Tim Burton’s garden
Since things are a little slow in the café today, I will share one of my long winded stories.
On the SOTD, ABQ2ATL was talking about how it is 95 in Atlanta and when it rains, steam comes off the pavement. Here in Florida, every day in July has been 90 and the humidity has been about 88, so it feels like 100.. And it has rained every day. June was about the same and even May was hot and wet. So I have done what any sane person would do under the circumstances—totally stayed in the house except for the 20 foot stroll to DH’s car (mine is in the garage).
Well today we had a thunderstorm at about 8 am and after the rain, it was only 78 degrees! I thought I have to take advantage of this. I am going to fix my swales and plant my potato vines. Swales are very shallow ditches that direct the rain out of your yard and to the street. Our new gutters changed the water flow in our side yard, so I am putting in the equivalent of dry creek beds. Except once a day they are not dry during our daily scheduled flash flood. We are putting in stones next month. And I have one of those corny little wooden bridges sitting in the garage waiting for assembly. I figure I burned lots of calories shoveling dirt and wheelbarrowing it to new locations. And a brief downpour was a feature because it allowed me to test the effectiveness of my redesigned swales.
Then on to the potato vines. I bought four flats of red potato vine to plant on the part of the lawn between the sidewalk and the street. I bought them
in May just before it became unbearable outside. May to the end of July is a long time to sit waiting to be planted. After the swale redirection, it was starting to get really hot and sunny. Yikes. But if I didn’t plant the potato vines today, it would probably be mid Oct before I would leave the house again. I decided to soldier on.
When I bought the potato vines, I tucked them under a shrub so the sun wouldn’t fry them. The daily rains kept them watered and they just sat there and waited for me. Not a one died. But when I pulled them out to plant today, most of them were missing most or all of their leaves. I realized that a mother slug had given birth in them, and all the now adolescent snails had gnawed on them like a well chewed ear of corn on the cobb. I prompted conducted a mass genocide of snails, remembering the role model my now deceased MIL set for me. She killed snails in her garden with a hammer, saying to each one “This is your last day on earth.”
This is what potato vines are supposed to look like.
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This is what my poor sad chewed up potato vines look like.
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The green spots are where the slugs ate through the skin of the stem.
But I liked their spunk (the vines, not the slugs). These little vines are viciously attacked and cheerfully hang in there. I am a Darwin style gardener—only the fittest, with a will to survive, make it into my garden. And I have noticed that I unconsciously test them before I plant them—like not bothering to water them for a while. Well these little potato vines were still perky. As badly as they had been chewed you would expect them to be limp and shriveled, but they weren’t, so I decided to plant them anyway. They deserve a shot at a good life.
Florida doesn’t now have dirt. It has sand. Our sand is crappier than most because it is a new house and the builder brought in lots of course construction sand. I had to dig out sand for each plant and replace it with top soil and peat moss. It was hot, tedious, and miserable, but I finished. Here is a picture of my dirty hand. It is the French manicure-noir version.
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And boy does the new planting look pathetic. Really pathetic.
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It looks like Tim Burton’s garden. Everyone who walks by will think I have a black thumb. Why would anyone do this on purpose? It will look a little better when I put down new mulch tomorrow. But I figure if I put out snail bait, they should be full and bushy by the next time I leave the house which should be about 10 weeks from now.
Just to prove that I don’t have a black thumb, here are some pictures of what I had blooming in my yard back in February. I just never got around to sharing them back then, so I will use them to redeem myself now.
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) I pull it out. The front of the house is mostly deer-proof, but something started taking a liking to my heuchera last year and ate it again this year too. I'll give it one more year, but if it happens again, out it comes. I tried grapevines in the pool garden and those needed too much spraying for bugs and fungus. (I really feel for vineyard owners.) I've pulled out Cherry Laurel (Shot-hole fungus) and certain varieties of Pieris Japonica (Bugs and Fungus). I've pulled out roses (Japanese Beetles and Blackspot) and many others. I just don't want all of that pesticide and fungicide in my ground water going into the well. And I don't want anyone breathing it in either, or working with it. I mostly try to work with Mother Nature and not argue with her too much.
