Gardening Sister: My First Raised Planter
Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)
Those who are not familiar with my work might be surprised by this post. Who am I kidding? You folks already know what I am all about. Anyhow, brother person has been taking lowering weight seriously.
The dieting not so much. Dieting is hard. This Friday we had pizza. Since he went up three pounds, he took drastic measures. Most folks would throw up, but that is not the healthy way to lose weight quickly.
The quickest way to loose weight is to garden. Two hours of shoveling dirt was enough to burn those calories. In order to avoid overheating, it is important to garden at the same time the farmers usually do so.
At the start of dawn is the best time to garden. It is usually pretty cool and windy in the morning. When the day progresses, it gets like super-hot in Florida. It is even worse at sunset.
The mosquitoes wake up at sunset. I tell you, the mosquito thing in Florida is pretty annoying. I was like in the garden for half an hour and they ate me alive. Moving along, so my brother made me a vegetable planter.
He used four slabs of wood that where crowding up the store house. He held them in place with rocks. There are plenty of super large rocks in the house. After lunch, we got up and we went to the local Home Depot.
It is the go to place when we don’t want to wait for plants. The place is usually relatively crowded. Since it is pretty big, the folks just roam about. Anyhow, we started our little garden with a lettuces, 5 tomatoes plants, and some red bell peppers.
We want to get more arugula, but they were out. As such, we only ended up buying one. I did as Monty and I added a bit of fertilizer at the bottom of the plants before putting them in place. He said it will make the roots grow downwards.
As you might expect, the mosquitoes came at me. It was pretty hard to plant and shoo away mosquitoes. Every exposed piece of flesh got a mosquito bite. Other than that, it was a pretty amusing experience.
Brother never gets bitten by mosquitoes. Those bugs only like certain people. In the old country, they said that those folks have mosquito blood. So, I got all the tiny plants already planted by sunset.
I learned from documentaries that the younger the plant, the more they tolerated changes. So getting a grown plant is counter intuitive. Just like regular human kids, youngling plants tolerate change better.
After planting them, and watering them a little mother added coffee to the plants. Once you make your coffee, the powder remains can be added to the top soil of your plants. Don’t go overboard with the coffee.
Just a 2 centimeter layer is enough to help the plants grow. As with most things, exercise a bit of restraint. Too much coffee is bad for both human and plant. Aside from the vegetables, we got two new indoor plants for the mother.
They make her smile. It is a bit of a birthday present for her as well. With some luck, we will be able to grow our own tomatoes. The other plants we have are looking just fine, more or less.
My red rose bush has Xs for eyes, but I am not ready to admit defeat. It has been raining a lot, so I don’t know what the deal is. I suppose some things cannot be helped.
It gave out one final rose, and then it finished dying. The sunflowers we transplanted got better. Who says you cannot transplant sunflowers? They are those orange Mexican Sunflowers the monarchs love so much.
We got hummingbirds too. We moved the sunflowers to the other side of the house to use the fence as a pole. The location is also protected from the wind. It took about two weeks for the sunflowers to recover.
Coffee ended up helping them in the relocation process. Brother also peed on them a couple of times to feed them nitrogen. The cats also helped in that department too, with their scent marking.
The cats came with the house, and they sort of live in the garden. We don’t mind. The cats feed themselves by eating lizards and tiny birds. We have been thinking of putting up a sign to warn people of the snake.
It gets around, and we mutually avoid one another, so what is not to like about the snake. If the snake is not trying to do you harm, then by relocate it? Brother has taken videos of it before. The snake moves like super quickly.
I just thought it would be fun to put a sign that reads: Beware of Guard Snake. She doesn’t bark, but she does bite. Teehee! The idea of it makes me smile. I think this is enough about my nonsense.
I hope you like my nice gardening photos. It had been a bit of while since I did some planting aside from removing bad weeds. It was fun, is the point I am trying to make.
