Monday, June 04, 2007

My Vegetable Patch May Get Dug Out After All!


Our dinners this week will include "Fresh Mudburgers," "Wormy Spaghetti," and "Boggis's Chicken." I taught T. how to place reserves on library books on the computer, and one of his first selections was Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes. The titles of the recipes are taken from various Dahl books (James and the Giant Peach, The Twits, and Fantastic Mr. Fox), but the recipes are actually quite good. What I'm looking forward to, though, is "Bruce Bogtrotter's Cake" (from Matilda), which is a nearly flourless chocolate cake. Mmmmm!

T. was assigned to garden digging duty today, in the hopes (ours, not his) of improving his attitude, which has not been terrific lately. The results were mixed. He found that manual labor is not to his taste at all, and his attitude improved noticeably, but I couldn't help also observing that his digging skills are in serious need of improvement. In fact, I think that there is a strong probability that it will take digging out my whole little garden patch to bring his attitude and shovel skills up to par.












And speaking of motivating the unmotivated, I saw a couple red swellings on the bare branches of my dead stick rose today. Digging it a fabulous hole, complete with peat moss, cow manure compose, and clay soil didn't impress it, and neither did faithful watering, patience, and kind, encouraging words. But purchasing a replacement rose, consulting with my bloggy friends, and leaving the replacement sitting ominously beside my stubborn little non-performer did the trick! I have found another, very nice place for Replacement Rose (otherwise known as a climbing version of "America"), but I am not going to plant it until "Amaretto" follows through on those swellings with some real leaves. (And No, I'm not going to try the "replacement in the wings" approach with T. He may be completely impossible sometimes, but he's also my sweetie, and he's a keeper!)
**This is Wayside Garden's picture of Amaretto. Isn't it pretty?

7 comments:

Wisteria said...

You seem to have a gift for roses! Beautiful.

Elisheva Hannah Levin said...

I love the rose!

I find that N. resists manual labor unless it has a tool attached, and sometimes even then. But if he gets to work at it and sees his results, his attitude does improve.

Good luck with the whole garden!

Dy said...

Beautiful. *sniff* I just love to see a young man being put to work in the garden.

Oh. OH! You meant the rose!?! Yeah, that's pretty, too.

Hey, I tried to email you, but I only have the addy from before y'all left Florida (ohhhh, bad corresponding friend. I'm so sorry!) Anyway, if you get a chance, would you drop me a line? Thx!
Dy

melissa said...

beautiful rose! And if it makes you feel any better, we are HUGE fans of manual labor for our boys when they just can't seem to be anything but....well....grumpy. One of my favorites was having them move the woodpile from one side of the yard to the other. LOL

andie said...

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142501654

Even More Revolting Recipes. (In case the first one isn't enough for you.)

I'm going to take some pictures of the flowerbed I want to turn into a garden later today. I have no idea what I'm doing, but what else is new?

Melora said...

Wisteria,
Thank you. Actually, I don't have a particularly green thumb, but I am trying hard to pick roses that are Tough!

Elisheva,
I think I might have done better to assign T. a smaller part of the vegi plot, so that he could have completed it and we could have planted something there. As it was, he didn't get much in the way of results. Next time!

Dy,
It was surprisingly gratifying to see my all play and no work boy doing Work! Problem is, he took such a dislike to it that he is now being pretty Good. I may have to wind up digging the rest myself.

Melissa,
I Love the idea of giving the woodpile a tour of the yard! With our little 3/4 acre, I will run out of digging quickly, but the wood pile will always be with us (because we have two fireplaces that need to be repaired before they can be used, and we'd rather have gas anyway).

Andie,
Thanks for the link! The titles are off-putting, but the recipes, at least in the first volume, have been surprisingly good. The chicken stew with dumplings, particularly, was delicious!
Are you re-furbishing an old garden that came with your new house?

Jules said...

Hi Melora!
Your roses are beautiful! I have not had the guts to try them here- I think they would require too much TLC in this climate. Maybe someday when I am not giving all my TLC to living creatures!

Manual labor is great for kids, isn't it? Isn't that why we had them in the first place? ;)