Ten-Finger Exercises

Garden Diversity

This is the week I'll finally finish my vegetable garden, and it's heating up again just in time. I checked several nurseries and box stores for petunias without much variety available at all. No cascades, nothing in white or ruffles. Of vegetables it was a different story.

I always look for Early Girl tomatoes, and Big Boys and Beefsteaks, and I can't remember all the familiar varieties. Not a one of them did I find. So I have a Celebrity, a Pink-Red, a Moravian Paste and a Green Zebra and a Bragger. Isn't that wild! Luckily I have some self-starters from last year, so at least I'll have some regular red tomatoes eventually. (They're very small still.)

There were so many self-started zucchini that I could have fed a small country of people, if they liked zucchini. It's hard to rip up those perfect plants, but they needed taming. They were already out of control.

We have a plentiful amount of a weedy garden grass that I have several names for but don't know the right one. The peculiar thing about it is that, for the first four inches or so, it looks like corn coming up. I've probably let some of it live accidentally, but it will show its true nature soon. On the other hand, I may have hoed down some corn volunteers.

I've noticed before that I have frequently found a look-alike weed among a crop I'm growing. Even the California poppies have a little twin sprouting up among them. Cousins of the Morning Glory known around here as "bindweed" have infiltrated the garden a little. Got to get ahead of those!

Now I know that seeds don't have chameleon qualities, but maybe I'd better think some more about that. I've been wanting to find something that would be fun to write about in the fantasy line. Hmmmmm....My only other good idea I've fantasized about is an invisible garment that will cover you all the way into the water at the swimming pool. Once in, it wouldn't matter, but it sure would be handy for the going to and fro.