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The Garden At Connie's Corner

Year two was still a struggle of overwhelming incompetence.  Still didn't do so much more than clean and clear out the rest of the garden spots but at least I was able to demonstrate that I could do that much.  As I was raking and cutting and digging in, I found an assortment of indigenous and imported rocks, geodes, stepping stones, brick lined niches and so much more buried beneath years of moldy leaves, twigs, branches, thorn bushes and worse.  

Granddaughter number one has a rock fetish so she spent many happy days sorting through the rock piles, washing them, carefully arranging them.  She built her own rock garden.  After she arranged her rocks, then she stuck in some silk flower bunches, sprinkled about a pound of glitter, a little spinning fan and other amusements. Pretty good for a five year old.  I have a picture of that rock garden, I must remember where.

At some point she decided that we needed to build a rock path up to the 'up top' garden.  She lost interest after she selected the rocks to be used but grandpa persevered and we have a lovely path with a multitude of indigenous stone, geodes and some store bought rocks.

Early May I still only felt competent to clear brush and dig holes. One lucky day as I was digging through around and under years of tree, limb and thorn bush brush, I poked into a wire fence.   How cool, thought I, so I spent the entire of a day digging back and tossing about until I had uncovered a small fenced in garden space.  The interior was filled with many years of the same stuff I’d cleared out from the outside of the fence.

Four days later I had cleaned out the interior of that little fence and found a neatly laid out garden plot.  With good dirt!   This is important in Indiana where most ground is hard clay filled with rocks.

The garden area was about 15 feet square, or three of my length foot strides aside.  There was a pea gravel path down the center with bricks lining out smaller beds.  Wholey smokes!!  I called my granddaughter and told her what I had found.  She was excited too!

Next day comes the honey home with a roto-tiller in the back of the truck.  I had no idea what it was for or how to use it or for that matter whom should be using it.  He gassed it up, dragged it into the newly revealed garden, pointed his finger and said, "Starter up". 

He was kidding.  Right?  I have post chemotherapy peripheral  neuropathy.  I wouldn’t be able to pull that starter cord if there was a gun to my head.  Well, if there was gun to my head I would have probably tried.

Not always as stupid as he looks, my husband recognized my body language and incredulous glare and started it up for me.  Then he invited me to come and use it.  I pulled the safety lever towards the handle, as directed.  The damn thing took off across that garden with me flying out behind hollering and cussing in foreign languages. 

Finally the voice penetrated the ungoshly loud din of the machine pulling me along.  "Let Goooooo!  Let Goooooo!"  Let go of what?  Oh.  The handle.  I let go and the safety feature immediately stopped the machine. 

I stomped off in furious tears and went to my room to have a good stew and a pout about it all.  Sure enough, he roto-tilled the whole thing.  Raked it up afterwards too.

So last year, at 53 I had my first real garden.  Alyssa and I grew cherry tomatoes (all eaten as picked) , lemon cucumbers (yum), green beans (not worth the trouble), Asian melons (get the seeds at WalMart), broom corn (no kidding!),  red peppers, cilantro (we had planned to make salsa with the tomatoes but they got eaten off the vine too fast).  Also in this plot was a neat peony bush… just there buried under all that rot!  I put one lavender plant in the corner.  Can't help it, I’m addicted. 

From the deck container garden we had fresh salad lettuce every day.  Not the iceberg kind for us. We planted genuine grown from scratch ‘field greens’.  Some of this stuff is alarmingly similar to the weeds Deanna had me pulling out.  Nothing in the world smells as good as arugula lettuce. You can just stick your face down in it and breathe deep.   Part of the entertainment for dinner guests at my house during lettuce season is the ultimate 'cut your own' salad bar.  Just giggles and grins.

Want something interesting in your garden?  A real conversation piece? 

Try Broom Corn.  Yep, the stuff brooms are made out of. 

There is no actual corn on the plant. 

When fully grown, there is a lovely spray of seeds covering the strands that brooms are made of. 

People love them as gifts and you can even sell them at local florist shops!

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