No matter how tired, cranky, or lazy I am tomorrow, or how hot and disgusting it is in the morning, I am going to clear out Bed One in the garden and process what’s there for the freezer. The sooner I get it done, the sooner I will feel inspired to get the seedlings for the next round of planting started. If I get Bed One cleared out, I can then start working up my willpower to deal with the mounds and the tomato plants. None of it is especially awful or heavy work, but in the kind of heat we have been having around here, just walking out to the garden to look at it feels like heavy work.

The potato plants are seriously starting to die back. That means that very soon we will be chomping on homegrown potatoes! After they die back or are cut back, I’m supposed to wait a couple of weeks to dig them up. It allows the skins to harden for storage. I doubt I will be waiting a couple of weeks for two reasons. We eat a lot of potatoes, and I don’t have room to store a lot of potatoes anyway. I hardly think there are going to be that many potatoes there, and if there are, well that’s what processing and freezing is for.

In short, I am eager to move on with the garden. The spring garden is all but over now, and the heat has to break eventually (it does, doesn’t it). I know I have griped about my garden a lot, and it is true things didn’t go as well as I had planned, but if all the stuff we’ve eaten out of the garden since sometime in February were piled up together, we’ve actually gotten a lot of produce from it … and I had fun and learned some new things.

Here are some of the things I have learned:

It is imperative that I have an indoor seed starting setup.

I will never bother with cucumbers again. Too much aggravation.

Tearing things out of the ground that aren’t doing anything is A-OK.

Mulching around plants is necessary in Texas.

Homemade, organic methods of pest control work.

Focus on a few types of veggies and plant more of each.

Companion planting may be a lot of hooey.

Have a dedicated herb garden with nothing but herbs.

Be even more organized with everything.

Start earlier than I think I should start.

And more, of course. Those are just the top things that come to mind as I start planning the next plantings. I’m looking forward to the next garden, and the next one after that. As long as I still enjoy it, there will be a garden at Casa de Orb.

Speaking of gardening (when am I not), I got a catalog in the mail the other day for iris bulbs. I am not much of a flower person. I like flowers, but I have never felt the desire to grow them, and any flowering plants I have been given, I quickly kill through neglect, but I do love the iris. While I don’t think I’ll ever spend $20 for a single tuber (but, OMG, it is a totally black iris), I think I want to devote the entire front bed to iris plants. Why? Well, aside from loving them and having fond memories of my grandfather loving them, I know for a fact I can’t kill them.

We have blue irises in the front bed and yellow irises in the back yard all of which have been here since we bought the house. The closest thing to attention they have ever gotten is the annual attempt to remove all the weeds from the beds (which I always give up on before the job is done). Even though I pay them no attention at all and never water them, they continue to come back ever year and bloom beautifully. In 6 years, I haven’t killed a one of them, in fact, there are more now than when we moved in. Therefore, the iris is the perfect flowering plant for me! They are apparently indestructible!

I think I’ll go spend my five minutes of late-afternoon outdoor time checking to see what the various critters have eaten in my garden today. I’ve pretty much given up trying to keep the birds and whatnot away from things. Nothing really works anyway, and I’m a softy for the wildlife. They deserve some tasty kibble too, and I do like having the critters around, now that they won’t be living in my laundry room anymore. :lol: