How Does Your Garden Grow?

Who am I kidding? I don't care about the "how". I only care about the "does".

There's an awful lot of self-esteem and responsibility tied up in having a garden, as I am finding out. DD and I put in 3 smallish beds last year when we went on our Landscaping Extravagan-zah!, and I spent the better part of the winter staring at the snow-covered yards and thinking "Well...they were nice plants while they lasted."

Because, seriously - how could any living thing survive that without the benefit of fourteen layers of fleece and a thermos of hot cocoa? HOW? Mentally, I had already said my farewells, and dreaded the spring melt where I would dig up the hosta and cedar corpses and put them to rest in that big black composter in the sk...er, backyard.

And then the spring melt came and, lo and behold: there was green! Actual, real live plants, right where I left them! Flush with success and drunk on my amazing powers of nurturing, I thought the only possible thought: "Hell! I should grow veggies this year!"

So I did the only reasonable thing - drag my partner to every home and garden store in a 15km radius inspecting every single planter until finally settling on some which, upon closer inspection, didn't really suit my purposes after all and therefore it's back to the stores with a rapidly-changing schematic in mind for building one ourselves using everyday materials such as wood, black plastic, four gajillion nails and screws and, of course, sections from a Derek Zeisman campaign sign.

In the meantime, though, I did actually plant a few things in my pre-purchased containers...and was that ever a nerve-wracking week, waiting to see if anything would actually grow. Every morning I'm out to water, all "any day now!" and every night I'm out back "stupid seeds! Why don't you freakin' grow, you stupid stinky seeds...oh, I didn't mean that, I love you! Please grow!" And you feel like a terrible, terrible person, especially if your record as a guardian of living things is four dead fish, one bird that flew away, and that one horrific summer where you killed every single plant (including bamboo) in the apartment you were subletting.

So would anyone be terribly surprised to learn that I did a full-out touchdown dance when the radishes started growing? Which, by the way, are my total favourite vegetables in the whole world, along with green onions, two varieties of lettuce, green onions, carrots and, if they know what's good for them, snow peas.

Now, all of these are still in seedling form, and they've just undergone a couple of days of frost, and my compost still isn't ready (stupid worms! Eat faster!) so it remains to be seen whether of them will actually make it to my tummy, but - it sure feels nice right now. And I've already got images of plump tomatoes, robust pole beans and abundant zucchini in the "so pretty that I'm not sure I want to get it all full of dirt and such" container that we built.

So here's hoping that if any of you make it out to the 'burbs this summer, you will have some of Floyd's bounty to enjoy. Even if it is just one radish.