Long time comin'

Okay, I freely admit I am a horrible blogger -- I come up with all sorts of things I need to talk about on my blog, but never seem to get down to actually doing it. Bah.

I suppose I will start where I left off last time, with my dying lettuce and beans. Well, they still aren't dead. While plants don't flourish under my care I seem to be able to keep them hanging on to the lowest ebb of life. Which is what my beans and lettuce have been doing for almost a month.

However, the good news is that I'm glad I didn't just rip them out and start again because there are signs of hope. While pretty much every single leaf on the beans died off and I was sure they were dead, now a whole new set of leaves is coming in, and this morning I even counted four flowers! As for my lettuce, after completely hacking it back to virtually nil, the two clumps left have regrown . In fact, I was even able to have some fresh lettuce for my sandwich today. I hope these new leaves are hardy because Buster has decided the empty space beside the lettuce is "kitty-sized" and I have caught him curled up in there.

What I have learned is that my pots are NOT big enough. They seemed enormous when I planted my tiny seedlings in them, but I have had to thin my peas, dill, and beans as they began crowding each other in the, now far-too-small, pots. Thinning is not something I am good at, as you may have guessed from my reticence to dig up my dying beans. Also, Kyle had to be the one to prune our ficus, which really needed it but I couldn't bring myself to start chopping off perfectly good branches. I'm just not good at the philosophy of sacrificing one for the good of the many. But I did do the thinning, and hopefully the remaining plants will thank me!

We have been using the herbs in all sorts of recipies, from roasted potatoes to fish to Thai curries. The vegetables, on the other hand, I would rather eat straight off the plant, especially our crisp, juicy, "oh my GOD those are good" snow peas. My love of peas has reemerged thanks to those peas -- for a while I was swindled into thinking those limp, thin, sorry excuses for peas you find at the grocery store were what peas were like. Our tomatoes are also pretty good, though I find our large "supersonic" variety a little grainy.

Finally, some before and after photos. The first photo was taken March 27, the second, May 12. What a difference! And if you are interested, you can read my recent article in Fast Forward on apartment gardening.