Desert Garden

Being sick has one advantage.  Lots of books get read without interruption.  I actually made a dent in the piles next to my bed and my Kindle list has temporarily shortened.  But that's the only positive.  I didn't even get to sleep in as I still had to get my daughter off to school.  But the bug has finally run its course and I am back in the Land of Living.  Just in time for a beautiful weekend.  Blue skies and warm temperatures beckoned me into the yard for the first time in a week.

It is THE weekend.  Finally.  I can put together the 6' x 8' raised garden bed that I've been thinking about for a LONG time.  We have officially passed the frost-free date for our area.  No guarantees, I know, but I can't back any longer.  The area in the side yard has been chosen.  It receives enough sunlight to make plants happy but gets afternoon shade so that they don't wilt and cry "Uncle" when our temps get high.  I moved the composter (full of larvae churning the kitchen scraps to nice black soil), cleared the old gravel, assembled the bed using my Christmas gift of bed corners from Gardener's Supply, and then began the arduous work of turning over a foot or so of the concrete - like "soil".  After about 5 shovels full I started to question my sanity.  I'm less than 24 hours from my sick bed  - what the heck am I doing?  Still, orange trees are blooming with their sweet, sweet smell which I could occasionally get whiffs of when my sinuses decided to momentarily clear.  Bees buzzed amongst them.  I guzzled water and reassured the hummingbird that was keeping up a running commentary on my progress.  Eventually I finished the digging and lugged over the 5 huge sacks of soil.... hmmmm... clearly not enough. So another trip to Home Depot and oops... 4 more plants made it onto my cart along with the bags of soil courtesy of my daughter. But how can you NOT buy this one:

This photo is from the Learn2Grow site here:  Learn2Grow

It's called "The Ravers/Pink Sugar" and it's an African Daisy.  Gorgeous desert sunset colors!  Once home, my kids unloaded the soil and turned the bed over.  Saved my back a little distress.  And then we began the fun work... planting!  We did a mixture of plants and seeds.  Tomatoes and marigolds together, herbs up front where I can pinch leaves and smell.  My daughter's sunflowers in the back where we can eventually tie them to the wall so they won't fall over when the summer winds start. Basil seedlings transplanted from the volunteers in my porch pots. Now it's water and wait.  Dream of the chiles and tomatoes that I will enjoy later. And start to scheme up ways to keep the neighborhood quail from devouring my tomatoes at the exact moment that they ripen to perfection.  My quirky daughter is looking forward to the nights when we go out with flashlights and pull of the cutworms and tomato hornworms and squish them with bricks.  Funny the things that kids remember happily from their childhoods!

So now I check the garden on an hourly basis, hoping that my seedlings have popped up.  I'll get bored in a few days and will stop checking.  At that point they will spring up.  In the meantime, I smile.  I love gardens.  I love the hard work up front preparing everything.  I love the gift of plants popping up and gaining strength.  I love cooking and being able to step out the back door to snip some parsley or thyme.  And I love being drawn outdoors where I can watch the mockingbird picking for bugs amongst my pots, listen to him sing his territory boundaries, hear the palm berries drop and bounce as a starling picks them over, and listen to the kestrel scold the world before disappearing into the palm frond nest.  Spring in the Desert.