The Persistence Garden

Not "The Pestilence Garden" (thank goodness); good things are actually growing from the ground back there.

Not "The Subsistence Garden" either, though:  I'm not yet green-thumb-esque enough to feed myself out of my own back yard.

This year's garden has taken on the role of "The Persistence Garden".  Because, gosh darn it, even though I have killed more plants than I've raised, I'm starting to get the hang of this seed-dirt-sun-water thing.

For about five years now, the "back forty" (forty feet, that is) has looked sort of like this come May and June.

Last fall I moved the sidewalk in, next to the garage, and moved the garden out, where the sidewalk had been, hoping to give the plants more sun and me a bit more room to walk around the beds.  The difference is subtle in appearance, but significant in structure.

There are a few more raised beds to the right, that you can't see in the picture above; here they are.  (The cat in the second box back is a statue, not a pooper).

But "Persistence" is more than just "I've learned a bunch over the years".  You can see in the above boxes that some things are growing, and some aren't.  So this is the summer that I'm also giving plants a chance to sprout, and if they don't, I'm going back to the seed box and finding more packets of stuff to stick in the dirt.

Starting at the wrong time of year?  Who the heck cares?  I've accumulated a lot of seeds, and they're certainly not going to grow while they're sitting in the box.  Most of them are more than a year old now, and they're hardly going to be even more fertile next year.  "Bury the seeds" is the motto of the summer.  Seeds, water, sun, water.  That's the plan.  Even if I don't get food from this, I'll get some lessons in gardening, which are still much needed.

It's been such a cold, wet summer that plants have had a hard time getting a good start.  Most of my neighbors tell me their basil plants failed.  Mine did, too.  But then I just stuck more basil seeds in the ground. And look what I see!  Future Pesto of America, coming out of the mulch!

Persistence is paying off.  And if the latest round of seeds decides to roll over and die, I've got more seeds where those came from.  Because I'm just not giving up!