Plantus Insanus

I’m taking the 30-day challenge (tip to Lunzy for letting me know about this). My blank? Write every day. Some of that writing may be in my private journal, on my blog, on my book project/web site, or who knows what. But I want to get into the habit of writing every day, even if it is at 11:24 p.m.  So here goes.

Today was a busy day full of farmer’s market, errand running, and working in the garden. Also, around 6 p.m., my sister, her girlfriend, and their pooch Lucy arrived and are now parked out in their camper in front of our house. I’m looking forward to visiting with them for a few days. A.J.’s already been working with them making necklaces (they do bead work and are happy to help him do some of his own), Lily’s been really enjoying Lucy’s company (she’s just so much more exciting than our dogs, right?), and even Ginny got a few drive-by lickings from ol’ Lucy. I cooked some steaks on the grill from our farmer’s market (I splurged on steaks from Skyline Premium Meats as I’d heard good things about this all natural beef). And they certainly came out yummy and were accompanied by local corn on the cob and garlic mashed potatoes (sorry, the potatoes were from a mix!).

Anyhow, the surprise of my day came while tending to the garden earlier in the afternoon. I was so glad I kept a grid of what I planted in my nice square foot gardens to keep track of things. Some things never came up. Some things (the mesclun, for example) waited and then sprang up out of nowhere. Then, there are the mystery plants. Things that don’t seem to be what I planted in that square or something (not weeds or grass) coming up in an empty square. There’s one I still haven’t figured out yet.

Well, one such mystery was the plant coming up in a square that supposedly contained seeds for a mammoth sunflower. A plant started coming up there, one square over from my space-hogging cantaloupe….definitely not a sunflower with those tiny little yellow flowers. Ah, another cantaloupe, right? I mean, maybe those birds I saw the day after planting moved the seeds around.

So, today I’m out planting and spot my first melon bud! Yay! See it buried down there among the leaves?

So I go around the back and sides thinking I’ve got to trim these cantaloupe plants down because they’re taking over the box and growing out onto the path as well as up the trellis. Trim and give the “good” parts of the plant more energy, right?

Anyhow, I go around the back of the trellis looking for more new melons and looky here, what do I find?

Cucumbers? I didn’t even plant cucumbers in either box! Where did this plant come from??!! (I certainly don’t need it with 2 freezers full of pickles!) The closest I can guess is that the seeds that we used for A.J.’s science experiment for the science fair (which we were working on shortly before I planted the garden) got mixed up with the sunflower seeds, and Voila! Cucumbers! I never knew how much alike these two plants look (the cantaloupe and cucumbers, I mean). And they are all tangled up together on the trellis, too, so there is no separating them. Guess, I’ll be giving away cucumbers if I can to any takers!

Next garden project: pantyhose hammocks for the melons that start far off the ground. Should be fun!