Victory Garden

It will be a victory if I can actually grow this garden. Michelle Obama has inspired me to supplement my food budget with vegetables grown in my own garden.

Anybody who knows me well knows my history with plants. Let's just sum it up by saying "not good." When I opened Club 50 my family sent me a "money tree" which was actually a scheffalera plant. I managed to keep it alive for two years which is some sort of record for me but in the end it succumbed along with the business. I can't blame the plant's death on the economy but lets just say the economy depressed me enough to stop watering the plant.

As for vegetables, I tried growing them in Chicago when my cousin, Scott built a lovely raised garden bed in our backyard. I planted lettuce, chives, parsely, tomatoes and peppers. The lettuce became a salad bar for rabbits in the neighborhood. Somehow they ignored the chives and parsely. I guess they didn't like the taste. As for the tomatoes and peppers, I will always remember that proud day in early October when I harvested my crop before the first frost. In my basket were two tomatoes the size of golf balls and a green bell pepper the size of my thumb.

Being a devotee of Martha Stewart I felt humbled and ashamed that I could not grown a decent garden. I tried to blame it on lack of sun but I don't think that was the whole story. The parsely turned out to be my cash crop. I harvested enough parsely to garnish plates for weeks.

Of course here in the desert it is not easy to grow anything. First of all my landscaping does not allow for anything but container gardening. My "lawn" is a bed of rocks which is nice because you don't have to water or mow it. Basically, the perfect lawn for me. But yet I have this urge to grow something. Remember the speeches Eddie Albert used to give on Green Acres about planting the seeds and watch them shooting up to the sky. I have that but I don't know why.

Last year I planted a tomato plant but despite watering it every day it simply fried in the hot sun. My marigolds fried too. So this time I could blame the heat but yet other people were able to make things grow. Certainly Home Depot, Lowes and WalMart wouldn't be doing such big garden business if we couldn't support anything but cactus.

So I did some research and went to Home Depot and found a tomato hybrid called "Heatwave." It's specially bred to thrive in hot climates. I was thrilled. Then, emboldened by my tomato find, I looked onward and bought a strawberry plant, rosemary and my old cash crop, parsely.

I planted them in three containers and put them near my front door but not under the canopy so they can get full sun most of the day and then shade in the evening. I have a hose so I can water them every day and even put these glass bulbs in that retain extra moisture.

And so far so good. It's been a couple of weeks and nothing is dead yet...and I even have a strawberry. Yes, one tiny strawberry, but I grew it myself and when it gets a little bigger I will proudly eat it. Maybe I'll even make a cheesecake to put under it.

I doubt that it's really going to make a dent in my grocery budget but it's in my blood (and on my membership card in the Martha militia) so I will press on and of course, continue to post updates on the garden.