Friday, May 01, 2009

accidental garden

Last year they had a flower expo downtown. Well, that is what they called it. It was basically a tent set up near downtown at a park. They were selling all sorts of flowers, bushes and trees at a very reasonable prices. We bought a beautiful hydrangea plant that had big bluish purple flowers on it. We put it out back on the patio and it did fairly well in the shade. That was until we got Colbie.



He saw all the green leaves and assumed it was his personal salad bar. Once he was done with it, all the remained were a few sticks poking up from the soil. I stopped watering it and thought that was the end of it's life. Earlier this year while back with Colbie I noticed some green leaves on those remaining sticks that Colbie so kindly left behind. It was coming back to life. I am still not sure how but was happy about it. (You can see in the picture the stick where he chewed on it.)



Now we are close to having flowers once again. I found a spot on the front patio that is shaded the whole day (and far away from Colbie). If this sensitive flower gets even 10 minutes in the sun here it is on the path to death, again.



Unknowingly, last year Jorge stuck a bean in the soil. I guess he secretly desires to be a farmer or has some fantasy to act out Jack and the Bean Stock. After moving the plant to the front patio I noticed a different type of plant growing on the side of the flower. I pointed it out to Jorge and he said, "Yeah, I put that in there last year.". Now we have a bean plant growing. I am not sure what we will get from it, but we will give it it's fair chance at life.



Now with the hydrangea plant growing so well and the bean plant taking off, we thought we would add to our garden. We got some free tomato seeds in a packet of cookies. Odd combination but we didn't care. We bought a planter (probably a bit too small) and planted those seeds. Now we have a couple of tomato plants.



I guess feeling so successful with his *crop* of beans, Jorge wanted to try his luck again. One day he walked in the house, after eating some watermelon, and told me that he had thrown some of the seeds from the watermelon he just ate into the planter of tomatoes. I saw the seeds sitting on the surface of the soil but didn't really pay much attention to them. I kept water the tomato plants as normal. One day I went to water the plants and noticed a different type of plant growing and it took all of 1 second to realize what it was. Over the span of a week or two 3 more of those plants appeared.


After only buying the hydrangea last year, we now have 1 hydrangea plant, 1 bean plant, 2 tomato plants and 4 watermelon plants. Let's see how good we are at producing the produce.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I love it! I also love the post about the dinosaur chicken egg!

Glad you are doing well.

Cutzi said...

I loved this post. It gave me a good little chuckle as it's just about how I garden - most things by accident. ;-) I'm really curious to see how those watermelon turn out! It's been so great to get your comments on my blog. Thanks for taking the time to check in with me.

Please forgive me if my comment about living in Mexico came across as insensitive. While I would love to spend an extended period of time living in Mexico with my family - I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for you to have to live there when your desire is to live in the US. I'll be praying for a silver lining!