Gardening

One of the many perks that my current residence offers is a fairly large vegetable garden that the owner hadn’t taken advantage of in years. The only stalwart inhabitants that continued to thrive there were a truly massive rosemary bush, and a slightly more reasonable sage bush.

About three years I got the urge to play around in the dirt and promptly planted seeds for a variety of vegetables. Shortly thereafter I realized planting seeds was a slow and fairly hit-or-miss proposition and switched over to purchasing pre-sprouted plants. Over the years I tried out peppers, cucumbers, green beans, cantaloupe, raspberries, basil, oregano, mint and a half dozen types of tomatoes. Nowadays, having learned what grows best and what I’ll actually eat, I’ve settled on just growing basil and Roma tomatoes. Basically, I want to make a much bruschetta as possible during the summer.

Unfortunately, the garden hadn’t seen a lot of use before I showed up and had fallen into disrepair. The automated sprinkler system was a mess, with most of the sprinkler heads broken or leaking and the beds were old and falling apart. Initially I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it seeing as I didn’t actually own the garden but over the last year or two I decided to start throwing money at it and have been slowly rebuilding the beds from scratch, replacing the sprinkler heads and hoses and keeping the weeds and surrounding bushes trimmed to a respectable degree.

I think the reason I love working on the garden is because it appeals to my sense of organization. Seeing broken-down beds and weeds marring a nicely constructed garden drives me nuts. And don’t get me started on that rosemary bush. Every year I get ready to start gardening again and the damn thing has doubled in size and begun its annual invasion of the other vegetable beds. I feel slightly bad chopping so much off but it’s got to learn it lesson. Just because it’s the biggest bush in the yard doesn’t mean it can bully the other plants.

This last weekend I finally got my hands dirty and began the yearly clean-up and planting of the garden. I completely replaced the primary vegetable bed I use, chopped back the bushes, did some weeding, finally replaced the sprinkler heads and hoses, and planted three tomato and two basil plants. There are still two more beds that need to be completely replaced and a good chunk of the pebbled walkway has been overrun with moss and dirt, but the latter is a massive fight for another day.

If you have the time, money and space I highly recommend you try out a garden of your own. While I lucked out with very sizable, pre-built plot, you can start on a much smaller scale with a single vegetable bed or just a large barrel. I think gardening is an incredibly rewarding endeavor, even if you don’t get much in the way of actual food out of it. For me, it’s an excuse to get outside and get my hands dirty. And speaking of which, if you’ll excuse me I need to go wrestling a rosemary bush back into submission now.