We Planted

There has been lettuce in the standing garden outside the gate for a few weeks.  The oregano is a new addition.  The tiny clay ollas I made and thought were useless are now passsively irrigating our produce.

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For scholars who are just walking by, Would you like a bite of lettuce? is a powerful inducement to stop and have a taste.  I now have enough plants to allow us to denude one or two and still have more to feed us tomorrow.  The oregano is there to balance the blandness of the buttercrunch; it tastes like pizza is my favorite comment.

We filled the two new raised beds with ollas and veggie starts.  Celery and basil and dill and a tomato plant here

spinach and dill and some petunias and a snapdragon in the other bed (which I forgot to photograph...sigh).

This raised bed has lots of something coming up..... I have no idea what it will turn out to be.  There didn't seem to be any leaves punching through the soil on the right edge, so we placed four onion bulbs and a sprig of dill to round out the planting.  I would add ollas but I'm afraid to dislodge the roots of those hardy suckers who survived a Tucson summer, a dry monsoon, and an unusually warm fall without any human intervention.  We'll be hand watering this area.

The painted tire that Mr. Guy rolled in for us last year is now home for the chocolate mint plant and several onion bulbs.  Mint has a tendency to take over; this one is totally contained.  Even if it sent roots down into the ground below, the soil is so dense and unforgiving that those roots will either die or turn around and rejoin their compatriots in the fresh, amended soil.

There is still more work to be done.  This old raised bed is a favorite spot for digging and making mud tunnels and looking for worms and buried treasure.  

Behind it is the second new raised bed and the older bed's twin.  Those are not plants back there.  They are Dollar Store scarecrow-on-a-stick faces.  Rearranging them is something else that makes the kiddos smile.  Today they are facing one another, kissing.

The best part of the garden, though, is our mandarin orange tree.  It has recovered from its near death experience when the irrigation was shut off all summer long and is now covered in lots of little white flowers-soon-to-be-oranges, like the one right here.

We can hardly wait.