My favorite component in this year's view from the back porch is the Elephant Ears. My sister gave them to me last spring, two bulbs - one large, one small - that I stashed in the "trunk" of my Wrangler. I open that trunk about twice a year; there's normally nothing in it but a 10-disc CD changer and a ratchet strap, neither of which I need on a regular basis. So it was that those bulbs rode around, forgotten, in my trunk until the fall, when I discovered mouse poop in the front passenger seat and had to tear the Jeep apart to dispatch the offender and its leavings. It was when I went to set a baited trap in the trunk that I found the bulbs, and I thought, "Oh, sh*t, I bet they're dead," but decided to plant them, anyway, in case there was still a living cell or two in them. I brought them around to the back of the house and laid them near the spot where I intended to plant them. And that's as far as I got. They laid there all winter on top of the ground and STILL haven't been planted. Aren't they magnificent?
I cleaned out the two of the three raised beds on the left this weekend and planted lettuce seeds in the first one, which still holds the stump of the kale tree. It looks pretty dead, but who knows? It might sprout again. The middle bed had zinnias in it. They were leggy and unsightly, so I yanked them out. All that remains is the freebie cabbage that a garden center gave me late this spring. It currently has four leaves on it. We'll see if it has any plans. Beyond the middle bed is the Blue Apron bed. It contains the root ends of the scallions that go into the dinners, as well as several heads of garlic. (Blue Apron folks, if you're reading this, one head of garlic per shipment would suffice). They grow! Some of the onions are as big as grocery store onions. I probably should take those up before winter, eh?
Waaaay over to the left, the black thing is my compost tumbler. I am making a serious effort at making compost to go in the vegetable garden, which is in bad need of additional dirt and apparently is starved of nutrients. All of our food waste goes into the tumbler, but I had very little "brown" matter to add to it until I decided to shred the Blue Apron boxes and add them to the compost. It seems to be working. I hope it's ecologically OK to use the cardboard - things I've read say it's fine, though it apparently doesn't contain a lot of nutrients. It sure gives bulk to the compost, and solves the problem of what to do with all that cardboard!
It's starting to rain now. Maybe my lettuce seeds will sprout!
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