last remnant from my somewhat abandoned planter BOX boxes

untended since July, I've gotten one last harvest from my planter boxes. need to get my boxes up here to plant next crop. the boxes would seem unnecessary, but do far everything I've planted has been dug up at the roots and tossed aside to wither by the armadillos and the Bambi's have been hungry enough to eat a few deer resistant plants I tried.

oh honey!

yipee. my first flowers on my capetown honey suckle.

fresh BOX crop coming up

arugula, purple onions, poblano peppers and cherry tomatoes

freezer burn; flourishing sans freezer burn

arugula vs cherry tomatoes PLUS hard freeze = arugula kicks butt and flourishes! well and my sugar snap peas froze. dang right when they were totally cranking out on quantity.

today's arugula harvest

that was a lot of pampering

in my little BOXed box planter garden to produce my six little butternuts. though I can't keep up with the arugula. I think I harvest 1-2 gallons every other day or so. my cherry tomato bush is still cranking out tomatoes in thick all most like grape clusters. they seem to take turns in turning red, single file, one at a time. my most peaceful moments are the twenty or thirty minutes of harvesting my arugula a blade/leaf at a time.

dang I just can't eat it fast enough

my arugula likes this weather a little too much! I just harvested about 4 gallons of the stuff. had to give some away! good problem. and my one tomato plant is so dang happy and drooping with fruits.

perhaps this is to remind me that life keeps on. at some level it does remind me of this with the continued growth and regrowth of my arugula and my ripening tomatoes even in the chill of a Houston winter. even when i don't do all the right things to protect and grow my garden. I can only do so much, but honestly I do not make the leaf reach toward the sun or drink from the soil. I can cultivate or not, and growth and regrowth continues. unless you are my a honey bear squash, in which case you're just our of luck. so perhaps even this uncultivated growth that has occurred in my absences amazes.

My first sugar snap

seconds have been harvested and eaten!

yeah arrugula!

sugar snaps are looking a little peeked -- apparently i was suppose to be feeding them (fertilizers)...i just thought that was why i bought fertile soil. anyway i have since fed them and hope they green up a little. the squashes are producing fruit like structures, i can't tell if they'll go to term. i think i need a few more of each plant next season so there are more opportunities for cross pollination and such...

so i'll finish this season in a month or two and harvesting what i've learned i'll be on to veggie gardening seconds for a late winter planting.

Firsts

My first salad of my own homegrown freshly washed arrugula.

My first ever tomato.

My first ever honey bear and winter squash.

My first ever jalapeno.

OH NO! my honey bear (squash)!

I guess i'll have to apply some chemicals. i had really hoped not to. Dang. I thought i didn't have bugs, but i do...just the wrong kind. my blossoms are covered with poppy seed like bugs?

this is chemical warfare time! i've squished all i could. see i am not a tree hugger.

Is this a baby squash?

Omgosh

Imitating a bumbling bumble bee

Ungracefully, Q-tip in hand, I fluttered from squash bloom to squash bloom landing gently on each anther. Onto the next I flit with my lightly pollen coated fuzzy q-tip.

Hope my imitation of a bumbling bee is fruitful. I figured I better take matters into my own hands since I haven't seen any flying cross pollinTors playing round my veggie garden. Where are all the good bugs? Guess I need to plant some bee and butter fly attractors.

Location:Capitol St,Houston,United States

Oh no

I drove up to my box and thought, "dang, gone two nights and my garden has already yellowed. Double darn!" but no!

Ends up my squash plants each have a whole herd of yellow blossoms. This new honey bear hybrid squash is happy happy happy.

My arugula is abut poignant from the heat though.

I even have little baby jalapeño peppers.

But do I want to make a rain garden or would I simply be breeding west Nile propagators.

Sugar snaps, garlic and arugula are poppin

With a few stragglers growing up from my awesome fertile soil/compost!

