Daily Dose of... Gardening

We like gardening. This doesn't mean we are good at it, on the contrary - we've failed repeatedly. Yet we carry on, year after year.

Rose bushes are something we are good at - well, I am anyway. Flowers in general tend to stay alive under our care... not just stay alive but almost flourish, I would say. We have giant sunflowers that the finches have really loved, but sunflowers pretty much do their own thing so I hesitate to take credit.

We don't bother with house plants, not because we are not good at keeping them alive but we have cats who love to eat and dig in house plants, so we've just never gone there.

Every Spring, we plant our vegetable garden. The first year, we had a bumper crop of tomatos - man they were delicious! The next year, we grew a zucchini bigger than Jon's forearm - amazing and tasty!

Getting cocky, we increased the size of the garden and added okra, bell peppers, jalapenos, carrots, corn, spinach and onions to our usual zucchini and tomatoes. Needless to say - this year, we were thwarted.

The okra was gang busters - which made us realize that we don't really know how to cook okra - beyond gumbo, and really how much gumbo do you want to eat when its 103 degrees outside? The spinach was a truly amazing jungle of green... and great food for the caterpillars. But the peppers, while impressive looking plants, haven't produced much fruit, and the onions have pretty much shriveled up to nothing. The corn? Well, I feel strongly the corn could have survived if the house sitter had watered the corn - at least once - during our two week absence.

Look, I hesitate to take the blame. I watered and tended the vegetables every morning... when I was here. We traveled more than three weeks this Summer, hired the wrong house sitter, and have had the record-breaking hottest Summer of recorded history in Austin.

Now the lake has dipped to a dire state, and we're all rationing our water usage so I shouldn't water as much as I want to. We've lost all but one tomato plant. The okra still grows tall, but it has stopped making okra. The pepper plants look truly miserable to be standing.

But there is a saving grace... hiding under the shade of the okra and peppers grow the carrots. The carrots are a puzzle to us. When should we pick them? We pick one at a time and find truly wonderful teeny tiny treasures! Its exciting and reminds us WHY we like gardening - there is something living and growing there!

So I give yo this daily dose of gardening - a teeny, tiny treasure for you to ponder. Out of your line of vision, not in your daily routine, completely off of your radar - something is growing, living, surviving down there. And all it needs is nice soil, sunlight, and some water.