DangerGarden Timeline – Dangercat Family

Are you curious how this got so out of hand? Us too. This timeline helps explain how we went from killing four avocado trees, over 1000 Parisian carrot seedlings, and 100 cherry tomatoes to a 1020sqft thriving fruit and vegetable garden.

JANUARY 30 – FEBRUARY 3

Photo of ice covering everything taken on February 2, 2023

For Jeromey’s birthday on January 30, Micah and the girls got seeds and planting tools/soil so that we could all work to grow things. This is a similar gift to the previous year when the girls got Jeromey an olive tree (which is still alive) and two avocado trees (which are not). Also, the girls came home from school early and they played in the ice pellets outside the Walgreens while we waited to pick up any prescriptions we needed for the week – it looked like it was going to be ICY!

Happy Birthday to our special-est of Jeromeys. The best Jeromey we have ever known. Also, if you look out the back window you can see that the ice already began accumulating on the night of his birthday – January 30, 2023.

Out of boredom and in preparation for some seed planting, we moved our kitchen table from the dining room to the other side of the living room by the back door. It also gave the girls a large area to get up to shenanigans during our week stuck in the house due to an ice storm.

We planted cherry tomatoes and Parisian carrots while there was still a little ice on the grass from the week-long ice storm. We would have planted them even sooner except our essential tools were delayed due to the ice! Sophie spearheaded the Parisian carrot planting…

… and Charlie lovingly planted her favorite food, tomatoes, while Micah and Jeromey filled seedling cups with soil.

We made slides for our google screensavers on our TVs that aimed to help us understand the life cycle of our new plant babies:

And then we placed our new, hopeful seeds, in the sun. We had to chase off both cats over and over to keep them from standing on, getting pets from, or eating our new seedlings as they emerged.

Photo from February 3, 2023 shows Mouse staring at the planted seeds from the window sill in our living room.

FEBRUARY 6

Jeromey and Micah were chatting while staring at the seedlings and remembered how they inquired about a City of Denton Community Garden plot last year but were way too late and all the plots were given out. Jeromey looked up when sign up is for 2023 and it was set for February 7. THE LUCK. 🍀🍀🍀🍀

FEBRUARY 7

The Dangercat Family paid $20 and signed up for a plot at Bowling Green Community Garden. Bowling Green Park is, as the crow flies, 1/3 of a mile from our house. We requested a spot near the playground. (SPOILER: we did not get a spot by the playground) For Jeromey’s birthday we purchased the following seeds (and at this point, hoped to put them into a garden at Bowling Green Park):

🥕 Parisian Carrots
🍅 Non-Descript Cherry Tomatoes
🍅 A pack of heirloom tomato seeds from Burpees
🥒 Space Saver Cucumbers (also Burpees)
🌽 Ambrosia Sweet Corn (Burpees)
🌿 An herb starter-pack (Thyme, Basil, Cilantro, Parsley, Rosemary)

Of this group, we had only planted the seeds of the cherry tomatoes and Parisian carrots.

FEBRUARY 8

In spite of our cats’ best efforts to kill the seedlings, they began sprouting five days after we placed them in the soil. We didn’t take any glamour photos so you’ll just have to trust me when I say the lids stayed on until the seeds began popping up!

Sophie, decorating her Valentine’s Day box on February 8, 2023. Behind her are our uncovered carrot and cherry tomato seedlings.

FEBRUARY 9

We got a plot at Bowling Green! It was definitely not near the playground (southwest of plot 9) as they go by seniority rules (and the seniors literally have plots 8, 9, 10, and 11), so we ended up over by the creek which runs along the east of the garden. Plot #30. Our own 15×20 piece of earth!

FEBRUARY 12

Micah started thinking about how to help these plants survive. She made slides to tell us when we needed to plant the other seedlings and to remind the girls to take care of the lettuce they bought today at the “Five and Below” dollar store. (SPOILER ALERT: it did not survive)

On this day of February, the same day on which we planted lettuce, the scooters were finally banished from in-house use after a year-long reign of terror.

