As I’ve thoroughly documented, I’m kind of obsessed with my garden. I forced myself to take a bit of a bloggy break from it though because I was getting a little single minded. It’s only one part of my homemaking efforts, so I needed to bring a little balance to the blog and to my life, but I’m starting to see some new developments so I thought it was a good time to go back outside.

The poppies are blooming! The poppies are blooming!

These little plants are so ridiculously hardy they’re almost more like a weed. All I did was toss a pack of seeds on the ground and I’m being taken over. They’ve choked out my anemones, they infiltrated the vegetable garden, they’ve grown over two feet tall in places, and this is after I thinned them out so aggressively I filled an entire landscaping garbage can. If you have a spot where nothing will grow and you need something that will take up some space, might I suggest some poppies?

My little vegetable garden is doing great. For some reason two of my melon plants keep trying to die while the third is going gangbusters, and my new strawberry plants went through some transplant shock and had to have all it’s existing growth die out before sending out some new leaves.

I planted my tomato seedlings the recommended 4 inches apart, and that was not enough. I now have one big tomato bush. But it doesn’t seem to be slowing it down much.

I had a bit of trouble starting my seedlings this year, so even after I learned a lesson with the poppies, I ended up just tossing lettuce seeds on the ground and I can’t really remember what went where. I know I had at least two different kinds of lettuce and arugula, but I can’t remember what a third seed was. Did I plant spinach? Or was that just in the failed seedlings? Was there a third lettuce here? I honestly have no clue. I’ll be sure and plant more carefully when it’s time to reseed in the fall, but for now I’ll have a whole bunch of wonderful mixed green salads.

I planted these beans on a whim. I hope they’re green beans. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

My green pepper plant is busily making little baby green peppers.

The oldest strawberry plant is showing off those beautiful tell-tale flowers.

And my little pea plants are making honest to goodness peas! I mean, of course they are, but still, actually seeing something I recognize as food, that I grew my own self? It’s just thrilling.

I know I’m in danger of becoming obsessed, but what is a blog for if not to document everything we can’t stop thinking about?

This is what’s keeping me away from all my responsibilities.

When I planted them I took all the packets of bulbs, emptied them into one big container, and then planted them randomly throughout the planter. I wanted a glorious random mix. I wanted my backyard to almost be an eyesore with color. I wanted it to look like an outfit a preschooler put together.

I can’t get over how different each flower looks. Some of them are the tight bulbs I typically think of, some of them almost look like anemones but with a thicker fringe of petals. And there are so many different colors, even within a color. There are some that are crazy variegations of green and red, copper and yellow, peach and pink.

One of my dahlia’s exploded too. Except this one is apparently shy and only wants to face the brick wall.

I brought in a few the other day and combined them with some flowers from my overrun parsley plant and it was a perfect combination. Those parsley flowers are almost acid green and with the neon pinks and yellows of the ranunclus it looked like an arrangement that Andy Warhol would have put together.

I can never decide if I should cut these and fill the house with them, or let them stay and just ignore everything I’m supposed to be doing so I can be outside. Either way, I just want to be where they are.

I wasn’t entirely productive yesterday, but I didn’t entirely slack either. I think I managed as close to a day off as I could while not making myself crazy with inactivity.

It’s all because there is just no such thing as spectacular as San Diego in Spring. I’ve mentioned once or twice that I am an indoor person – I’ve got the skin of a redhead, no discernible athletic talent, and I hate being hot – so this is really my first experience with the season, even after two years of living here. Shameful, I know. Especially for an environmentalist and budding granola mom.

But this year I can’t keep myself inside. And I can’t keep my head out of my little garden. Even calling it a garden is generous seeing as it’s just a few square feet of dirt on my tiny SoCal house lot, but I’ve become so entranced with the magic of growing things that even this meager little plot is my own Secret Garden in my head.

