To prevent them from the Attack of the Deer, we swathe them at night in coverings secured by sophiscated knots and clips and pins. And we lay traps for the nasty beasts by placing old bits of mesh fencing and wire about.  These we move every evening, just in case they get used to the placement.  Although we’re certain they watch us from nearby…

Why not, we thought, try to capture some of that resource for ourselves? For our garden? For (almost) free? Which is what we’ve done.

After a phone call to our friendly neighborhood beverage manufacturer, we became the owners of a dozen bright blue barrels.  Each has a 55 gallon capacity (which means they are waist-high and as wide around as your arms in a big circle).  They had been used to contain some sort of fruit beverage punch mix.  We know this because they were sweetly scented with remnants of red inside.   In fact, the afternoon we rinsed them out, our street ran with red water. (I know. I know. Seems like a waste but how else to clean them?) We were concerned that the police might drop by to see what we had slaughtered…

Because a few of us at VEGGAaH are very resourceful and extremely clever, we not only made the barrels rain-ready –  by drilling holes, applying caulk and inserting variously sized plastic pipes — but we also made them gardener friendly.  Our rain barrels are equipped with clear tubes that give us a visual gauge of how much water is contained within.  Cool, no?

The tomatoes are growing and, thanks to this week’s lack of rain, they’re not even showing signs of bursting.  As we weed the beds and brush against the plants, the scent of the tomatoes’ leaves makes us want to take in big breaths of air.

We couldn’t be more proud of these perfect little orbs! They’re small (ish!) but there are hundreds of them.

Ninety per cent of the tomatoes are thriving and we’ve just planted peppers and cucumbers with the promise of more crops to come.

No matter how often I see a robin’s egg, my breath is taken away.
I immediately think of Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn.
Mr. Blanding Builds his Dream House. Myrna Loy and Cary Grant.
We’re on Day 4 of The Big Rain and the ground is wet and dark
presenting the perfect background for a little Tiffany blue.
There are more significant garden discoveries to report today,
like the purple fingers of potatoes pushing through the soil
or the thickening stems of the tomato plants, but none are
more beautiful than this robin’s egg blue.

our garden beds are covered with black plastic (which, of course, we reuse) and anchored by halves of bricks (the ones that we broke while chipping the original mortar off) so that the soil warms before we plant.  before this was able to happen though, a fresh layer of  30%  pre-composted soil was brought in and mixed with the existing material. everything was mushed together and fluffed up with a mantis roto tiller.