VALENTINES WEEK (FEBRUARY 12-18)

Wow, this was a busy week. I can’t believe our plants survived, oh wait. They had to be taken and hidden in Jeromey and Micah’s bedroom where they lived, un-sunned, unwatered for ~4 days while children roamed our house in blacklight. The cats also had free access. FREE, UNCHAPERONED ACCESS. Most of the seedlings died. We couldn’t figure out why.

FEBRUARY 20

Even though Micah wrote “set the plants back” on the slide for today, the plants had already spent four days in the west wing. Also, Micah and Jeromey (in shell shock after the wild party) were not eager to bring out the folding table and clutter the living room again. It was too cold to germinate the seedlings outside and the indoor conditions were peace-seeking (after an 8-year-old glow stick party) rather than plant-focused. Again, the poor plant babies suffered. 😢

FEBRUARY 24

The cherry tomatoes died first while the carrots hung in there longer, although they were limp. We didn’t yet realize that you can overwater little seedlings and that limpness can be a sign of both over-watering and under-watering. As you can see in the following image, the cats never lost interest.

Samantha, prowling for carrots, while staring at the spray bottle which reads “No Kitty No” written in sharpie. Not one seedling is visible standing upright TWENTY-ONE DAYS after planting. The whole thing is looking bad.

FEBRUARY 26

It was so cold overnight tonight; we moved the olive tree indoors. We also moved the seedlings away from the window to keep them from getting too cold.

MARCH 1

All seedlings moved outside by March 1 as the weather was good for them to germinate and grow out there. Most were dead.

March 1 – thanks to a gift from Gary at her wild birthday party, Bird began her education in witch magic.

MARCH 2

Storms danced through Denton County and we made a shelter in our big closet in the west wing. All the plants were lovingly invited indoors (except the honeysuckle, which is always amazing).

Is this witch protecting our house and plants from the storm? (Viewed from our weather cam)

Mousey loves when mattresses get moved to the closet

Hail in Sanger at Nana and Poppy’s Ranch (it did so much damage out there)!

We set up a tv and an apple tv in the closet

To be honest, we all love weather days (as long as they don’t harm people or things). We get to hang out together, eat pizza, and make a snuggly pallet in the closet. Even the cats vote yes. Plus, Denton County is statistically pretty tornado-safe.

MARCH 3-9

Midterms. Just. Midterms. Even though we knew we should be planting our other seeds (we had cucumbers and tomatoes and herbs PLUS corn waiting). Jeromey was simply hanging in there with school and the girls and Micah were keeping the Dangercat manor from getting out of hand and ferrying Sophie to theatre practice 2 hours a day beginning March 5.

MARCH 10

After the kids went off to school and while Jeromey was still working on midterms papers, Micah sat down at the kitchen table and began planting cucumbers. She planted all of the cucumbers before Jeromey finished up his paper outline on the dysfunctional political dynamics of Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott using Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualization of cultural hegemony as a lens. Once he finished, they worked together to plant ALL of the following tomatoes:

CANNING AND PASTE TOMATOES
🍅 Amish Paste
🍅 San Marzano

DICING AND GENERAL USE TOMATOES
🍅 Arkansas Traveler
🍅 Cherokee Purple

HEIRLOOM BEAUTIES/SLICING TOMATOES
🍅 Black Krim
🍅 Brandywine
🍅 Mr. Stripey
🍅 Quarter Century

SNACKING TOMATOES
🍅 Chadwick Cherry
🍅 Yellow Pear

I think it is worthwhile to say that at this moment, planting seeds became a stress relief from graduate school, grading, work, and ferrying kids. Micah began planting cucumbers the day after she finished grading for the first half of the semester and the day after she finished ferrying Sophie to theatre for the week. Jeromey began planting seeds when he finished his paper. Planting seeds is a bit like a zen garden. When the girls got home from school, they joined in. It became our family hobby starting this day, March 10, to re-center and seek peace in our busy lives.

March 10th was also Sophie’s 7th birthday! This adorable muppet had a little family party at Nana and Poppy’s house with a slumber party planned for the end of the school year in May.

Unbelievably cute and squeaky, this baby is missing an unknown amount of teeth due to natural causes.