End of the day

the sun she sizzles upon the wires hung limp
her moon pregnant with things yet revealed
the evening cools finally
and in her rhythmic absence even
my garden still grows unseen
ok well at least i try to make the day seem
worth doing again and tomorrow i will
for it is my habit to try

One new bed from start to finish (well almost)

They take much longer to make than I expect though I am getting much faster. Tomorrow I will plant this bed with more sugar snap peas (I hope I like them) and either more arugula or some butter leAf. I think.

My goal over the next two months is to line the back of the courtyard as well with planter boxes. So one or two more runs to harvest abused and to be reused (free) rough cut oak, soil and then prep my planters for spring veggies. I hope I can eat all this healthy stuff.

I have peaked the neighbors curiosity with these planters and my gardening endeavors even more than the tube art. Or perhaps a veggies mAke sense to them were as my art does not. Anyway they've been stopping by to ask what I am planting. My first visiting neighbor was a woman named Rosa. I liked that I was working the garden soil when my first rose arrived. Perhaps at some point I will off load the bulk of my tires and build a community garden. I like the neighborhood with its tejano music filling the night air. I do need to learn Spanish, the neighbors kind of look at me like I am ignorant. Of course relative to speaking or understanding Spanish this is true.

The rain has just begun. I love the smell as the temperature drops and my hair is lightly tossed by the gusting breezes in the forefront of the showers.

OMA

Oh My Arugula!

It's already sprouting! Dang I didn't expect that... I hope my sugar snap peas start popping up by Monday!

I love arugula (and chocolate gelato). I discovered these when my...ummm (not X because that is too much like scratching someone's eyes out or their face from photos, I suppose former is a more gentle wording, more in terms of the respect I have for her and the condition of my heart, but since she was my only in over two decades, my entire adult life, and i care deeply for her, i will simple refer to her as who she has been to me, my mother-in-law)...so my mother-in-law introduced me to these things as we traveled together when she invited and included me on a trip with her to Italy (rome and florence) and France (paris) in 2005. I never ever expected to, it never even entered my head that i could, get to travel to these places just to look at art, so it was a wonderful surprise, a geniune gift (it was the first time i ever cut school as well). Anyway, in these places, over our three week trip, I sought out contemporary art...Rodin. Picasso, Hesse, Debuffet, and so much more (and ate in little cafes and fine restaurants with she and Rod...thus arugual (and gelato)). So many wonders and works I had only read about and had seen in mere slides projected onto a wall in art history lectures, i now got to actually see. While on that trip I began the final pivotal transition from designer (invisible) to artist (visible)--though my whole life had been building to this point, traveling with her was that real snap moment. It is when i knew, that feeling of coming home to who i was meant to be and am, it was like stepping into my own skin for the first time in 44 years. It was on this trip that i began to follow the call on my life as artist. In a purpose driven life style were all things must clearly and overtly serve the creator, coming home to, an uncovering of, who i am as artist was disruptive and unsettling in spite of just being so right to how i am internally built and gifted. So huge changes began to manifest -- I became more comfortable with who I am, less timid, less dependent, more aware of were I felt wounded and God's healing call. Art seemed so purposeless, like entertainment, in so many ways it created a huge paradox and a new kind of anxiety in the world I resided in.  In trying to listen and follow, i have walked on unknown territory in which i have stumbled and fallen yet i am, at 48, still learning to walk. And as I keep getting back up (trying), I still limp from the many woundings. i assume i will always limp but i will walk.

Anyhow that is how arugala (and chocolate gelato) entered my life and that is when i overtly, with purpose, began following who I was create to be. All these things I will hold onto gently, as I am lead.

he leads me beside quiet waters
he makes me lie down in green pastures
and restores my soul.

I do love arugula; i really kind of hated salad (iceberg based) before i discovered arugula. now i am a saladaholic...plus steak (medium rare)!

Beds fully made

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,

And so my garden grows.  (c1744)

i don't recall the context other than childhood, but nursery rhymes, fairy tales and fables were a typical mom time. So now i shall look for the silver bells and cockle shells as my own garden grows.

note...thursday no arugula sprouts...but by friday afternoon, they've all sprouted! dang. the growth taken place under the surface is so unseen and then in a moment it becomes wonderfully visible. god i hope it will be like that.