Magic shovel

Strawberries are easily my favorite plant to grow, and one of my garden goals for this year was to increase my already-substantial empire. The problem was that the place where I planned to put the new strawberries had hard-as-a-rock clay beat down all summer by our landscaper’s skid-steer. I literally couldn’t get a shovel into it. 

Then—because Instagram ads know everything about you—I heard about a magic shovel designed by an 85-year-old who wanted to be able to keep gardening.

It’s really expensive, looks like this…

…and works like a dream.

I could not believe how much easier it was for me to dig planting holes, and anyway I finally moved all my strawberry starts from one side of the house to the other. 

In other strawberry news:

Still growing on November 11

The weird backyard vortex where neighborhood leaves congregate

I am starting to wonder if it’s ever going to snow here, or even freeze, really.

New raised beds and Ironman thoughts

I wanted to show you a picture of what I got for my “swampy” area (although it hasn’t really rained in weeks, so):

There are not technically raised beds but “fire rings” (meant to contain a campfire). They were less expensive than raised beds—although not by much, because the manufacturers of fire rings have obviously figured out that people will also buy them to use as raised beds, which by law must be absurdly expensive.

Anyway, they look pretty nice from my kitchen window, which was the main goal. The setup process actually involved me running back in forth into the house several times to look out the window and make sure they looked right before they got their final placement and filling. 

This spot is wet because of the drainage situation but gets FULL sun, like 14 hours a day in the midsummer. So I am thinking that in each one of these I will put a pepper plant, a watermelon plant to spill over the sides (maybe one in each direction) and then some annual flowers to fill in the gaps and make them super-cute.

Unrelated note: Blogging more often got me curious about what the rest of this blog actually says, and I went back recently to read about the year leading up to my Ironman (2011). No huge surprise that I was training a lot, but the part that shocked me was how much I was also working at the time. Some days I was working 11 hours and training 4. (Other days I was training 8 hours and basically eating and sleeping the rest of the time.) I know I’m older, but these days I consider a day where I work 4 hours and also go to yoga more than enough activity. Just…interesting.

Wisteria research

 I got all my seeds organized but just found one more gift from Dexter:

Ingenious packaging and labeling.

Research and logic tell me that this is an American wisteria, probably the cold-hardy Betty Matthews cultivar. They also tell me it’s a huge, high-maintenance plant that could take 15 years to flower when grown from seed, so I probably should not get into the wisteria business.

Bunny wars

I have had a cute little bunny hopping around my garden all year. I made some halfhearted attempts to chase it away at first, but it is faster and cleverer than me—for example, running me in circles around the greenhouse. I never even managed to chase it out of the yard. 

Eventually I decided that a bunny calmly nibbling at this and that wasn’t going to hurt anything, and eventually we got to a point of mutual understanding. Meaning that it was always hanging around and not even slightly afraid of me.

But yesterday I looked out the window and there were TWO bunnies. Right away I’m thinking potential garden disaster if they start breeding, but they were actually battling for dominance! They look similar so I couldn’t immediately tell who was who, but one was chasing the other all over the place and eventually Scared Bunny performed an acrobatic leap over Mean Bunny and left the yard. I got a better look at Victorious Bunny, and it was NOT Regular Bunny.

(M.H. asked, “How can you possibly tell?” I said, “My bunny is cuter.”)

Looked out the window today, and there is Evil Bunny again. I can tell for sure because it’s super twitchy and on high alert—patrolling its new turf rather than merrily nibbling in the style of an animated movie critter.

Bad Bunny

Am I comfortable with this new bunny? No I am not.

The seed hoard

In much the same way that I’m both a crocheter and a yarn hoarder*, I’ve become both a gardener and a seed hoarder. Our library has several seed exchange events every year and a seed library, and I’ve done a ton of collecting there. I’ve also gotten seeds online from Prairie Moon Nursery, American Meadows, and Etsy. I’ve done some seed saving from my yard. And my boy Dexter sometimes brings me random—or specially requested—seeds that he encounters in his job as a landscaper.

Today I spent a couple of hours making an Excel spreadsheet to try to start getting a grip on exactly what I own and making a plan for what to do with them. I don’t know if it will help me get all these seeds put to use next year, but it’s nice to get it organized.

The “organization”:

Here are some seed statistics gleaned from my spreadsheet: 

• Total number of seed varieties (I didn’t inventory the vegetable seeds): 57
• Most common type: Perennial flowers (38)
• Most common source: Library/seed swaps (26)
• Seeds types I saved myself: 12
• Most repeats of same type of flower: Zinnia (7 packets/baggies)
• Seed types I hope to overwinter in the raised beds: 17
• Seed types I’m getting rid of: Blanket flower (the weird tall one) and lemon balm (have enough)
• Flower I can’t believe I haven’t tried to grow yet: Lilac Pompom poppy (look)
• How much work this is all going to be: lol

* There are actually a few other examples of this behavior. I make things out of T-shirt yarn and also hoard T-shirts. I paint and also hoard art supplies. I read and also hoard books.