MARCH 11

It was so successful as a peace activity, we planted the herbs the next day. Jeromey brought in a tarp and covered the kitchen table so we could plant without getting dirt all over the table.

Jeromey was so uncomfortable calling cucumbers “cukes” as he said it made it seem like we know what we are doing and we do not.

We planted:

🌱 Thyme
🌱 Basil (“Pesto Party”)
🌱 Rosemary
🌱 Parsley
🌱 Chives

As soon as we finished planting our seeds, we went out to our garden plot to visit it for the first time.

MARCH 13-14

Welcome to Spring Break! Charlie wasn’t feeling her best, but it was really only bad at night while we watched musicals. On March 14, we went to Ace Hardware which began our extended patronage of our local ace hardware. We bought the following small plants (not grown from seed by us):

🪴 two strawberry plants
🪴 two dill plants
🪴 one lettuce plant (to replace the one from “five and below” that died)
🪴 one Anaheim pepper plant
🪴 one “mini jalapeno” pepper plant
🪴 one peppermint plant

along with several pots for planting them in so they could live next to our rose bush from last year that is STILL alive. We have three plants from last year that live on and are quite established:

🫒 one Arbequina olive tree (from South Carolina???)
🪷 one coral honeysuckle bush (native to here) (Lowe’s)
🌹 one white rose bush (Lowe’s)

Meanwhile we killed succulents last year. So those that survived are hearty AF.

We also bought more seeds because we could not help ourselves. We bought:

🌱 Cat grass (mousey love)
🌱 Heirloom pineapple Alpine strawberries
🌱 Spanish onions
🌱 Mini cucumbers (cornichons)
🌱 Bell peppers
🌱 Sugar Daddy snap peas
🌱 Italian oregano
🌱 Heirloom Italian Arugula
🌱 Heirloom Rustic Arugula
🌱 Fern leaf Lavender
🌱 Red poppies
🌱 Purple poppies
🌱 Pink Hungarian Breadseed poppies

[Note: You know, as I’m typing this I’m realizing that very few of these non-Burpees seeds lived to fruit. Only the lavender and the cat grass, really.]

Also pictured: on the right, two dead avocado trees. In the center, a container for a hose that we thought was a planter and we planted arugula in. They did not live very long.

Charlie (Bird) did seem to be getting worse on the night of March 14. Her throat was “like knives.”

MARCH 15

Happy Ides of March! We celebrated by printing 23 knives on our printer named “Czar Printy.” The printer still has a sign on it which reads, “Et tu Brute?” but I digress. Around 5pm we decided to test Charlie for COVID-19.

Faint but visible positive line.

We planned to go to a City of Denton activity called “Bird Songs” but Bird’s COVID meant we needed to stay home. Around 8pm, Micah’s throat started to hurt as well. Out of fear that COVID was coming for all of us, we began planting our seeds like mad people. We planted:

🌱 Lavender (Sophie’s choice)
🌱 Banana Peppers
🌱 Bell Peppers
🌱 Oregano
🌱 Alpine Strawberries

Just after midnight, Micah ran a COVID test on herself. She also had a faint but positive test.

MARCH 16

Micah woke up with a throat that “felt like knives” too, but that didn’t stop us from heading to the garden plot. Fearing we would miss out on our window to plant the corn because of COVID-19, we tilled one single row in the garden and planted all our corn seeds.

🌽 Fortunately, Bowling Green didn’t have the water turned on to the garden yet, so we couldn’t water the corn. Over the next several days there were nights where the temperature dropped below freezing and we just crossed our fingers it wouldn’t rain. Maybe, we thought, if it didn’t rain the seeds wouldn’t freeze and our corn wouldn’t die.

While Jeromey and Sophie developed weird tongues during our bout with COVID-19, neither tested positive and neither had symptoms beyond COVID tongue. This was incredibly lucky as Micah ended up needing a fair amount of care over the following two weeks due to primary COVID followed by bonafide COVID pneumonia, tailed by a secondary abdominal infection which finally sent her to the ER on March 31.

