Gardening post! (Finally?)

Small variety of tomato (I forgot the name) and purple string beans in the back trying to survive the heatwave.

So wtf have I been up to? Chaos. Yes, that about sums it up. With thing s in the real work going to hell in a hand basket, it’s been hard to focus on life and managing a garden that just wants to cover everything up.

I started pretty late because, I think, End of March to April we just had so much rain! Like yes, rain is great! Save water, no hosing, yay no back pain! But my garden was in no condition to get weeded and garden beds prepped. I wasn’t the only one late either so I don’t feel bad. My neighbor, Mr. Phan has an amazing green thumb and grows loads on containers. He also doesn’t really speak English so it’s just some unspoken shared time when we’re outside together doing our thing.

This came with one just starting to grow and now it’s about normal average size?

Some things I planted too soon and that was a hefty price to pay. My Japanese cucumbers are only now starting to thrive, though I’m still scared I’ll lose them. The seeds were pricey and only 3 are left growing and my mistake was putting them in ground instead of in garden beds. The ground got cold when we dipped back into early Spring weather. Great for me, who always runs hot (thanks, lupus 🙄). Not great for anything that thrives on hot Summer weather you can roast things on the ground.

One Japanese cucumber trying to do its best.

Learning curve. I never grew cucumbers so somehow I thought they were a cool weather crop 🤷‍♀️ I’m just glad I have any left and we’re entering July so let’s see what happens.

Yes, folks, that is something growing out of my compost bin. I’m still mastering the art of the bin, but we had a pantry cantaloupe couple months ago and, well, dad dumped the seeds with my scraps. Those stalks have mean ass spikes! 😰 Asshole got me good but this just means my compost is lit 😎 I’m assuming it’s cantaloupe because nothing else has been going in with that much seeds in them. So we’ll see. Chaos ✨

Yellow string beans I swore would be dead. They have proven me wrong💪

I was almost cried when I heard we were going to read 95F to 100F. My tricolor string beans didn’t seem to have a chance because they weren’t finished growing. Again, I stuck them in the ground thinking it’ll be ok. Cool weather crop was coming along then Satan opened the doors to Hell so he could vent the place out 😒 But lo and behold, a few beans grew over the those days and proved me wrong!

Not the success I hoped for, but we are headed back to below 90F so things have time to grow at their normal rate. And maybe I can see other color beans before we go back to Dead of Summer weather.

I’ll try to post more updates on my garden since that’s the only other thing I’m doing besides showing off books and reviewing them. If, for anything, following the journey of the Compost Cantaloupe should at least piqued your interest 🧐🍈