For me, one of the great joys of living in Reno has been planting and harvesting every year. I am so completely happy when I have my hands in the dirt. Heaven on Hillcrest has provided the most delightful blank canvas. This started out as a blog about the watermelon, I think, since I named it the cash crop, lol. I have a lot of drafts started. I would think about something I wanted to blog about and I would enter the title so I would not forget, this happened a lot while I was sorting the pictures. So rather than try and sort these out, I am just going to write about each one till all the drafts are posted.
This is where the huge pile of wood chips was. We raked and shoveled all the wood chips into the paths between beds. This picture was taken before I'd planted anything yet, I had cleared and turned all the brick planter beds, then I just started carving out the beds from the sidewalk back, lining them with rocks from the property. I spent a lot of time in the fall and winter looking at the space from the bedroom window, imagining the shape my garden would take and how I could use the elements left on the property to create a pleasing aesthetic.
I went to a retreat during the Continuum years called Dreamtime Wilderness Gathering. We camped on a sacred piece of land for 4 days. One of the things we did was find a section of that land and create an earth portrait of ourselves. That's what the backyard was to me this year, a place to express myself with the earth I have been given.
I had run out of rocks by the time I got to the circle in the center of the trees. If you can't tell, it's a yin/yang shape, lol, very me. The watermelon would be planted on the moon shape and the tomatoes would go in the tear drop. The shadow you see in the foreground belongs to a horrible holly bush, that I would dig up if I owned this house. I did, however, cut it waaaay back.
This shot was taken when growing season was in full swing. I had planted watermelon seeds that never took. I gave them 4 weeks, then started looking for starter plants. I hadn't seen any and was about to plant some wildflower seeds, then I saw them at Lowes while I was there to buy dirt. I bought six tiny plants and put them in the ground that day. The watermelon is probably about a month in the ground at this stage. It's the second batch of tomatoes on the right, the first ones died in the April Frost of 2013. I sort of knew better than to plant that early, but I took a shot since it had been such a mild winter. About 50% of what I planted survived, so I felt lucky. Along the fence is a bed of mammoth sunflowers and morning glories. The sunflowers were amazing, look for more on those later, but the morning glories never really took off. The soil was pretty sandy over there and I was running out of budget for dirt. The sunflowers are weeds that will grow anywhere, but the morning glories will need a richer soil next year.
This is just a nice shot of the midsection of the yard just before I planted anything. The one below is mid August and by this time we were eating tomatoes, corn, and cabbage,(which survived the April Frost of 2013). Both corns are in the back, clockwise from Corn 2 is zucchini,(which was originally 4 strawberry plants that died in the April Frost of 2013, lol), cabbage, watermelon, and tomatoes.
Here is the watermelon near the end of the season, it was taking over the yard.
Another watermelon view from the opposite side. I used a bunch of twigs and branches from the yard to line the area and guide the vines where I wanted them to go. I missed a couple of days once and I had to unwind a watermelon vine from the tomatoes. The center path between the two beds became quite narrow. Yeah, watermelons need a lot of attention if space is an issue.
I was tickled and delighted every time I found a new melon. The entire experience was running a close second to the corn love. I will plant watermelon again, allowing more space, and knowing better when to pick the fruit. I think we harvested 15 or 16, maybe more, there were quite a few super small ones by the time the cold said no more and it was the end of the season. I learned all about ripe in a whole new way....big is not ripe. Even though the first one we picked was huge and beautiful green, inside was almost a milky salmon color. The meat of the melon was already getting sweet, but nothing compared to the ones at the end that we let stay on the vine longer, even all those tiny ones. They were delish!
The following few photos are the evolution of the first melon I found.
Random....
No comments:
Post a Comment