March 16: Jeromey, in an attempt to heal all the sick family members, cooked roasted veggies for dinner. Charlie is eating her favorite from this dinner: asparagus. In fact, everyone fights over the asparagus and broccoli, every time. Also, if you look behind Charlie you can see the table covered in seedlings from our planting spree.

MARCH 17

Micah with Patty Rabbit, feeling sick

While resting and heading in and out of sleep with COVID-19, Micah requested seedling updates. Jeromey ferried the seedling babies to Micah on tub lids so that she could watch them grow. Unlike the other seedlings, because of the warmth outside, we kept these seedlings outside during the day from the start, bringing them inside when the temperatures would dip below 50 degrees at night.

The (blue flag) cucumbers took off and never stopped. This was mind-blowing to us!

The Yellow Pear snacking tomatoes also started to sprout!

So did the Chadwick Cherry tomatoes!

Even the basil and thyme began sprouting! Spring Break was so good to our plants! Also, in the taller white and gray container are the last few Parisian Carrots (labeled “Jungle Carrots”)

Spring Break was such a good time for our seedlings and between school being out and COVID-19, we happened to be home to watch them burst from their seeds. We wanted to check them constantly. Micah and Jeromey talked about how they would be pleased to just sit and watch for new growth for hours.

MARCH 18

Again, just sick bed viewings here for Micah – Jeromey was the care taker for the plants.

Peppermint in the top center. All the pink flag plants are our surviving non-descript cherry tomatoes. Out of ~100, 5 survived.

These cucumbers were growing like crazy but also molding on the bottom of the cups, so Jeromey elevated them on a baking rack to help dry out their bottoms. It worked.

After having the carrots and cherry tomatoes just…not make it…it was like a miracle to see things like this thyme just thriving.

Yellow Pears just showing how poorly we thought out planting seeds at this point. Yet, we feel no shame. We were trying and that actually worked.

One mistake we made that we are still making is asking these two peppers to be roommates. Why we thought to do this? I don’t know. All I know is it was Micah’s idea.

We were going to see The Lorax at the movies today, but Micah was too sick and Charlie wasn’t feeling well either, so at the end of the day, we had a movie theatre at home.

While Jeromey and the girls went to the store for supplies, Micah made Dangerbucks as a currency. Everyone got 10 Dangerbucks to spend at the movies. It was a great night.

MARCH 22

By today, Charlie was feeling much better. Micah was still feverish and went for an x-ray of her chest. She had pneumonia. Sophie went back to theatre and Jeromey went back to work and school. We also did a bit of YouTube watching and learned how to split up our crowded seedlings. We began with the unbelievable amount of cucumbers.

Surprisingly, the cukes (lol) LOVED their new single-plant houses.

This was due, in part, to our trying to understand what we do with seven Black Krims in a single square. The plants were appearing to be successful beyond what we thought was possible.

Jeromey and Sophie separating cucumber plants while, off to the left, the next batch of seedlings is in process.

MARCH 24

We went to check out our garden. After the early planting and avoiding rain, we showed up prepared to water and cross our fingers for our corn. To our surprise, the corn had sprouted!

The girls discovered dirt mountain (a pile of mulch left for community use by the City of Denton) and played in the dandelions.

We also had our first encounter with the weed plague that is simultaneously delicious and annoying: Lamb’s Quarter.

By today, it was becoming increasingly clear our seedling situation was out of control.

Dangercats’ seedlings on March 24

MARCH 25

We began the day doing some tomato rehab.

Untangling jungle plants and giving them their own space became our COVID hobby. Unfortunately, we found we had WAY too many plants. Like. WAY too many.

HOW DID SO MANY SURVIVE?????

I’m starting to develop the hypothesis that the reason for our success was COVID.

Our arugula in a hose storage container. It did not survive but we still hadn’t learned it was a hose container.

Herbs and grasses re-planted and just thriving. Except the oregano. That didn’t quite survive the transplanting.

Seriously does anyone want a cucumber?

We tried to give some plants away in our neighborhood and had a few takers.

Charlie and Sophie delivering plants across the neighborhood. Sophie has a phone with directions and Charlie is hauling seedlings down the street. They were actually given a barter on this journey and came home with a wagon full of one teacher’s 3rd grade reading level books.

