I love spring anywhere,
but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.
―Ruth Stout

Oooohhh it’s that time of year again. And even though I’ve been told I’m not allowed to garden this year due to my repeated inability to bring a veggie garden to fruition… I’ve got that yearning. To get my hands dirty. To plant seeds and make great plans.

Gardening is the purest form of optimism. It’s the embodiment of hope.

Anyway, at the Philadelphia Flower Show there was an exhibit by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society that I found hugely inspirational. Look how many herbs, fruits and veggies they managed to cram into a space about the size of a typical city rowhome backyard! Is that corn?

It’s a beautiful illustration of how you don’t need a lot of land and a ton of money to grow your own produce: enough to make a difference in your diet (and likely your neighbors’ diets as well).

Small Space, Low Budget Gardening Tips
(Lessons learned from the Flower Show)

1. Raised beds rock the house.

The picture above has raised beds (and a walkway made with boards and a seat made of part of a tree trunk). Raised beds mean you don’t have to go digging down into your dirt and then amend it; you can start off with good, clean, well-balanced dirt to give your plants an extra boost.

2. Think inside the box. Or bell jar.

Cold frames and glass jars help protect from nips of frost, extending your growing season.

3. Look up, down, and all around. 

Vertical gardening is an awesome technique to increase your square yardage for growing (and ultimately increasing your yield). Think trellises, wooden pallets to make walls of plants, archways, cages.

Cherry tomatoes grown on a simple archway

Wall made of lettuce!

4. Gardening doesn’t need to be fancy. 

Beds neatly hemmed in by logs. Oyster shells to create a pathway. Cages made from thin branches. Those wooden paint stirrers from hardware stores as row markers. Seats made from tree stumps. Used wooden pallets. Old windows for cold frames. Produce section twist ties for supporting and training plants. Pretty much anything with a hollow center as a planter… this is recycling at its best, and gardening at its least expensive. Plus, I think using as many natural materials as possible makes a garden so pretty.

5. Seeds are cheap.

Add love, time and effort and the return is bountiful. Freeze up your surplus for those winter months when the price of produce soars! (I was paying $3.99 A POUND for red peppers this winter! But I can buy a pepper plant for $2 at my farmers market.) Check out this breakdown of the most cost effective plants to grow— salad greens are #3 and soooo simple to grow yourself. Not to mention, way better tasting than salad-in-a-bag or trucked-in-from-afar!

Share the wealth by planting a row for the hungry or checking with your local food kitchen to see if they’ll take garden donations. Turn your garden plot into a political statement.

Garden for victory. For your health. For your kids. For your mental well-being. For your wallet.

$10 of seeds = one ton of tomatoes

Are you growing fruits, veggies, herbs in your garden this year?

What are you planting?

Please excuse the quality of the Flower Show shots. I had to resort to my pop-up flash.

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been told by people close to me that I am making a spectacle of myself.

I can’t help it. I’m a talker. I love to tell stories, to trade anecdotes, to argue, to debate, to spar with words. I love to paint pictures in your mind.

I also talk with my hands. Wildly gesturing. I tend to stand while others are seated so as not to incur any injuries. If I have to remain seated, I wrap my hands around a drink or I sit on them. I’m not even kidding. They just love to jump about of their own accord.

My husband is Not A Talker. Ironically, this is one of the subjects we discuss most– the fact that He Is Not A Talker and how it’s not such a big deal, since You Talk Enough For The Both Of Us. Whenever we go into a social situation, I am reminded to Try Not To Bore Everyone Or Embarrass Us With Your Incessant Blather.

I usually start off well. I stay quiet. I answer questions in a way I consider succinct and soft-spoken. But at some point the floodgates break open and those traitors, my hands, they are running about and illustrating points and they goad me on, leading me like a conductor’s baton.

On the way home, I’ll get a You Talked Too Much Again. Sigh.

I think any writer is a talker. They understand cadence and flow and nuance because they have heard themselves talk so damn much. And at some point they have to stem the flow… redirecting it onto the page.

Writers have to write because they have something to say and a need to be heard. Anything else is censorship… and since writers are also READERS censorship is the ultimate enemy.

As for wild geese and ducks… well, let’s just say he wasn’t there when I pulled the car to the side of the heavily traveled highway just off a college campus road and followed this family around. And that’s a good thing, since he probably would’ve been offended by all the people laying on their horns as they whizzed by, shouting “Honk! Honk!”

I am not easily embarrassed. This comes from growing up with a mother who was beyond embarrassing. I developed a fairly thick skin.

To what extent am I bound to not embarrass the people around me?

To what extent am I bound to be the way that I am?

*** Local Peeps: On this particular stretch of road– 273 near Lowe’s– there is a Papa Goose who has an arrow sticking through him. The arrow “currently is not interfering with the goose’s ability to fly, feed or care for its young, according to Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research Inc.” so reporting the goose is not necessary, he is being monitored. In a few weeks the goslings will be old enough to survive with a single parent and at that point the rescue will attempt treatment. ***


Interesting Canada Goose Facts (to me, anyway)
–Canada Geese mate for life.
–They return to their old stomping grounds to nest. Which in turn were the nesting areas of their parents.
–Goslings stay with both parents for a whole year.
–If a goose falls out of the V formation while migrating (say, if it is shot, maybe with a FREAKING ARROW), then two other geese will stay behind with it, bringing food until it recovers or dies.

I’m all about a wild goose chase. Makes me feel good about myself.

Aaaaargh I have so much to do today.

Very quickly wanted to share this cute hip-hop video of kids talking up their love of fresh grown!