The dreaded email arrived in my inbox yesterday "Your Autumn Garden has Dispatched".
Crap.
When I ordered my garden, I bought the Spring/Autumn package, thinking it would be nice to try some Fall veggies as well.
But, you see optimism turned into reality with a side of weeds and neglect. For the last 2 or so months, I had been meaning to do something about the veg patch (aka the well intentioned, but massively overgrown corner of the garden that was better not spoken about). I would walk past it quickly, not dareing to make eye contact with my forlorn carrots or highly strung lettuces, the guilt far too much for my delicate constitution.
However, with the new garden's imminent arrival, I knew that I could not avoid it any longer.
And so, after:
- making myself the obligatory "take out to the garden" cup of coffee (5 minutes),
- hunting down appropriate outerwear for children 1 & 2 (15 minutes),
- arguing with child 2 about what constitutes appropriate footwear for the wet garden (ruby slippers = no, wellies = yes - 10 minutes),
- realising that child 3 was awake and needing fed, dressed and brought downstairs (20 minutes),
- putting said welly boots back on child 2 (6 minutes)
- herding all 3 children out into the garden (3 minutes + 4 minutes of high-pitched whining)
- realising I have nowhere to put child 3, so going back to collect the baby chair (5 minutes)
- rescuing child 2 from the overturned garden car toy (7 minutes)
- helping child 3 dig some potatoes (2 minutes)
- going back into the house to get my cup of coffee (6 minutes)
- cleaning off child 3 after child 2 poured 2 pots full of compost on his head (12 minutes)
I then had about 4.2 minutes left before dinner to harvest my crop.
Sometimes neglect serves me well...this time, yeah, not so much. The meagre veg we did harvest were the perfect size for a small hobbit family -- potatoes the size of marbles, beetroots the size of gobstoppers. The only thing that truely did well was the kale.
But, I am nothing if not stubborn optimistic. And so this afternoon is going to be spent making new homes for our autumnal friends. Fall is a whole new growing season and I am sure I'll have MUCH more time to attend to my plants this fall as Theo starts to eat/crawl/fight with his siblings. Right?
Right?
OK, so urban homesteaders we will never be...but with the autumn garden containing no less then 30 kale plants, we'll be fine (and have excellent digestive systems).