Maybe we can blame Samantha, the witchy cat, and her magic.

We also emailed Charlie’s (Mrs. Lam) and Sophie’s (Mrs. Pierce) teachers to see if any of them wanted a plant. Fortunately, they wanted a few as well. 😅

Then we went out to the garden where Jeromey tilled the plot in its entirety. We needed homes for all these babies like, stat.

Pictured: Handsome man in Tevas tilling the earth

Sophie weeding and digging for worm babies while Jeromey tills the plot. Also pictured: normal looking walkways and neighbors plots not full of weeds and chiggers.

Charlie climbed her first tree: a Crepe Myrtle

Micah couldn’t do much at the garden yet (still ultra sick) but she could march in the walkways. Jeromey tilled the whole plot.

At the end of the day, Plot 30 had rows and was tilled and ready for seeds and seedlings.

Whatever it was that caused our plants to rise up and grow in mid-march is what directly brought us to our garden today. Jeromey and Micah couldn’t bear the idea of killing a bunch of seedlings so they planted them, gave them away, and cared for them until more people wanted to take them and give them a home.

Maybe it was the moon and Venus aligned.

MARCH 26

The past two Junes we have had little baby toads hopping around our neighborhood. Last year, one large male toad made a burrow in a pot in front of our house (it was supposed to be rosemary but it ended up being a toad house). So, for each of our seeds we planted, we donated a couple to the toad’s pot hoping that when he comes back this year he will have plenty of vegetation to hang out in.

A couple seedlings sprouted in our toad’s pot. Charlie is the keeper of the toad pot.

This morning we gathered supplies for a picnic and got a big tent set up so we could work at the garden all day (which we literally did). We didn’t leave until the sun was down.

Our picnic! The first aid kit contained COVID supplies: a pulse oximeter, inhaler, steroids

Just doing farmer things. Our tent is in the background.

Micah did venture out of the tent to do things but had to rest more than she wanted. She came out for planting the cucumbers and setting up their trellis.

They just look so happy in here.

Sophie made best friends with a blue bird by tossing it little crackers from the picnic. Much better than the weekend before when she scared off ducks and stole their seeds.

Everyone worked together to plant our babies and construct our garden.

MARCH 29

The corn was growing so well and our garden didn’t look like much but it had the seeds for success. Micah’s pain had moved from her chest to her abdomen and she developed a secondary abdominal infection following COVID. It was painful.

We also found out we had another friend who thought our garden was amazing:

MARCH 31

While the girls were away and Jeromey and Micah went to visit the hospital, Farmer Pikachu kept watch over the plants. They did an excellent job.

Today we ordered seeds for the July change out in the garden. We ordered Eggplant seeds, six kinds of pepper seeds, and cut flowers for the back yard.

APRIL 1

Things were still pretty crazy in the back yard.

Because the olive tree was such a good plant, we decided to give it a forever home.

About a week earlier while getting supplies we decided to grow tea plants but you can’t get white tea plants from just anywhere. Texas is picky. So we decided to grow chamomile and hibiscus zinger. Maybe we decided this because tea had been so good to our throats during COVID.

APRIL 2

Hail was in the forecast so we went over and put berry baskets on top of the corn seedlings. Thanks to a collection effort led by Charlie we had plenty of rocks to hold the baskets in place.

We also feared for our grasses and herbs so we brought them inside.

On the left is 2 containers of spinach followed by 2 containers of parsley. In the center are three arugula and on the far right are three containers of chives.

APRIL 3

The storms came through and flooded the plot but the berry baskets saved our babies! Our corn looked so good!

APRIL 4

Grasses and herbs are doing so well. Left to right: spinach, parsley, arugula, chives

APRIL 6

Sophie, caring for our corn

APRIL 10

We had other things to take care of, life to catch up on, from the second half of March for the first half of April. Yet, we still went over and cared for the garden every morning after dropping off the girls at school or in the evenings or both. We also cared for our backyard beauties and always have a couple seedlings in the works.

