Runaway Garden

Well, I came home from work the other day and Keith had a surprise for me.

My new garden was ready. All tilled up and ready to go. Except it's too early to plant, but when it's time I could just go out there and start stuffing plants and seeds in virgin dirt. I was so happy.

Until I went out back and looked at it.

Tiny! Itty bitty! The smallest garden I've had in years. It was only 10x20. Not nearly big enough for 20 or 30 tomatoes, a couple dozen peppers, plus green beans & cucumbers & lettuce & basil & on & on & on.

I was all good with downsizing, but that was ridiculous.

Then that night when I was watching the dogs poop I looked at the crappy flower beds around the house. They need work. There aren't any flowers involved. Well, except for a couple of clumps of daffodils. Other than that there isn't anything but a bunch of some kind of little evergreen bushes and a lonely Japanese maple.

So I started thinking, instead of making Keith expand the new garden, why not just tuck some of the vegetables in these beds that are just going to waste anyway. Tuck some lettuce over here, some cabbage over there, throw in some flowers to camouflage the vegetables. Between the two or three mostly empty flower beds I thought I'd have enough room for everything. If there still wasn't room for something I didn't really need it after all.

Then Saturday a guy down the street was out tilling his garden. He ended up stopping by and tilling up another chunk of the neighbors yard. Now my garden is 20x22. It's still a lot smaller than my old garden up on the hill, or last year's garden here, but I'm happy.

I can still use the flower beds for overflow plants if I need to. I just hope I don't need to because one of the reasons there aren't any flowers in the flower beds is they are about as swampy as the garden. Plus they get a lot more shade than the garden. Which would probably be a good thing for the lettuce and cabbage and other cool-weather crops.

Well, except for the swampy part. That's not good for anything except rice or seaweed.