This Means WAR!

What you are looking at here are the remains of my green bean plants thanks to a naughty little ground squirrel who breathed his last naughty breath yesterday.  Yes, those are four-inch tall green bean sticks.  I was about to rip them all out, then I noticed some are sprouting new leaves.  Not sure what to do quite yet since there are fifty bazillion ground squirrels that live in the alley next to our house.  I did find the hole next to the house where they were getting in and they will no longer have easy access.  AND I bought some cucumber plants to replace the peas and beans.  It’s simply too hot here in the Sonoran Desert for peas past April.  We grew them last Fall with great success.  What was I thinking planting them in March??

Anyway, yesterday I was out watering the garden when I heard scurrying on the far side of the yard.  Our entire backyard is surrounded with a six-foot high block wall fence.  Yes, it’s kind of prison-ish, but it’s what they do here in Phoenix.  I dropped the hose and ran for the back door to get our Rat Terrier, Trixie, to come and earn her keep.  Rat Terriers are bred for killing rats…. and all related rodents, I was hoping!  That poor dog is getting old!  The ground squirrel was frozen in place next to my back flower bed, but Trixie couldn’t see it.  I threw her toys over there… I threw rocks, hoping the little ball of fur would move and get her attention.  FINALLY she sniffed around and when she got within six inches of the demon of destruction, it jumped into the flower bed and the chase was on.  Yes, several of my flowers were trampled, but I did not care!  Trixie caught it, shook it mercilessly and then left it lying on its back… dead.  I thought about laying the carcass on the outside of the block wall to warn all the other fifty bazillion relatives that doom was pending if they crossed the dead body.  But I just chucked it over the wall toward the alley.

A few months back I read the book Rabbit Hill to my children.  The tale is written from the viewpoint of the rabbits.  It had been a long lean year with no people living in the house where they burrowed near.  Finally people moved in and planted a huge garden.  The rabbits, mice, badgers, squirrels, etc. were wondering what sort of people they would be: trap-setting, pesticide people, or generous, nature-loving people.  They ended up being the latter, and at the time of the reading, I was thinking that I was a generous, nature-loving people.  Not true, as yesterday’s victory in the garden proved.

Linda, Linda, Quite Contrary

Garden Update #2.  The good news: Plants are sprouting!!!  The bad news: the dog buried a sock in the green onions.  Boooo!  I’m so impressed with the power in a seed!  Life… all dried up and shriveled… bursting forth into green goodness.  Does my heart SO good.  I go out several times a day and stare at the garden barrels.  Here are some photos to make you purely envious of my amazing gardening ability. (We’ll see if we’re all envious after the Phoenix sun does its duty in June and July!)

That is the spinach popping up their little heads toward the sunlight.

Little peas all straight in rows. (Thankfully I could see those seeds.  The carrots aren’t in straight rows at all.) Next is a cute and dainty green bean doing its thang.

Those pictures were from Saturday.  Here are the pictures from TODAY… only two days later!

Peas on the left and beans on the right.  The no-man’s-land in the center is going to be peas too, but they were planted 4 or 5 days later than the rest.

Bringing up the rear of the photo montage is the two zucchini plants…. soon to be the SOLE zucchini plant.  If you have ever planted and harvested this yummy squash, you know the SECRET to raising zucchini….. you only need ONE plant per family!!!  We learned the hard way, 18 years ago, when there were only two of us and we planted eight zucchini plants.  I believe we lost some friends that summer after we filled their car with the prolific vegetable!  Good times!

SpRiNg BrEaK!

Yes, we are a week late, but for a good reason.  Homeschoolers can take Spring Break whenever they want to!  So we did school all last week while our friends played.  This week, Rick’s brother, wife and daughter are in town to PLAY!  It started yesterday and shall continue for another six days!  WhoOoooo HOoooOOoo!

Today’s business was: street hockey game, dressmaking and container gardening.  Unsurprisingly, I chose container gardening.  (Only because I had half of the soil mixed on the tarp when the trip to the fabric store was announced.)  After much calculating and price shopping, the final mix for the ultimate container vegetable garden turned out to be: 1 cf (cubic foot) each of perlite, peat moss, compost and mulch.  There are so many different mix recipes out there, I had to do my research.  I do like the book The Square Foot Garden, but his mix is very expensive.  So I found all the ingredients and mixed it myself, well, with the help of my two sons and my 7-year-old daughter who LOVES to help!  And I added mulch.  Hey, it’s cheap and adds roughage to the mix.

Funniest thing happened as me and my sister-in-law were leaving the store with a flat-bed cart piled with huge soil bags….. the cart hit the first of the pavement bumps leading to our get-away car and half of the bags fell off onto the ground.  As we were laughing and setting our purses down to pick them up, a lady in a wheel chair pulled up and asked if she could help.  “Sure!”  (I was thinking, what exactly is she planning on doing to help???)  She held the cart still while we piled the bags a bit more securely.  That was nice!

One thing I did know was NOT to use the soil in the ground in AZ!  It is the same clay that the Hohokam Indians used to make clay pots.  After the sun shines on the clay soil at 120 degrees, it is as hard as a clay pot fresh out of the kiln!

As mentioned before, I was given large plastic barrels that were cut in half long-ways for my containers.  Yes, the hardware store sells cute little wooden fences for a 4’x4′ garden bed, but like I said, these were FREE!  And required next-to-nothing in set up.  I filled six of them today with my miracle mix and will plant tomorrow.  The heat and sunshine are always a concern here for wilting plants in the summer, so I lined the barrels along the west wall of our backyard, so they only get sun until 2:00.  Then they can recover until the next morning sunshine kisses their little leaves again.

(Pictures to follow when plants appear.)