The Garden, Week 13: Blossoms, Mushrooms, and A Very Goofy Kid

Today while watering the garden, which I have not done in several days (thank you very much soaking rain from last Friday), I was picking at random bits of grass that had come through the soil and pinching off suckers and I noticed some BLOSSOMS!

Is it hard to tell what you're looking at? Well, I don't have a fancy lens to take close-up pictures of my garden, so I'll make it super easy for you:

This is a website that prides itself on excellent and highly professional photo editing.

This means I will spend time tomorrow at the garden shop, buying fertilizer. I am not sure what to buy, but I am banking on the garden people being helpful and I also read an article from the Sacramento Bee (that Elizabeth sent me, of course) so it doesn't look too hard.

I was feeling like my tomatoes were rather shrimpy to be blossoming (they're about 18") but Elizabeth's are about the same height so I guess it's fine. (Elizabeth and I spend a great deal of our friendship discussing tomatoes, what of it?)  I was just expecting GIANT HUGE TOMATOES OF DOOOOOOM and unless I start giving them steroids I'm not sure how that's going to happen in the next month or two. Perhaps I will be wrong? The Brandywines are easily 18" each but I have a lone Black Krim that's only 8" at this point and he is growing SO SLOWLY.

(Pretty sure he is going to get cut from the team for 2013.)

Mushrooms in my garden, WTF DO I DO WITH THESE?

A week or three ago, a found a stray mushroom growing in the garden. A clump of them, actually, right at the bottom of a tomato stalk. (I might have sent a panicked email to Elizabeth that said something along the lines of "WHAT THE SHIT DO I DO?") I pulled it out of the garden, but more showed up! I yanked those out too. About Day 7 I finally remembered there's this thing called The Internet and maybe I should see what it says about mushrooms in my garden?

They're okay according to a few oddball gardening forums. (Watch out for that first link, it's kind of FREAKY how excited some people get about garden mushrooms.) It's something about how they help the root systems? And some people BUY mushrooms to put in their garden to improve the soil? I don't know, but the spores were probably part of the vegetable soil mix and I felt silly for taking them out if they were supposed to be there. They pop up and disappear over a couple of hours and don't seem to be hurting anything, so unless someone leaves me a panicky comment otherwise, I'm ignoring them.

Can you believe the audacity of this bunny to just HANG OUT by the garden fence??! 

He is totally asking for me to pop him with a BB gun. HE SO TOTALLY IS. And you guys? He does this several times a day. He just loiters over there, plotting ways to get in once the vegetables show up. He's much smarter than he looks, I'm sure of it.

And here I am, with no makeup on at twilight, watering the garden. 

This is what I look like when I water the garden. Most of the time, I actually DO maintain a slightly wry look on my face because I can't believe I haven't killed anything yet. Also, I am wearing an Old Navy maternity t-shirt from 2008 because it has aged BEAUTIFULLY and is SO VERY SOFT and I will never get rid of it, even though it is a maternity shirt. Please don't judge me and my awesome 2008 maternity shirt.

Aaaaand, here are some pictures of Claire and the garden.

I know, I know. She appears to be dancing to Thriller. I....don't really know why.

Comments

[Jessica]

That's obviously what I come here for - garden-side thriller dances. Video next time, please.

[Life of a Doctor's Wife]

Your kid is adorable and so are you. And that BUNNY. What balls.

Since I like to tell you about my garden, I will say that a) SOMEONE ate one of my pepper plants. Just bit the whole thing off. Even though it is in a tall pot on my deck. And b) I used some organic potting soil for my plants and it had some... seeds in it, apparently. And so I keep pulling these little sprouts of SOMETHING out of all my plants. I never imagined that they would be there on purpose! (Although maybe they are just weeds, conspiring to suck the life out of my tomatoes and strawberries?)

In conclusion, YAY for tomato blossoms!

[K]

Holy moses. You look so great without makeup on!

Also, rather randomly, I saw a little girl that SO REMINDED me of Claire. It was, like, her Midwest doppleganger.

[HereWeGoAJen]

Your garden appears to be doing better than mine. I shall now be pouting.

[Mel]

Man that is one cute Claire. And? My husband called me out once on still wearing a maternity shirt way past the whole maternity part and I almost ate him whole.