Johnny Johnny Quite Contronny How Does Your Garden Grow?

When I was home on maternity leave, I spent a lot of time over at my sister Whipcreamy's house. She and her hubby have a lovely backyard they work on most every weekend which upon buying the place they brought back to life with a wonderful lawn, plants and flowers. Upon seeing it, JD suggested they grow some vegetables. It was planting season afterall, and he urged that they get the stuff in the ground as soon as possible so as not to miss the window. Back in the day when this City Mouse did a stint Upstate as a Country Mouse, he tried a vegetable garden himself by tossing a bunch of seeds into a patch of dirt and had some pretty good success with it. He had enough of a return to produce a tiny salad, afterall. The way he described the process, he made it seem easy, but we were all daunted by the idea nonetheless.

Intrigued, I decided the garden idea was goin' down, no matter what our objections were. Whip and Hubby tossed all the rocks out of a corner of the lawn that got the most sun and tilled the soil. I bought a boatload of different seed packets at the Dollar Store in town, and one night over a few glasses of wine and PBRs we banged it out. Sure, we had a book to guide us, but no, we really didn't know what the hell we were doing. We just plopped the seeds in the dirt into dedicated rows as neat as we could be, highlighted the rows with some string tied to old tent stakes with the designated packets on top, and then crossed our fingers to see what happened with water, sunshine, and time. We named it John's Garden.

I present you with a photo of a newly-planted John's Garden:

Anne and John ~ May 4, 2010

And some of the results:

Anne and John ~ July 2, 2010

Lesson learned: More often than not, it pays to just bang something out even if you don't know what the hell you're doing. So what if its not perfect? If we waited for perfect, we'd have no zucchini. Or John, frankly.