Our poppies began to sprout! Unfortunately, only the orange poppies (Burpees) that we picked up at Tractor Supply sprouted. The others didn’t do much of anything. Either that or we weeded them out. One way or the other lol.

We planted the three sisters: corn, squash, and beans. By April 10, our corn was solidly in V1 stage, our beans had big beautiful leaves, and our squash began sprouting. We also planted Zucchini in here but it never sprouted.

Our cantaloupe has sprouted!

Some cucumbers were pickier than others about replanting in the garden. Because we had so damn many cucumbers we planted 3 cucumber plants per pole.

Our garden: wet and sprouting!

APRIL 13

I’ll be damned if that corn didn’t just jump to V3 almost over night. The three sisters became our strongest row, growing at an unbelievable rate.

With stage V3 and mid-April came the first weeds. Jeromey was more concerned than Micah. Micah underestimated the threat of weeds until they had overgrown things. Jeromey knew.

Look at those beautiful leaves on our cucumber! Can you believe that came from a seed????? We couldn’t.

While the watermelons never sprouted and only a couple of okra took and somebunny ate all our snap peas as soon as they sprouted, everything else was flourishing.

APRIL 17

Someone was hanging out by a dead avocado tree this morning. Someone special.

We call this baby Janice/Janis after her presumed mother or father, regular Janice/Janis.

corn, squash, and beans

APRIL 20

The girls have now developed a habit of grabbing some dill on the way out the door or chives/basil while playing in the back yard. Add this to the honeysuckle and I bet they’re getting a solid 5 calories from our plants each and every day.

Also pictured: crocs of parents who garden in the mornings, dill, the Columbine in the front left corner, a dying lettuce which is simultaneously too dry and growing mushrooms, and the beautiful future home of a toad.

APRIL 22

Micah ordered “cut flower” seeds to grow flowers for vases on March 31. They arrived a couple days ago and we planted them today in the big white planters in the back yard that once held our dead avocado trees. If they all bloom this will be a very maximalist flower garden. These are the types we planted:

🌺 Globe Amaranth Strawberry Fields
🌺 Cosmos Apricot Lemonade
🌺 Cosmos Cupcakes and Saucers Mix
🌺 Delphinium Delphina Light Blue White Bee
🌺 Balloon Flower Komachi
🌺 Zinnia, Cut & Come Again Mixed Colors
🌺 Zinnia, State Fair Mix
🌺 Gomphrena, Fireworks
🌺 Cosmos, Double Click Bicolor Pink
🌺 Delphinium, Fantasia Mixed Colors

We shook all the cut flower seeds in a bag and sprinkled them as a wildflower mix into the two containers and lightly dusted them with seedling potting mix.

Our backyard beauties. In the far back row (white planters) are cut flowers. In the middle row, left to right: a blueberry bush from Tractor Supply, Sage from seed, Rosemary from seed, two strawberry plants from Ace Hardware, and our trusty rose bush. In the front row left to right: Culinary Sage from seed (both brown pots), Basil from seed, Lavender from seed, Chamomile from seed, more Lavender from seed (Sophie’s little pot with a face), Oregano which is from seed and not thriving, Hibiscus Zinger from seed, Peppermint from Ace Hardware, and more Basil from seed. Also visible are the seedlings all over the yard. I love this picture. It really captures how things were at the end of April in our gardening lives.

APRIL 23

The girls decided to make themselves a salad from our backyard grasses and herbs. They added bacos and ranch 😂 but its real. They ate and loved it.

You can even see some mint in Sophie’s bowl!

APRIL 25

Micah added some of our backyard parsley to our red beans and rice + spinach and cornbread dinner. It was amazing.

APRIL 30

We began growing two mushroom kits. They started out under the kitchen sink but Micah moved them to the counter when they were slow to grow. Now they’re taking off!

Also, regular Janice/Janis came back today! We had spied her on the side of the house while her baby hung out in the back yard. We put out a box (and the girls put out some celery) for her and her baby in the yard to hide out in. But, before she arrived, we knew she was there because of the bunny-sized butt marks on the parsley.

Janice/Janis just living her best life grazing in our side yard.

