The Garden of Good Intentions

The temperature has cooled down to a beautiful sunny 70 degrees and I've finally caught up on my sleep. What with all the rain, our yard had gotten out of hand so we hired someone to work on it. He and his brother spent all day working. When they finished, we could see parts of the lawn that we had forgotten existed. Our yard -- such as it is -- consists of the area behind and to each side of the house. In front of the house is an incline filled with boulders. The boulders are covered with ice plants and jade bushes with California poppies popping up in between. There's a flat bit of dirt on top with what's left of our sadly bedraggled rose bushes. There used to be a bunch of unruly Canna plants there, but they were taking over so we had our guy rip them out. Now there's a nice empty area ready for planting. I want to put in loads of lavender and other drought resistant plants because the ground is very dry and it's hard to get in there to water it.

The bedroom side of our house is a no man's land. It's too narrow to plant anything in the space between the houses so we've learned to ignore it. The other side of the house is where the communal garden is supposed to be, but isn't. It's a 'virtual' communal garden, meaning an oblong wooden frame heaped with dirt. During the rainy season, it was overgrown with weeds. Every so often, Bob went out there and cleared it, but then it rained again and within a week the whole mini-jungle was back.

The last time he cleared it, the weeds didn't grow back, but we didn't plant anything and neither did our neighbors. Linda kept talking about the cherry tomatoes that she would plant there 'someday'. She talked about this for months so today I was astounded to see ACTUAL cherry tomato plants lined up in pots against the side of their house. Then Jack started spreading mulch over our so-called garden. He told us that Larry two doors down would be planting lettuce soon. "It's time this started being a communal garden again," he announced. We were thrilled because over the last two years, Bob was the only one doing any work. My knees had given out, Linda and Jack were busy with their kids and Larry has been quite ill. Oh, well, we all had good intentions. (When we first came up with the idea of a communal garden, we were a little looped on wine. That's when we decided to call it "The Garden of Good Intentions.") How apt that title turned out to be, though we're excited by our neighbors' renewed participation. Now we're thinking about what we might plant. I want herbs: parsley, thyme, chives, basil, and tarragon -- and marigolds for a spot of color.