A Sidetrack into Gardening

Nature is a constant source of amazement for me. Everything runs in a cycle, one thing taking care of the next which in turn nourishes the first. It’s really quite beautiful.

Every spring when I start my garden I am reminded of this process, especially when I look at my beautiful compost… yes, beautiful compost. I love it. I take the pieces of food that we cannot use – egg shells, potato and banana peels, coffee grounds, along with grass clippings and some paper from my shred pile, and it turns into this wonderful rich dark fertilizer for the next batch of plants I grow (and it would be even better if I could get my hands on some manure, but that is just wishful thinking on my part!) So, the food we don’t use (and that the animals eliminate) ends up nourishing the food we grow the next year. On first glance, this might seem like a disgusting process, but in reality it just shows the wonderful cycle of nature and how one thing takes care of the next.

When I was growing up my family always had a garden, and a very large compost pile. We grew tons of vegetables every year – tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, radishes, beets, squash… by far my favorite was the tomatoes. There is just nothing like a home grown tomato. Those pathetic little hydroponic things you get from the store can hardly be recognized as a tomato once you have had the real thing.

As much as I love to garden, we don’t have any land on which to plant or even have a compost pile. But I don’t let this stop me. I have a compost pile – it’s in some old five gallon buckets that originally contained a bulk purchase of kitty litter. It still decomposes just fine – I just leave the lids slightly askew so those bacteria can get oxygen… and to turn the compost I just put the lids back on tight and shake the contents a bit every couple of days. And as for my garden, it grows on our deck in containers – which I get for next to nothing, because you can plant in anything that holds dirt, for the most part. I get my planters from garage sales and thrift stores… Everything from popcorn tins and lunchboxes to laundry baskets lined with plastic and old mixing bowls. I have a pile of potential planters in the garage right now just waiting for the last frost to pass.

And my tomatoes are already sprouted, along with my thyme, some basil, and a chile pepper or two. Can’t wait for summer and all those yummy tomatoes.