Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Wasteland


Last week was insane.

Chickens being killed, health issues, a trip to Urgent Care (I'm fine, just not taking care of myself well), now a chest cold, and a nice but tiring fishing trip to the beach (yay!). I'm so glad to be in a new week.

I took the past two weeks off of anything related to work, and with that plus being under the weather, I haven't spent much time on the internet at all. Well, except for Pinterest, but that doesn't count.

Y'all. It's been amazing. Take a week off from social media and tell me how you feel. I promise you'll feel amazing.

I love how much time I haven't wasted scrolling on Facebook. I've been almost completely disconnected from the world and I feel like I can breathe. I have spent my time cooking, cleaning and organizing my home ( I actually enjoy doing this), and reading wonderful books. I'm loving it so much, I think I'll just check in every now and then to see if anyone is talking to me, and keep ignoring the rest.

I've also spent some time planting. I know I'm terribly, terribly late in the game but being in Southern California our growing season is pretty much all year long and I figured it couldn't hurt to try. My seeds are at least a year old and I need to use them up anyways. I planted last week and was going to wait until I had some sprouts to show you. This is what they look like this week:


Completely munched. What was a nice little box full of wee-baby sprouts with tiny leaves a few days ago, is now a completely decimated lettuce wasteland. I'm almost ready to give up gardening forever. I feel like we can't win at all this year. It either gets munch by bugs, chickens or dogs, or gets dug up by tiny hands who aren't paying attention.


Good news is, so far I have green beans. The chard was victim to munching as well, and I haven't seen a single flower sprout out of all the ones I sowed last week. But if nothing goes terribly, horrifically wrong, we might have green beans!


We have asparagus growing too! My mother-out-law (my sister's MIL) found freebie giveaways of a bunch of sad looking plants at the home improvement store early this spring. We took a few home, planted them with the attitude that if they grew, awesome, if not then nothing was wasted and a few weeks later we had sprouts! They are feathering out nicely with their little ferny leaves. In another year or two hopefully they'll be big enough to grace our dinner table.


After years of trying, a few moves to different parts of the yard, and being chewed down to nubs from a (previous) dog, we finally have edible grapes this year! They tried last year, but this is the first time any of the bunches actually set with grapes. I'm so excited! They are just about ready, so they'll be picked soon for snacks. They aren't huge, maybe the size of a large pea, but they are tasty, and they are ours.

Ok, looking at these pictures all is not lost with the garden. It just feels like it when everything is being munched to death by various creatures. We get a few tomatoes every now and then, and we've gotten about 3 good jalapeno peppers. The berries gave a few this year after being moved, and I think next year we'll get a decent crop if I can keep the dogs from trampling them. And of course, we still get eggs from the girls and sweet Dilly the duck. Food is still coming from our yard, in tiny fits and bursts. It's all good.

1 comment:

  1. Okay, what the heck happened? Why did you have to go to urgent care? Have there been any more murders? My garden is the worst ever this year. I have a couple of green tomatoes that's it. Sunflowers zip!! Anyway take pity on me and tell me. Lovely asparagus by the way.

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