Black as your soul

Early May peas coming up, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

I am often loath to share pictures of my garden, especially the early spring garden, even though at that point I am absurdly excited about the little plants coming up and I want to tell total strangers on the street, "The peas germinated!"

See, it's my soil. It's my compost, to be specific. Our compost looks like a front yard in the Ozarks. Look at all that crap in there! Even before we realized that we could empty the vacuum cleaner canister into the composter, and hence began introducing rubber bands, Lego, Barbie shoes, and milk carton rings into our garden soil, we were kind of lazy about chopping up the big stuff that went into it, so we have big pieces of corncobs, the occasional half onion, and watermelon rinds in our "finished" compost. Not to mention pistachio shells and olive pits, which, you know, ARE biodegradable, but not, one might say, anytime soon.

So it's always a minor relief when things start filling in a little.

Early July pea bed being taken over by zinnias and pumpkins, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

... and by "filling in a little" I mean that not only did I not plant some of these things, I don't even know what some of them are.

It's the compost to blame again. I'm guessing the remains of the Jack O'Lantern went into the composter, and also some deadheaded zinnia blossoms, and who knows what else. At least it isn't gourds this year. The gourd year was a nightmare. I didn't pull them right off the bat because I thought they might be squash, and before I knew it they'd taken over the entire yard.

A little more orderly is the bed up near where the chickens used to be, that I loaded up with wee tomato plants in early May.

Early May tomato plants, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Early July tomato plants, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

It has also filled in well, mostly with things I expected. I'm finally going to get some tomatos this summer looks like, but maybe I should have given all this stuff a little more room.