Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Sowing seeds and waiting for weeds

The seeds are in! The seeds were in three weeks ago – I am a tad bit behind with the blogging!

A few things have been keeping me from the jardín lately:

  • Cinco de Mayo Fiesta wrap-up (I help to plan St. Paul's festival) and multiple margaritas.

  • Graduation of a fellow Spanish-speaker and future garden helper. ¡Felicidades Tomas!
  • Baby shower for my adorably pregnant sister.

Prior to the margaritas, graduations and tiny, baby-blue baby things I found some time to sow the seeds. Or rather watch my family sow the seeds for me. It's the dirt.

My Aunt Mary did remind me that I hated, HATED to get dirty when I was little. I went through multiple wardrobe changed in any given day due to a dirt or anything that resembled dirt.

Why am I gardening then you ask? I love vegetables more than I hate dirt.

Mom and dad putting up the trellis for the ejotes (beans) and guisantes (peas).

My cousins Bailey and Josie and garden compañera Emily planting pepinos (cucumbers). Looks like Josie and I both dislike dirt on our hands.

Look, I'm working! Or posing with a garden tool? You decide.

No really, I helped to plant, too. I did indeed get dirty.
So the seeds are in. The ejotes (green beans), guisantes (peas), espinaca (spinach), cebollas (onions), zanahorias (carrots), pepinos (cucumbers), and calabaza (squash). The jitomates (tomatoes) and serranos will be planted this weekend.

Lesson for the day (and disclaimer). The Spanish language differs country to country. Certain words can mean very different things depending upon where you are. Names for vegetables are a great example of that. I may have just embarrassed myself. I think I used above a blend of Mexico, Spain, Spanglish, chilango, and who knows what else.


Now it's a waiting game. And a weeding game. I've heard organic gardening involves a lot of weed-pulling. Here's to hoping my organic garden is the non-weedy exception!
En mis sueños.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Starting a garden, starting a blog, staring at a computer

I’ve been staring at my computer (and watching a horribly addicting episode of the Real Housewives of New York City) for the past 30 minutes trying to write the very first sentence of my very first blog about my very first vegetable garden. Such an important sentence. I caved and am babbling my way into blogging instead.

Just about as much staring went into starting the garden I am blogging about, too. I’m re
nting a plot at a community garden in St. Paul this summer. A few weeks back our garden manager e-mailed to let us know the rototiller would be available soon for garden prepping. (Rototilling?! What's that?! I though the plot came with seeds already planted?! Tilling sounds hard. And dirty. That's not what I signed up for.) Of course I e-mailed him back to ask if he was tilling, or did we have to do it? Come rototiller day Matt, the garden manager, tilled my plot for me. I took photos for my new blog. And pointed out the spots he missed. (Pointed them out to myself in my head -- I don't want to be kicked out of the garden on day one.)


I should back my tiller up a bit to explain this garden and blog project. At the start of the new year I wrote down a list of things I want to do before 2010 comes to an end. Blogging was one of them. Taking up photography another. Pretending I’m a farmer was number three. And using and improving my Spanish is on la lista también (hence the title and the Spanglish you'll see throughout my blog). I figured why not throw them all together. If I love them all, they match -- right? (That's also my decorating and fashion philosophy, and it's worked pretty well for me so far.)

"Jardinería verde" (I just love the look of the word "jardinería”) means "gardening green" in Spanish. And "green" meaning 1.) organic and eco-friendly; 2.) all things leafy and edible; and 3.) I have near to no idea what I am doing, but I can’t wait to learn. In this space, I’ll share my adventures of learning how to farm organically in the city, and how to look cute and bokeh while doing it.

I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. And I invite all the green thumbs (and not so green thumbs) that want to help at my farm in the city this summer to come on down. I’ll need it. So far gardening has been a whole lot of staring at it through the lens of my camera. I’m afraid I’ll want to keep it that way. I don’t do dirt well.