I’m learning as I go, and I’ve made several mistakes already, but they don’t seem to bother me like my crafty failures do. I don’t know why exactly, maybe the whole thing seems so like a mysterious trick that I’m just amazed when anything happens at all.

I spent yesterday thinning out my poppies around the magnolia tree. They had grown so big and so fast that I think they’ve managed to kill the anemones by being little moisture hogs.

I put off the thinning for way WAY longer than I was supposed to. The seed packet said to scatter the seeds around and thin when they reached three inches. These are probably over a foot. I apparently spread way too many seeds, but I was sure that some would get eaten, some wouldn’t sprout, and I wanted to ensure that I got poppies everywhere I wanted. But they all sprouted. Every last one of them, and I just couldn’t bring myself to thin them and throw them away. I’ve given some to everyone who came by the house, I offered some to neighbors and friends, and I still ended up throwing away more seedlings than I kept.

It just breaks my heart, but what else could I do? I tried and tried to replant them, but they just couldn’t make it. I had intended this spot to be full of poppies, but instead of thinning them out, I tried to replant the hardiest ones. It was not a big success.

I don’t know what I’m going to put in that spot now, but every time I go to a nursery I fall in love with some new flower so I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

My ranunculus are going gangbusters, and I’m eagerly awaiting some big fabulous flowers.

The lemon tree has three or four big green balls swelling up by the day, the lime tree is dropping blossoms all over the place, and my sweet peas are already in need of some scaffolding. It’s just beyond description how much fun this is. Maybe by the time we’re ready to upgrade to my dream house with enough land for an orchard, a big veggie garden, some chickens and a goat, I’ll actually have some idea of what I’m doing.

In my moping about over the weekend (and then some) I drowned my sorrows by driving to the nearest nursery and buying myself a bunch of vegetables to plant. I had been toying around with the idea of a vegetable garden, but I kind of moved that into the ‘Next Year’ column in the grand to-do list of my mind. Until Atti’s monster teething just happened to coincide with an absolutely glorious Spring San Diego weekend. I am not made of stone. I couldn’t resist.

If I had been thinking clearly at the time, I would have remembered that we have a trip planned from tomorrow until late Sunday night and my schedule was packed solid already. I still don’t have a thing to wear to the wedding (why does no one make clothes to fit post-pregnancy boobs?), I’m actually toying around with the idea of sewing myself something to wear, I have a quilt to finish to take up with me for one of my dearest friends, I still have that shop update and the weather is not making pictures very easy, and now I have to squeeze in some major yard work. Clearly, I am insane, y’all.

On Monday I put a bunch of seeds out to start. There’s three different types of lettuce (I couldn’t find Arugula, but I’m still on the case), carrots, spinach, and dill to make up for what got killed off in a sprinkler explosion last year.

Then I spent all day yesterday weeding and weeding and hoeing. My inner thighs are so pissed off at me today. Bear had to yank me out of bed this morning and be a spotter for me as I staggered down the stairs like Frankenstein. How can I just now be 30 and already my back and knees are pretty close to worthless. One of the many injustices in life.

I think this little plot is about 12′ x 8′, and once I got everything all prepped, I realized that I’m going to need a lot more than three little tomato seedlings, 1 pepper, 1 pea, and whatever makes it out of those little seedling pots. Time to go back to the nursery.

I planted this little persimmon tree at the end of last summer, and it ended up staying in it’s little pot for several weeks before I could get it in the ground. I was sure I killed it, but I planted it anyway just to see what it would do. A few weeks ago I saw little buds popping out and it seemed like such a miracle. Hopefully I’ll get to start eating persimmons come October.

In flower news, that pack of poppy seeds I threw out into the yard is now taking over everything. I don’t think I’ll have time to thin everything out before we have to leave, and I’m a little worried about what I’m going to come back to. As I was weeding yesterday, I realized that a lot of what I was pulling up looked pretty darn familiar. I think some of those seeds must have made their way over the wall and onto the ground next door. And it means that they managed to grow while underneath a table that used to live there. These poppies seem to like it here.