruit. next to them she's grown zucchini on a compost heap. then she put a table in the rest of the garden and has he own containers sitting on top of that. she has basil, peppers, swiss chard, lettuce and kale, (those 2 she moved to the shade over on top of the old compost box which is beside the shady bed).

the shed has one flower basket, which mom made herself, artistically graceful, and a blackberry bush mom is training on the shed wall. there's a giant bush of lemon mint too, and my two bins of compost that's on the go. mom has 2 more flower baskets hanging from the underside of my porch and in her entrance patio area. one was a mother's day gift from me and the other is one she created again.

i have two beds made from the drawers of the dresser, with more cabbage and marigolds sitting on the ledge beside the table that we have sitting here in the patio area. on the other side of the railing is anothe bed. it's the mystery bed. well, it was a bed we had left wild with weeds. it had garlic from crabby dave and mint growing in it but  we kept getting these mystery seedlings popping up everywhere we used the compost that i made last summer and i wanted to grow them to see what they were. so we got the elders to weed that bed and then we transplanted them there. they seem to be either some kind of squash or cucumber. mom added some pumpkins to the back. we are excited to see what we get. the whole box is full of giant leaves now.  

besides all this, are 2 more cherry tomato pots, 2 more cabbage pots, my climbing roses, and my little yellow rose bush.  plus my porch--my flower bower, but that's enough description for now.

mom waters at night and i water in the morning. we sit out here in the cooler evenings and in the breezy mornings. we ooh and aw over the fruits of our labours. we pick handfuls of raspberries and pop them into dad's mouth and our own. it has become a lovely place of refuge. something to tend and care for. something to watch over. something to marvel at. a peaceful grounding little piece of paradise.