Love my lav

 We’ve had several frosts and freezes, but look which flower is still going strong (even the baby plants):

The past few years I wasn’t 100% sold on lavender but enjoyed it for its whimsy and purpleness. But now I have a much greater appreciation. My established plants have bloomed three or four times since spring and basically never looked bad. It is pretty easy to propagate. The pollinators loved it. It barely needs water. It’s an amazing addition to a vase. The flowers make a nice tea when combined with lemon balm. It is going to last into NOVEMBER. And theoretically I could learn how to make potpourri or something with it.

One of my plans for next year is to propagate much, MUCH more of this delightful plant, and make sure I get some in the front yard as well.

First frost

 I enjoyed the sight of frost on the clover lawn this morning:

The various garden beds didn’t enjoy it as much, and neither did some of the plants in the greenhouse, because I accidentally left a big window open. Oops.

But to be fair, I am mentally OVER vegetable gardening for the year anyway. I’ve had “harvest kale and make kale chips” on my to-do list for two weeks and I just don’t feel like it. 

A quickie paving job

 Here’s today’s project:

I took some of my extra flagstone and “paved” the little space between the walkway and the compost bins. Very informally—nothing like the careful, laborious process we used to make the proper flagstone paths in the front. It will look better after a rainfall or two and perform better after some more stomping and settling.

I think next spring I’ll plant some creeping thyme in the cracks, in keeping with my mission statement: “Everywhere you see woodchips will someday be plants instead.”

…That was a joke, but it really makes me want to come up with a mission statement for my garden.

The compost post

I finished The Rodale Book of Composting this morning and felt inspired to take my composting game up a notch.

Pictured above: Turned, chopped, grass-clipping-infused, leveled, wetted, and partially cardboard-covered pile that I’m hoping will mostly turn into compost by spring.

Not pictured: My aching back and disgusting hands.

I read somewhere that people who get into composting for the health of their gardens often end up finding composting more fun and satisfying than growing vegetables. That remains to be seen in my case, but I would be thrilled if my work and newfound knowledge turn this garbage into magic in a few months.

Rodale is big on using manure in compost, but I absolutely draw the line at putting manure in my car and bringing it to my home.

They’re also big on chopping and shredding things before they go into the pile, and that is the part I definitely need to do better. I don’t think it really matters for kitchen waste, but I pulled tons of 3-foot-long woody stems out of this, and it would make a lot more sense to chop them up on the front end.

Also, if you read this far and are interested in compost, no-dig gardening, or soothing British accents, I highly recommend Charles Dowding’s YouTube videos. 

A flagstone dream

OMG, LOOK what we finally finished last night:

This represents an unbelievable amount of work (mostly for M.H.) but look how amazing it is. We did an even longer one of these on the other side of the driveway last year…

…and I’m not sure I don’t prefer these flagstone paths without the plants! Maybe I just need to figure out the right plants. Or retake the second photo during magic hour for a fair comparison.

At any rate, I now have a walkway that completely encircles the house (the backyard portion transitions into a much plainer-looking crushed granite). I had originally envisioned building a meditative labyrinth in the backyard, but honestly this is more practical, and you could definitely still use it for a meditative stroll around the house if you weren’t too worried about the neighbors thinking you were odd.

I was about to title this post “Done with flagstone!” but actually I have tons of leftover rocks that I plan to use to build some less formal pathways throughout the backyard.

Total cost of flagstone paths: $25 for materials on Facebook Marketplace and 1 billion hours of backbreaking labor. (I think we relocated the pile of stone something like seven times as the project progressed.)

Fall color

I went out into the garden early this morning—well, early in terms of sunrise; it was 7:45 and I’d been up for two-plus hours—to have a look around and hunt for strawberries.

Someone got to this one first, but that’s OK: “If nothing is eating your garden, your garden isn’t part of the ecosystem.” (Critter and berry still got relocated to the compost pile.)

I also admired this blanket flower growing on the edge of my clover lawn:

It’s the Arizona Sun variety, and it makes a neat little mound that blooms all summer and apparently well into October. I thought I was planting the same thing behind the garage, but apparently not all blanket flowers are created equal:

This variety I’m calling Sprawly McFlopperson. I’m truly not sure if this is just what the offspring of Arizona Sun do, or if I got these seeds from somewhere else. I have been to a lot of seed swaps this year.

So little of my yard is successfully covered in plants at this point that I would hate to remove anything, but Sprawly is not my favorite. I think will try Chelsea chopping them next spring and see how that goes.

Tomato tales

 

Glad I remembered to get a picture of these before they all went into a salad. This is the Roger Boye tomato, named after a lovely man and favorite college professor named Roger Boye, who sent me the seeds in a Christmas card. Apparently this (actually unnamed) variety has been grown by his family for decades, and they were the nicest, best-tasting little tomatoes ever. 

Overall I had a fairly disastrous year of tomato growing. Long story short, I LOVED growing tomatoes from seed and started one million of them. Said tomatoes then suffered from 1) freezes, 2) being forgotten about, 3) being planted in a swamp, 4) not being planted in time, 5) being overcrowded, 6) being unmanaged, and 7) being forgotten about again.

