Our Bonus Garden

This year, we acquired a bonus garden! And best of all, it didn't require purchasing more land, ripping up sod, or driving to a community garden! The house next door is up for sale, and the owner moved into a retirement apartment last fall. It has a lovely vegetable garden of about 15'x20' that's been lovingly tended for - literally - decades, and has fantastic, powdery soil. While it's on the market, she is paying my husband, Brian, to do snow removal and take care of the lawn.

In May I realized that this garden was going to turn into a jungle of weeds if no one did anything about it, and that gave me a brainstorm: we could cultivate her garden! So with the blessing of both the owner and her power-of-attorney, we jumped right in. In early June, we planted four packets of organic corn seeds, in two different varieties. I was so excited about having our own corn! Several years ago we planted a few rows of corn in our own garden, and I enjoyed it, though Brian was always less than enthusiastic about corn because of the amount of space it requires. That would be no concern this year. I also planted five rows of cutting flowers, which I was also excited about because I do very few annual flowers; I mainly focus on edibles and most of my flowers are easy-care perennials. We realized that there was some risk involved, as we could lose it all if the house sold before harvest time, but we were willing to take the chance.

And then -- the rains hit! We had days and days of rain, it seemed! We thought we'd have to build an arc. I patiently waited and waited for the corn to germinate. The packet said it would take 10-20 days, and I knew that the cool weather wasn't going to help. Well, after giving it the benefit of the doubt and a good three weeks +, we admitted defeat on the corn after realizing we wouldn't get more than a handful of corn seedlings. Finally we took the easy way out and purchased 10, yep, 10 plum tomato plants and four pumpkin seedlings, all on clearance, and planted those. Sure, I wouldn't need that many tomatoes (already having 12 tomato plants of several varieties in our own garden), but we can easily find homes for the surplus. And what family with kids can't use pumpkins at Halloween?! All of these plants, plus the existing rhubarb and chives in the garden took up about 80% of the space and left me feeling satisfied that we'd made good use of that beautiful space next door.



And now, the pumpkin vines are going wild and threatening neighboring plants and the lawn. The tomatoes are a little slow (like everything else this year, but even more so), but just yesterday I noticed that some were turning color, so I'm confident that they will amount to something. And the flowers - the greatest success of all, as you'll see in my first post. I'm definitely hooked on cutting flowers now. And by contrast, we've had very little rain all summer since those early rains.

And the house? No offers yet. The first realtor's contract ran out last week, and now a new realtor is listing it. It's a great house -- brick, 1.5 stories, 5 bedrooms, and a lovely garden out back! It's within walking distance of a number of restaurants and a grocery store. We're really hopeful that a nice family with young kids (and green thumbs) moves in.