The Legacy of Bill Murray

Last month I was digging a watermelon patch along the side of my house when my shovel sank deep into the earth and I discovered a cavernous hole about a foot beneath the ground. I wrote it off. This is southern California the earth is shifting constantly and sink holes are frequently discovered, sometimes rather unfortunately. Then one day while digging up not one, but TWO very dead sweet broom plants, I discovered another hole. Quite perplexed I took to Facebook with my quandary. "Might be a mole" said a landscaping business owner friend from back home. "Viet Cong" offered another slightly less qualified individual. Then my mother-in-law offered this "Sounds like gophers to me, but they are very hard to get rid of.". And finally this sage wisdom from another gardening pro "stick a hose down the tunnel, I did that some years ago and he moved next door." I don't know if I'm prepared to deal with the karma that comes with hosing an animal out of his current abode, even if it is under $60 worth of lavender plants. One time, many years ago, I fed an earwig to a Venus fly trap and we see where that has gotten me.

 So this bring us to today. I have been living in blissful ignorance, thinking that this furry creature and I are living together in shared harmony, and I am planting the remainder of my tomato seedlings on an absolutely perfect day when *thunk* that damn shovel sinks into another tunnel. I stop, examine the hole for a bit determined to write it off once again and move on with my gardening life when suddenly, without warning or provocation that little bastard comes OUT OF HIS HOLE, and smiles at me*. Again, as with the earwigs, profanity ensued . Lots. Then out came the iPhone to grab this quick paparazzo-esqe photograph of the little shit before he scurried back into his hole. He then proceeded to CLOSE THE HOLE BACK UP before my very eyes, as if to say "No photographs please! No photographs!". I am at a loss.

*Slight dramatization.

An earwig walks into a bar...

One day, very early in my gardening career (last month) it occurred to me that the hundreds of seedlings I had been so tenderly caring for in my guest bedroom, under timed grow lights and oscillating temperature control would not be safe outside. I became riddled with fear and paranoia, obsessively googling any and everything I could about plant disease, unexpected frosts ("What's a frost?" says my husband), rodents, birds, bugs, deer and perennial eating space aliens. Because they do exist. I was prepared, I was educated, I could not be defeated! Then when some persistent creature began reducing my babies to lace at night I proceeded to have a complete break with reality. A meltdown if you will. What? What the fuck?! I built a fence. I amended my soil, damn it! My neighbors likely think we are running a home for the mentally unhinged with the amount of profanity that came flying over the fence that day.
I began to do what any sane human being would do at that point. Armed with gloves, night vision goggles and a profound sense of rage, I set out into the yard one night to catch the culprits in the act. I was certain I would find snails, instead I found something far more heinous.
Earwigs, an abomination unleashed upon this fine earth. Earwigs share a resemblance to the common cockroach, except they go one icky step further and carry around a set of pinchers on their ass. Every bit of research I've come across on the interweb would lend one to believe that they are a gardeners best friend. They supposedly eat equally icky garden pests like aphids and rotting garden debris. That is of course until they have eaten all of the aphids and rotting debris, then they turn to your flawless young artichokes.
Now, I have always been a creature lover. I catch and release any little thing that wanders into the house, have always had pets, and the sight of something hit on the side of the road has the capacity to send me into a deep depression for a week. But these fucking earwigs? They must die. The other day as I shifted my garden hose rack and an family of 50 of them came scurrying out from underneath, it occurred to me that I was not dealing with an ordinary infestation, I was dealing with a god damn plague. These things are everywhere! I can not weed a single bed, lift a single rock, or dig a single hole without discovering an intrusion of the little bastards.
After weeks of counter productively defending my garden from them, it became glaringly apparent that I was up against something far greater than myself. I was up against an unbalanced ecosystem. Setting dampened newspaper traps out at night and burying shallow graves filled with soy sauce and oil only proved to be a fools game. My adversaries cackled maniacally as they devoured all of my bell pepper plants. The defeat was crushing.
Do you remember in that Lion King movie when James Earl Jones was explaining to Jonathan Taylor Thomas about about the circle of life and then Elton John began singing a song about something or other? Yes, well that whole monologue kept running through my head. Something was missing from my yards ecosystem. Something was not taking its place in the circle of... well you get it. Anyway.
One day I took a walk down the driveway to the mail box, when I noticed a set of beady little eyes staring at me from beneath the bushes. Enter the Western Fence lizard, also known as the blue belly. My new best friend, or friends as I should say, because I'm catching sight of more and more of them every day. These guys are ferocious earwig hunters, and highly intelligent because they found my yard before I planted explosives in the center of it and blew it to smithereens. I am, however still protecting my smaller more tender plants by giving them a light dusting of diatomaceous earth in the evening and that appears to be keeping the damage to a minimal. But for now I can and will avoid using chemical pesticide in a bid to keep my new friends busy. I have a feeling that things will get worse before they get better. This battle is far from over, but I'm certainly glad to see a shift in government happening in my yard. LONG LIVE BLUE BELLY!

Behold! The fruit of my labor...

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, Sandy! How ever did you ever get such large and bountiful broccoli to grow so early in the season! I must know your secret! I NEED to know your secret!"
Calm down, I'll tell you. I was able to grow this FULL OUNCE of lovely green broccoli by using a highly scientific technique called watering and fertilizing.
That's right, I did almost nothing at all, and I am clearly reaping the benefits. I didn't even stop to investigate the variety of broccoli I was planting. I just bought some and planted it. I was even stunned to come out one day in late March to find little heads forming. I half expected the suckers to take six months to grow. At any rate, apparently the plants will continue to produce, despite the fact that I just hacked off the top four inches. And get this, they will create even SMALLER heads than the ones first produced.
These plants would be one of my very first purchases made early both in season, and in my gardening adventure. I'm going to go ahead and count it as a win that I got anything to grow at all from the stupid things, considering my complete and absolute ignorance.

