For the past two weeks I've been craving and struggling and whining to myself that I wanted to write a cute gnome story about the garden.  After writing and writing, ripping up, meditating, walking, writing, ripping up and tearing my hair out, this morning and I got up and had to concede that a gnome story just isn't going to happen any time soon.

I find myself wanting to write about everything else BUT our plot in the garden.  I want to write about Jared Martin who grows peppers in the garden for the sole purpose of making sausages.  I want to write about Sharon McCullough who has a house garden full of wildflowers.  I want to write about Jim and Lillian Phelan whose garden grows like a bat out of hell.  I swear that Jim and Lillian must be half gnome themselves.

Our plot seems like.... well, just dirt and plants to talk about.  We have this simple plot, quasi-alphabetically sewn, with quasi-neat east-west rows.  Almost a month ago we started throwing seeds into the first two rows.  We have a third row of leeks from Ann Taylor, another row of kale from Bill and Sydney Blackwell, another row of tomatoes from the D'Eramos and some arugula from them as well.  Last week we went to Home Depot and bought cucumbers, peppers, and squash and planted them into the last two rows, along with another two tomato plants that Mom bought.

So tonight we (my mother, niece Donella, and I) visited the plot so that I could take pictures of it and we could do some watering.  I'm feeling that more pictures might help me begin some sort of bonding ritual with my own plants.  Sure, I'm appreciative when I see them alive, but I still have no idea whether they'll die tomorrow and if they do, why.  I have no way of telling them about my day and I have no way of knowing how their day has been.  To be able to bond with something that doesn't bark or meow or talk is a completely foreign concept to me.

We've had some rain earlier this week, but the past two days or so have been dry.  Some of our vegetables might make it -- broccoli looks ok, turnips look pretty happy, tomatoes are alive and healthy and just beginning to flower, but they still look a bit scrawny -- nothing like the 4-foot tomato plant that someone has planted a few plots away that is already covered with tomatoes.

It looks like we're starting to get casualties too, though.  So far our casualties are pretty much all the cabbage, all of the cucumbers that we planted last weekend, and most of the Walmart marigolds that we bought.  (The Home Depot one are struggling through).  Only a handful of Joe's arugula look to be alive, and I'm grateful for at least those.  As we talk about the casualties, we conjecture that store-bought plants might be greenhouse-grown and not outdoor-hardened.  Maybe you can't immediately transplant a store-bought plant.  Another possibility is, maybe we need to be amending the soil with something.  Maybe we need to be making more watering visits?

On the one hand I'm surprised that any of our vegetables are alive.  On the other hand I'm disappointed to see that some are dying, and maybe all might die.

I'm at a loss on what more to do to a plant but water it.  Mom thinks we should fertilize.  The other people at the garden bring bags and bags of "stuff" that they dump on their plots -- salt marsh hay and organic compost are some of the bags that I've seen.  The Blackwells, the plot next to ours, have salt marsh hay all over their plot.  You would never think something could grow in that mess, but lo and behold, potatoes, as healthy as can be are popping out.

I think the reason I'm so attracted to writing about gnomes in the garden is because I'm convinced there's another plane of existence in that garden other than the one that I see when we go there.  We fiddle with our plants, pulling weeds, and watering, but it's still dirt and plants to me.  Somehow the other gardeners, I think, have that vision into that other plane of existence.  I have a lot of admiration for them knowing this other world that I'm a stranger to.

We will need to research all about organic fertilization.  Donella will ask her friend who does a lot of gardening.