Tuesday, February 12, 2008

gardening and Grimaud.

Yeay for sunshine! I've finally gotten to the garden beds. When I started, they looked like this:

You can sort of see the artichokes in the middle of all the weeds, overgrown oregano, gone-to-seed arugula, and wild fennel. There are actually THREE raised beds there, and asparagus in a fourth bed that you can't see, just to the right.

After several hours of work and a lot of randomly muttered obscenities, this is what emerged:

Not quite finished, but very, very close. There was a lonely rebel strawberry in the first bed that I couldn't bear to tear out, and one artichoke just out of sight. The second bed used to hold three artichokes - gophers have apparently enjoyed one of the three (and look like they're well on their way to finishing off the middle plant...). The far bed currently houses six pinot noir vines (now pruned within inches of their winey little lives), given away at the Vinters' Festival a few years ago. It doesn't make sense to have them in a bed but they're all watered on timers so they can continue to hang out there until their housing situation is figured out. The copper strip you see around the top of the beds usually does a remarkable job of keeping snails at bay; the overgrown weeds made perfect snail highways, however, so there's some major eradication to be done. And then spring planting! Current list includes: Parisian market carrots, arugula, romaine, tiny red potatoes, padrone peppers, favas (I should have started months ago), lots of different basil, rhubarb, cilantro, and heirloom tomatoes.

The rest of the yard is still depressingly, overwhelmingly blanketed with oxalis. I'll start on that while the seedlings are growing.