Garden reverie

This weekend I decided I needed a break from a particularly long and crazed period of overworking as a freelance graphic designer. As is said, when it rains, it pours -- and it's either feast or famine. So yes, I guess I'm feasting now! (But somehow I am feeling a twinge of famine in some other areas of my life. Not the life balance I’m looking for, really.)

But speaking of feasting (or, I should say, the hope of feasting), I puttered a lot in my vegetable garden this weekend: both watering and weeding around my 10 tomato plants of various varieties, giant kale, five varieties of lettuce, green and rainbow chard, an orange sweet pepper, yellow summer squash, a cucumber, and a cinderella-style pumpkin. Oh, and my lone zucchini plant, whose predecessor was recently eaten leaf by leaf for four nights in a row until there was no healthy amount of chlorophyll left to catch and absorb the sun’s light. But that's another story...

On my way home on Friday, I stopped at my local garden supply store (Grand Lake Ace Garden Center) and bought some more tomato spirals -- which I’m curious to try out this year instead of using the usual too-small, wire cages -- and also purchased several containers of a variety of flowering plants. I prefer to buy perennials as much as possible (to enjoy them for more than one season for the same price), but this trip, I couldn’t resist the cute mixed cosmos, especially when I saw that the flowers already blooming in the six-pack were in my favorite color: orange.

Saturday night, I became a whirling dervish: I decided to mix in some of my compost around the lettuce and chard. I have one of those spinning composters that rolls around like a wheel. The composted soil felt good in my hands, like flour does after you’ve just mixed in the egg when making pasta. A bit gooey but deliciously potent. The worms seemed to be loving it too -- as I brought each scoop from the bin to my waiting garden approximately five worms were wiggling and squirming.

I really recommend investing in a composter for your garden no matter what size. (Here's why.) My partner and I use this compost crock in our kitchen. Just today I peeled about seven organic bananas to freeze for a smoothie fix later. All of those delicious peels are now enjoying the delightful dance of decomposing with our recently added eggshells, leek tops, and orange peels. Oakland gives every household a composting bucket when they drop off your garbage/recycling carts and also has a compost bin program that lets you buy a Smith and Hawken Biostack for $39 (normally sells for $89) or a Wriggly Wranch Worm Bin for $29 (normally sells for $100). Or you can build your own. You can check out other Bay Area compost bin programs here.