Behold the Battle Ground

So, I think that in the past I might have mentioned that I like to garden. If I haven’t then let me show you a picture of my back garden as visual explanation….

I love gardening.

But there has been something missing from my life for almost 10 years now. Something that I haven’t been able to do…….

Vegetable gardening.

I inherited the gardening gene from these people.
Look only at the couple to the right in the picture. Please ignore the rest of us as it was 1980 and we were still in recovery from the 70’s and our addiction to polyester. It was a frightening time that I still try not to think about, especially that pink polyester pants suit I had. Shivers.

The gardening gene comes straight from Grandma and Grandpa Pringle. They always had a garden, I never remember a time when they didn’t. What they planted grew and tasted delicious. And when they finally moved into a condo and no longer had a yard then the parental units carved out a garden plot in their yard. Grandpa gardened in a shirt and tie or a vest. Always looking dapper for the veggies.

But here at Chez Knit there has been no veggie gardening. And the same applies over at LookLeap’s house (well, she does live 300 feet from me after all). You see, we live in the shadows where it is always gloomy. Like Mordor. Or not because then that might make us Orcs and I prefer not to be an Orc thank you very much. We live amongst trees which bring lovely shade but also are antagonistic to veggies. There is also the deer issue but I don’t want to be a downer.

But finally, FINALLY, there is a light at the end of our long nonveggiegrowing drought tunnel. Our little Ohio town has seen the light and set up a Community Garden.

Joy!

And Lookleap was on the ball and snagged not one but two plots. And she had to be on the ball because these things went faster than Lady Gaga tickets but were much less expensive. And then, being the excellent friend that she is she asked if I wanted to participate.

Well Duh!

Here is our battleground. If you look off to the left there you will see someone with a white shirt on. That is LookLeap tilling the ground like an early pioneer. We did think about the pioneers putting in gardens and decided that we understood why they didn’t live long lives. It is hard work and we didn’t even have to remove any tree stumps.

There are others who got to work sooner than we did. I have to tamp down the thought that we have to get going because we want to beat them, beat them ALL. And have better tomatoes and peppers and……

But I am really not competitive you know.

LookLeap had spent time last week thinking up our garden plan, she is very organized that way. And we had it all thought out. And we had purchased peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, bean seeds. Yum!

  But I can tell you that we need a BUNCH more plants. Our plot is in the lower half of the picture and that probably shows you a third of the actual space that we have. After putting everything in we decided that we needed about 6 more pepper plants and 8 more tomato plants as well a cucumbers because we have the space.

Look, my gardening clogs.

Our pepper plants. We need some big green stuffing peppers and I think I need a banana pepper plant too.

Tomato plants. Do you know that you should not plant your tomatoes right by your peppers because it stunts the growth of the peppers. You may scoff but it is true and I have proved it in past gardens. We have separated them with the beans. Perhaps the State Department should call us when planning negotiations. Hmmmm.

LookLeap threatened me with bodily or at least photographic harm if I put in the OTHER picture that I have of her in the garden.

She doesn’t scare me!

Much…..

And so, the garden is partially in. And it is back to the garden center today to get a boat load of other things. And we both decided that we can hardly wait to be back in our little plot of land, gardening together, as friends who live 300 feet from each other should do.

I will be keeping you posted as to how things go cuz I know you want to know.

You do don’t you?

Don’t you?