Gardening Woes and Joys

So far, my vegetable garden has been very unimpressive.

I love snow peas, and for the second time, decided to try to grow some. For the second time, my crop has failed. My first mistake was to plant them in the top of a mounded row. It seemed like a good idea at the time... After all, cucumbers and squash are planted in mounds, and it was easy to see where my mounded rows were. However, after a nice watering from above, I realized that most of the seeds probably washed out. The few that did sprout were quickly eaten by rabbits or trampled by who-knows-what. No peas.

My spinach suffered the same washout, but I had enough seed to replant some. I have yet to see but one sprout.

I planted some lettuce. They were also washed out of the rows, but I got a better germination rate, so I might end up with a small, haphazard lettuce patch. I am tempted to blame some of my failure on bad seed.

I have planted eight tomato plants that I started from seed (and have two others still in pots). I have hope that at least my tomatoes will survive.

I have just realized that I should have planted my carrots weeks ago. Better late than never?

Another challenge is trying to figure out how to teach a two year old boy not to tromp across my rows and watch where he puts his feet so my tomatoes have a fighting chance. I would hate to ban him from playing in the dirt altogether.

Oh yes... and there is another thing I can blame on my husband. Sort of. We have lots of wonderful leaves in the fall that beg to be turned into compost, so every year, I pile the bin high. It works best to shred the leaves, then turn the compost every couple of weeks through the winter (or so Mike McGrath says), otherwise, it could take two or three years to get a decent compost. Last year, since we don't have a shredder, I took the weed-eater to the leaves in an attempt to get them as shredded as possible. This year, I didn't (and was hoping that Chris would do it for me but... he didn't), so all I have is a mass a wet, slimy leaves.

I am wishing that I had a serious gardening mentor nearby. Unfortunately, one neighbor has the horribly bad habit of spraying Round-Up to kill all the weeds in his garden every spring, then just transplants everything into that a week or two later. That isn't exactly the sort of gardening I want to get into... So any advice anyone wants to give... just e-mail or comment.

On the other hand, I do have beautiful flowers. Too bad they don't fill the belly like a vegetable does. One of my favorite spring bloomers are my anemones.

I took the kids down to one of the flower beds by our swing to do some weeding, and discovered my columbine was blooming.

As I re-edged and weeded the flower bed, we looked for worms. When I would find one, I would give it to one of the kids to hold for a minute, and then they would dump it back into the dirt so it could dig its way back to relative safety. They were completely infatuated with the worms, and not once this morning did Finley ask if she could watch TV. These are the sort of things that make me happy.