A is for Effort

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Without further ado, today’s pocket.

In an effort not to waste water, I took the ice that remained from an ice cream experiment and dumped it in one of my flowerpots. This pot contained two tiny marigold seedlings which finally emerged, a large cluster of happy mint and purple and yellow pansies still eager to please. The next day though, things took a dark turn. The marigolds had shriveled and died as if cursed by an angry god. The mint was seriously distressed, the rich green leaves were now brown and crumbling to dust. The pansies looked pissed, each pathetic petal wondering, “How could you do this to me?”

I saw what looked like shards of ice around the edges of the pot. They couldn’t possibly be shards of ice though as it is July in Spokane; it hit 95 degrees yesterday. This was not the kind of weather where shards of ice stuck around. “What the fuh?” I said setting down my watering can so I could Miss Marple the situation. The answer dawned on me slowly. When I repurposed yesterday’s ice cream experiment, I forgot about one essential ingredient. Salt. The little shards I was seeing were tiny pieces of rock salt. The salt served as a desiccant, dehydrating my poor little plants, depriving them of the moisture they needed to survive. I could see the Clue Card in front of me, Mary Fruchter, in the garden, with rock salt.

It’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? We try so hard to get something right, and instead we get it so very wrong. Sometimes it feels like the universe is also in on the joke. Like the time I checked out Simple Matters, Living with Less and Ending up with More by Erin Boyle in an effort to get organized, and while I was decluttering one space, my puppy was chewing on the pages of Erin’s book in another space. I’m looking forward to the sequel, Simple Matters, Living with a Puppy and Not Losing Your Ever-Loving Mind.

And like the other day, when I decided it might be nice to have a toaster, so I could toast my sourdough bread when it was 95 degrees and have a slice with a little salted butter and rhubarb jam without transforming my kitchen into a sauna. Of course, because I so very much want to live with less and end up with more, I figured I could get a secondhand toaster. No need to add another item to the landfill. I mean sourdough toast with rhubarb jam is exceptional but at what cost? Fortunately, a planned thrifting crawl with friends offered the perfect opportunity to obtain a guilty-free toaster.

Unfortunately, the first two thrift stores didn’t have any toasters, or to be fair, I forgot to look for them. By the third thrift store though, I had accumulated a new to me dress, a cute tank and another pair of overalls, because really you can’t have too many, so I was satisfied and ready to search for my toaster. “Maybe people don’t use toasters anymore,” I said to my friend Andrea.

Miss Marple would have been disappointed with my deductions because when I walked the appliance aisle, which consisted of a few things that looked sadder than my pansies, I found not one but nine toasters. I chose a stainless steel one and then feeling smart started to look for somewhere I could plug it in and check if it worked.

“Hopefully I won’t get electrocuted,” I said nonchalantly, recently having finished a book where the main character experienced this fate. I asked one of the employees about testing the toaster, and he told me they had a station for testing the electronics. The station turned out to be a power strip in the front of the store, but it would suffice. Andrea followed along because she’s a good friend, and she wasn’t taking my electrocution comment lightly, or maybe she had a hunch that the situation might have a comical end.

I plugged the toaster in, and like magic, the green light lit up. I was delighted that it worked. I could even switch the settings, toast, bagel... The possibilities felt endless… that is until smoke, like a significant amount of smoke, started emanating from the coils. “Oh,” I said to Andrea, “it’s smoking.”

She nodded at me and watched me quickly unplug the toaster, leaving it to cool off among the lamps, alarm clocks and other things people were testing.

“On to number 2,” I said.

Andrea was laughing so hard her eyes were welling with tears.

“I wonder how much a new one is,” I said. I could tell by the look on Andrea’s face that she thought this was a better plan.

“I would just buy a new one,” she said. “They’re not expensive, and you can’t really clean those.” She’s practical like that, and I appreciate that about her. She cares about people and the planet, but she’s not setting herself on fire to save the world.

I love my friends, and I want to be like them in so many ways. This week we visited my friend Jamie. Her garden is lush and beautiful and impressively organized. She has an Agastache that is as tall as me. I’ve never seen anything like it. She started it from seed. She gave me the same seeds. However, my gardening is a bit wilder and more haphazard than Jamie’s. I took care of my seeds diligently, but now I’m unsure where I transplanted them. How am I supposed to grow a luscious licorice smelling plant like Jamie’s if I can’t even find it?

To conserve water, I installed a drip system in my garden years ago. It is functional, but it is far from perfect. The output I need to water the small front lawn and garden doesn’t quite match what I need for the garden in the back, and these two systems are connected to the same timer. In an effort to improve this situation, I decided to manually adjust the water system daily, so both parts of the garden get what they need. It’s a decent solution, but it relies on my remembering to make the switch, me the same person who can’t remember where she planted the Agastache, or to look for a toaster, or that homemade ice cream contains rock salt. I do it though because it makes my plants happier. There are more blooms. And of course, I also forget to make the switch, not once, not twice, but so far, three times this summer. I only remember when, like the rock salt, it is too late. The porch sopping wet, the wooden floor taking on damage it might never recover from.

In the most recent accidental flooding, I grabbed my usual fixes, an old towel to sop up the excess water and a fan which would hopefully evaporate the water off the wood. Maybe next time I’d get it right. Pansies would get watered and porches wouldn’t. Maybe not. Either way, I’ll keep trying.

This Week in the Garden

Inspired by Jamie’s gorgeous garden, I laid some of my compost down this week among my flowers and vegetables. It is a huge accomplishment for me that I had compost that was usable. My friend Liz is always telling me how easy compost is, but I told her recently that it’s not as easy for me. “It might be the chicken shit,” she said and then sent me home with a few bags along with some rabbit pellets. I added both to the compost and I’ll let you know how it goes. I also put some wet strips of newspaper over the worms in my worm bin hoping to see happier worms and more compost there.

The blackberries are starting to ripen. We have an abundant crop this year. In addition to just eating them straight off the vine, I’ve been trying out new recipes with them. One of my favorites was blackberry, whipped lemon curd tartlets. I’m linking the recipe that inspired the creation. I made this recipe with the first of our blackberry harvest. When I sent the boys to the garden to harvest the berries, they gathered all the ripe berries they could find, about two and a half cups. This was just the right amount for this recipe whereas a pie would require at least twice that number of berries.

The sunflowers are stealing the show in my garden. They are tall pillars, and there are so many of them. The birds love them, and so do I. I am already starting to think, though, about how to organize next year’s garden differently. The sunflowers are incredible, but they create a bit of a jungle, and it can be hard for some of the other vegetables to get what they need. I might be a little bit more judicious next year about where they grow.

I have definitely succeeded at adding more color into the garden. My favorite bloom this week is phlox. It smells so sweet. I also have some cosmos which are taking off. I love the whimsy of cosmos. I would still like to add more color though, so I’m beginning to think about where I have space and which perennials I can add in the fall.

In case you were concerned, I found the stash of Agastache. They are small, but healthy, and I’m hoping one day they turn into mammoth plants.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. What are you giving your effort to these days? What’s growing in your garden? Which summer recipe has brought you joy?