DESTRUCTION IN THE GARDEN

Much like the beginning of the summer, Alexandria, Virginia saw days and days and days of rain this past week and weekend. At times it was so torrential i wondered if it was hailing. (My parents in North Carolina did have hail, grape-sized.)

I was kind of glad that the garden was getting watered without me, but when I went out to inspect the weeds that had surely sprung up, i was horrified at what I found.

Here is a photo of a healthy zucchini plant, on or about July 7, 2009, so almost two months ago. (Note, that it has grown much much bigger, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like.)

Now, a week ago, the leaves of this plant were so large that they reached the newspaper on the right side and were equidistantly stretched out all around. With beautiful squash blossoms beaming at me every morning and zucchini growing. Did you know that zucchini blossoms open in orange glory early in the morning and look like tiger lilies, sort of? They don't stay all twirled up all the time - in the morning they are open and glorious. I notice this from my shower window in the morning and I have been meaning to post about it for you.

Well, that is unlikely to happen due to this tragedy:
The leaves have been shredded and beaten into the ground.

Here is the horrifying closeup.

It would be impossible for photosynthesis to occur with these shredded leaves, not only because the leaf area does not exist anymore (mostly) but because the xylem and phloem in the stems has been destroyed. Xylem (zylem) and phloem are the tubes in the stem that carry the and water throughout the plants. I remember this from 7th grade biology, believe it or not. Our teacher made us sing a song about it, a really simple song, and she told us at the time "you feel stupid now, but you will remember this the rest of your life" and she was right. So: xylem carry the water up, phloem carry the food down. (i.e., xylem carry water from the roots up to the leaves, where photosynthesis occurs, and then the food is made there in the cells, and the phloem carry the food down to the roots, etc.)

So, in this plant, the xylem and phloem is pretty much brutally bashed out of commission:

Those are the main stems of Plant 1 and Plant 2. they were beaten open by what I can only imagine was hail and now there are ants taking up residence like it's an open house. I see no evidence of either xylem or phloem.

Then there are such exhibits as this:

Stems such as this have just given up.

After coming to terms with the devastation, I reminisced over times gone by.


Photos like these remind me to Carpe Diem. Look at all the sturdy xylem and phloem.

If you think I am not shedding a tear, I am. Mister Siren and I had words over a lack of sensitivity to the destruction. It was like losing a child. I'm serious, people! I was looking forward to a bountiful harvest of zucchini all summer, and i get - - - - - destruction. I feel like a pioneer in a year of famine or something.

There were other casualties:

My husband tried to repair the damage with scotch tape out of sympathy for me and his own dinner salads.

If the plant does not repair itself, all of these tomatoes will be at stake

Please mourn with me. This is way too sorrowful to mourn by myself.

RIP, zucchini.

Bunnies and Fences

This little guy


Is why we had to put up THIS fence:

It's about a 2 foot fence and we just step over it when we go in and out of the garden. That is the big Mr. Stripey tomato plant you see in the corner there by the fence. The fence seems to be working great to keep the bunnies out. I have seen no nibbles on my mesclun greens or other plants so far.

Here's a pictures of the entire garden right now:

On the right hand side you are looking at big Mr. Stripey in the top corner, with two other tomato plants coming down the row, and the last plant is a jalapeno. The next row of plants over to the left are two bell peppers, red and yellow. Here's more of a closeup:


You can also see two groups of zucchini seedlings at the bottom left, and a bunch of weeds.

The horizontal row of greens that you can see is the mesclun greens, doing quite well, and if anything was really growing, you would see three identical horizontal rows of bibb lettuce, arugula and sorrel. However, I just went in and weeded more and re-planted this weekend. Hey sometimes you have to start over. There on the left is my row of bush bean plants, looking great.

And on the far top left side are the tarragon, lavendar, and rosemary plants.

The container plants are doing well:

Dill (god i hope this is dill and not a weed)


Cilantro (although no seeds have come up yet, so i replanted some seeds this weekend - what you are seeing is a transplant):

And the Early Girl tomato plant:

Now, she has a flower on her now. I don't know what that means. I am going to have to look it up or ask my Aunt T, who seems to know a lot about growing tomatoes.

In addition, i said forget growing basil from seed and just transplanted three nice basil plants straight into the garden. I hope they take:

They should be getting enough water because guess what, it's Monday and it's RAINING AGAIN! GO VIRGINIA!