Planting!

That afternoon after Alli got off from work, we rode our bicycles over to the garden center that smoking neighbor had given me directions to. The lone guy in the store was very helpful and they had a mind boggling selection of seeds, ugly decorative terracotta pots and about 8,000 varieties of dirt in bags.

We ended up leaving with two varieties of carrot seeds, (they said "tolerant of mismanagement" on the packet, so I doubled up) beet seeds, pepper seeds, cucumber seeds, beans (should I call them bean seeds? They just looked like beans), cherry tomato seeds and three little straggling tomato plants. We also picked up a small bag of an organic mix to mix into the soil in small amounts and place a couple of inches away from the seedlings in about two weeks. We had a pretty amusing time trying to get out of there without the man helping us to our "car." He gave off the impression that he would not like it if we stuffed his babies into a backpack and rode home on our bikes. But that's exactly what we did, albeit sneakily.

We got home and I went back out to the garden and planted the tomato plants as I had been directed, in mounds, burying the bottom six inches, of stalk and a couple of leaves which Garden Man swore up and down would sprout roots. They each had a piddling three inches sticking above the dirt. I then planted the seeds in haphazard rows mostly ignoring the seed spacing directions on the package. One of the other pieces of advice that I ignored was writing down where I planted everything, thinking "this is not exactly a massive expanse of plants, and I'm definitely not an idiot," but I was wrong on the second point. There were some areas of great confusion until the plants were well and sprouted and recognizable.

In the weeding process, we discovered mint running rampant among the less interesting weeds, and we decided to leave a patch of it near one border, and just keep an eye on it so it didn't strangle the little seedling babies. After I was done planting I took some of the mint, and we went to a friend's house and made some mojitos and I felt rather smug.

That mint is from our garden. I had nothing to do with it. But enjoy anyway.