Suburban gardening

One of the things that’s a bummer about living in an apartment building is not being able to garden. Sure, we have some things growing on the porch, but we’ve had little success with that route. The two big challenges are the rabbit (who eats any plant not elevated above jumping level) and the sheer number of pests we have in Florida (our screened-in porch seems perfect for letting aphids and whiteflies in, while keeping their natural predators out). We’ve had success with chives, onions, oregano, and marjoram, but it’s hard to make a meal out of those.

At any rate, one of the things we did while visiting my father this spring was admire the gardens, and help out a bit. I use the plural because he has plants both growing around the yard and in the neighborhood community garden a few blocks away.

Right before we visited, Minnesota was named the “Most hipster state” in the US, in part because of the number of community gardens, farmer’s markets, food co-ops, and bike trails in the Twin Cities. Debate ensued, centered on whether these things were indicative of hipsters or hippies. Whatever the reason, there is plenty of fresh locally-grown food (other than during winter).

Some summer, we’ll have to time our visit to when the raspberries are ready to harvest. This year, we admired the raspberry patch, but it was way too early to sample the berries. Dad has this annoying habit of calling me in mid-summer and sighing about how he has so many raspberries that he has to bake with them or freeze them- there are just too many to eat fresh:

A surprise- while we were in the back yard, planting a tree, a flock of wild turkeys came cruising by. These were big birds: two toms and a hen. They walked buy us, about 10 feet away, and obviously weren’t too fazed by our presence. They probably roost in the big cottonwood trees near the railroad track nearby.

There was very little rain while we were there, so one order of business was to water the community garden plot. This garden is located on the property of a local church which is using most of its lot for a prairie restoration project. The prairie area is always swarming with butterflies during the summer. As you can see, most of the garden plots are still in the early stages of spring planting.

One of the big questions while we were there seemed to be when the beans would sprout. We probably went to check on them every day:

There were apparently at least two varieties planted, but I must confess that I don’t recall which, since I will not actually get to taste them. Oh well.