45

In my entire life I have never seen a tomato plant grow 6 feet tall. Which is likely why I saw it fitting to start 45 of them. Suddenly everyone I know is guffawing at me "where will you put them all!?" My husband says I should save only the ten heartiest and toss the rest before we are overtaken. My friend seems to think I'll be feeding the entire neighborhood before summers end. I think everyone is full of shit, because I HAVE NEVER SEEN A TOMATO PLANT GROW THAT BIG. A few feet, perhaps. But six, I am highly dubious.

I HAVE taken a bit of measure on the off chance that I'm wrong and spaced the suckers several feet apart. But then it just looked like I was wasting precious garden space. So I placed some baby basil plants I'd been working on sporadically throughout the tomatoes because I've heard they grow well together.
Another problem I ran into was the fact that somewhere around oh, say number 28 I forgot to label. So now I really have no clue what I'm planting. This might prove to be my greatest folly as I have started everything from Better boy (huge) to cherries (small). I could be staring down the barrel of the most misguided tomato garden ever.
I will continue updating on my tomato happenings, however. Because secretly I really am hoping I get to feed the entire neighborhood.

The Art of Racing in the Rain (while in LA)

Now, I am by no means an experienced gardener. But I'm going to operate under the assumption that the fact that my plants are currently sitting under a half a foot of water is a not a good thing.

Here in Southern California we don't get much weather, and we like it that way. However, to my dismay, this week, for some ungodly reason, it has done nothing but weather. It's weathering all over the damn place. The east, the west, hell it's weathering right now in my back yard! And I haven't the foggiest idea of what to do about it.
In a fit of madness I ran home this morning and went all Noah's ark trying to save at least two of everything. Of course, that just accounts for the potted stuff. Who knows how the plants I've already put in the ground will fair. I have half a mind to head out there and start bailing water, however the sad truth is that Angelinos tend to dissolve in weather and I don't want to take the risk of dying over a red sunflower seedling. Additionally, I lack the proper footwear for weather. I don't want to take any guff about this little factoid, you'd be hard pressed to meet an Angelino who owned a completely enclosed pair of shoes.
For now I will stay dry and hope that this weather stuff lets up in a bit, and my precious plants are better for it. Although that may be wishful thinking at this point. There is a silver lining, in that I may end up getting to go back to the damn nursery for more plants after this event has passed.

Welcome to gardening, idiot!

I will admit that at first I was terrified as I scattered my first round of seed, those tiny, little seeds, along the thin line that my imagination had drawn in the long row that was entirely too overworked (My research had shown that they like "well worked" soil). Carrot seed, some sort of fancy variety that had caught my eye at my local garden center. however, despite my nail biting hesitance, I carried on, not having a single iota of a clue of what I was doing or for that matter what I would be seeing in that row one month, two months, even three months down the road. For, you see, I am absurdly new to the gardening world. Obsessed! But admittedly new. Even more absurd is that fact that I have apparently jumped in with both feet! Have you ever gotten really involved in a project, devoted hours of your already dwindling time to said project, and then in a moment of clarity, taken a step back and realized that the slightest possibility exists that you may actually be a little in over your head? Yes? Excellent, because I'm fucking feet deep at this point. I may have hit the "in over my head" portion of this project sometime during the process of hardening off my 8th flat of seed trays back in March. Boy, had I mastered those stupid flats. Pop a few seeds into the cell, water, cover and set under lights (thank God I happen to be married to a lighting technician or the latter and most complex step would have left me completely confounded). It's basically one giant, flat, perfectly sectioned Chia Pet. I got so good at that at one point I could get a basil seed to germinate in 48 hours (It was later determined that this is not so much 'good' as it is 'normal'). At any rate, the third to last mental note I made to myself about gardening was that this seed starting business was child's play.
Now, at some point or another I decided that it would be a good idea to start more stuff. Harder stuff, the kind of stuff that couldn't be started indoors. Stuff with a ridiculously finicky tap root system and enormous attraction for pest problems. Okay, I'm making that last bit up, remember I'm still just a novice. It was more like "I like carrots!" and then I bought a fancy packet of seeds without reading the back. A month later I have my face 2 inches from the soil wondering where the hell all of my carrot seedlings are. It is in situations like this when the mantra "try, try, try again" enters your brain, and boy, I just refuse to be licked by something as puny as a carrot. So I drop the rest of the packet in the dirt, swear that I will not be foiled by this simple root veggie, and walk away. Hold tight, because I'm about to drop some knowledge on you. Seeds germinate when the temperature rises to where they need it to be in order to germinate. All of them. With small seed, unless of course they are coated to create a heaviness (called "pelleting") to keep them in place, they are more likely to float in heavy rains or heavy watering. At the end of the first 80 degree day I ended up with roughly 200 lovely carrot seedlings, all nestled deeply together at the absolute very end of my garden row, by the kale, in the bottom of a shallow irrigation ditch. If I'm going to be successful in my new venture, then it seems that I am going to need to exercise a small amount of patience and maybe some good faith to go along with it. My carrots on the other hand, are going to have to move the fuck out.