I did get a decently large harvest in the end because I had so many plants, but even then it was like, UGH, NOW I HAVE TO COOK SOMETHING WITH THESE.

The Roger Boye tomatoes, on the other hand, were a delight. You just grow them and then you eat them. No weird crevices to cut off, no urgency to make sauce or something, just little mouthfuls of joy.

So with my 2025 lessons learned, here is my no-fail, everything-will-be-perfect tomato plan for 2026:

1. Start them in mid-February at the earliest.
2. Start just enough to get TWO Roger Boye plants and TWO Clear Pink plants (plus maybe some backups three weeks later).
3. Sell or give away any extra plants—DO NOT GET ATTACHED.
4. Don’t move them to the greenhouse until at least mid-April.
5. Don’t plant them until at least mid-May.
6. Use the good tomato cages.
7. Give them enough space, watch them, train them, and PRUNE THEM.
8. Mentally accept that when you grow vegetables you may also have to cook vegetables.

A blank canvas

 Here’s a little peek at what I’m up against:

The west side of the house is largely unfinished. The landscaper finished with it this summer, there’s irrigation and a path, and M.H. built those lovely compost bins you see in the left—but there’s just a ton of open space that still needs plants, seeds, mulch, structure, vision, digging, raking, toil…

All the little mounds of mulch are because we had a slight emergency two weeks ago when wood chips were delivered NOT on the driveway as requested but smack on top of a bunch of baby plants. We worked as hard as we could for three days straight just to get them somewhere else and haven’t done a lot of raking yet.

On the plus side, the possibilities out here are ENDLESS.

On the minus side, the possibilities out here are ENDLESS.

The task I set myself for today is to do a little mulch raking and start working on a very informal flagstone path to give myself access to a planned flower cutting bed. Various bits of vision are emerging, but it will take years to get it looking the way I am dreaming of.

October surprise

I have a plan for growing raspberries, but they’re off to a poor start. I bought/acquired six plants this summer, and just two survived. They’re temporarily sharing space with some tomatoes that I didn’t have room for anywhere else. I’ve flung a bit of mulch in there for spreading around eventually.

Behold:

Because I have ten thousand other things needing attention outside, the “plan” I mentioned is to do nothing, let those two plants spread around in their designated area, and eat raspberries straight off the vine someday.

But did you notice?? An actual raspberry has presented itself. Behold the close-up:

I have no idea how long it’s been sitting there or if it’s really ripe. I think maybe tomorrow I’ll eat a raspberry a grew myself?? Banner day.

My little swamp on a rainy day

 

I have this highly visible area right off the back patio where rainwater from the rooftop drains through a cleverly disguised little spout.

Most of the time the middle of this space is just too wet for anything to grow. (The tomato cages you see are basically gravestones for the tomato plants that I tried to put there.) There are some other odds and ends that I planted—not thriving—as well as rocks that tossed in for lack of anywhere else to put them. And strawberry runners, but to be fair those are EVERYWHERE.

The thought: Clean this up a bit and install a couple of round raised beds to lift the plants out of the muck. 

The thought about the thought: How can I do this with used or upcycled materials? I want it to be open on the bottom to soak up all that good rainwater. I was thinking about maybe just stacking old bricks or wood, but I’m not sure that would look nice enough for where it is. I think I’d rather have a couple of metal rings? 

My first step is always to ask my local Buy Nothing group, but that feels like a long-shot. It might be a moment to just buy a thing, but I will ponder.

On blogging and lemon balm

I used to have a blog. Remember my blog?

It was mostly about triathlon training, which was great. A lot of days the thing that made me do my scheduled workout was wanting to write the next blog post about it—and the blog allowed me to share my manymanymany thoughts with you all, rather than my husband (who has no interest in triathlons and understandably wanted to talk about something else once in a while).

But after finishing an Ironman, I mostly lost interest in triathlons. I tried to keep blogging, but it was missing that secret sauce of “I think about almost nothing else and want to talk about it all the time but also need a bit of motivation to do all the hard work it requires.”

But guess what? I have a new obsession these days.

In 2023 we hired a landscaper to start tearing all the grass out of our formerly all-grass yard. As of about four months ago, the grass is all gone—and a lot of the yard is still just a sea of wood chips.

So there’s a lot to do, and a lot to talk about.

I wish I had written more about this entire saga from the beginning, but I’ll just leap into the middle with a word about lemon balm. I grew the little plant pictured above (and three others) from seed this summer. I’ve planted them all in relatively contained areas, since they can spread very quickly. Although they’re lovely, I don’t think I want them to take over the world.

Lemon balm smells like Lemon Pledge, which is kind of wonderful if you can actually just forget about the existence of Lemon Pledge. And I’ve been experimenting with making herbal tea from the fresh leaves and other garden goodies:

Lemon balm alone = Liquid Lemon Pledge, but I think in a good way?
Lemon balm + fresh chamomile = Super delicious
Lemon balm + fresh lavender =  Just trying it for the first time right this minute (tasty, but I might go a little easier on the lavender next time)

So far I haven’t found anything to replace the jasmine green tea I love, but honestly growing all your “tea” at home seems like an earth-goddess fantasy that I am definitely open to.