Also, at some point, we planted a Blackberry bush (online from Burpee) next to the honeysuckle plant and a gooseberry bush’s dormant roots.

MAY 1

Happy May! Now begins the push to final exams, Sophie’s performance of Little Women, and Charlie’s performance of Pirate Jane. Our garden is looking so good!

Our three sisters are looking beautiful! The corn is at about a V5/V6 here, the beans have established bushes (ha, we should have picked beans that climb to do three sisters properly but hey, we never claimed to know that much), and the squash has big happy heart-shaped leaves.

The cantaloupe has more than true leaves – they look like real cantaloupe plants! Soon we’ll need to help them trellis and thin them out. Jeromey does not like the idea of thinning out plants but Micah says this is essential to ensuring their success.

If you look at the corn picture vs. this one you can see that the poppies were overrun with weeds but we began working through the weeds. These poppies are so surprising. Micah read somewhere that poppies are like people with daddy issues – they don’t take well to good treatment – so we try not to fuss over them too much but, its hard because they look so good!

Look at that big old cucumber plant from a baby tiny seed. At this point we are down to six cucumber plants (out of >100 seedlings and 27 transplanted into the garden), fortunately, there’s about one plant per trellis stake.

Weeding. Just. Tons of weeding. Sophie gets mad when we weed out the Lamb’s Quarter as it is her favorite garden snack. She just picks it off the ground and eats it. Unassuming friends who visit find they’re handed a leaf and told to eat it by Soph. They always look to Micah and Jeromey like: is this safe, can I eat this? Sophie loves to eat from our garden and back yard plants. She constantly grazes.

More ants. This ant hill was in a different place when we started and Micah went to war and literally shoveled the entire ant hill out. Sophie placed a butterfly on a stick in their former location to commemorate the massacre, yet, here they are back in the garden. Sigh.

MAY 2

Sophie had three hour dress rehearsals all this week, plus we had grading, work, finals prep, and Charlie’s dance club and drama PLUS our lovely garden.

Samantha on the grind

Yet we did try to find time for non-garden fun —

Charlie enjoying a mocktail at 940’s Kitchen and Cocktails

Sophie, hollering at strangers on the street or making up a story about Bob at the climbing gym.

The girls, right after their sidewalk cartwheel fight

MAY 3

Two days. It has been two days since your last picture of corn and LOOK AT WHAT THIS CORN IS DOING —

This is like V10, basically.

Our garden EXPLODED overnight.

Our cucumber babies are all grown up and blossoming.

Like seriously can you believe our cucumbers are in bloom? Yesterday they were a wild bunch of seedling stems strewn across my kitchen table. Basically. Even the poppies were poppin’ —

Squash bugs are “something to take care of” until they become real bugs eating your entire squash plants and covering the ground and destroying your little harvest. This was when we first noticed we might have a problem.

So tiny yet so destructive.

And back home, our mushrooms were also getting out of hand.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, Bird (once again) ushered in our next round of COVID-19 when she got sent home with this —

It seems COVID comes when our garden is about to get awesome. Tell me I should interpret this differently and I’ll fight you.

Meanwhile, Sophie’s theatre marches toward performance this weekend! So exciting!

[Note: If you get to thinking Charlie and Sophie are perfect kids, let me tell you they do not respect “I voted” stickers]

Actual finding in the back yard near the trampoline. The grass voted. Or something like that.

MAY 5

After shuffling a few things around and slowly culling and gifting a bunch of tomato plants to both Nana and Newton Rayzor Elementary (yay teachers), we began planting our tomatoes in our garden plot.

Micah planting her babies. Its like sending them off to college, probably.

One beautiful Mr. Stripey going into the dirt. Mr. Stripey and Black Krim are Micah’s favorites of our tomato plants, followed closely by Brandywine.

A view of our garden from the right. Jeromey is in the background wrestling the hose loose from someone else’s plot, probably.

A view of our garden plot from the left. Jeromey, victorious, is walking toward the plot with the hose ready to water the little tomato plants we put in the ground.

MAY 8

Welcome to finals week! Jeromey uses the garden this week as stress relief. Charlie seems to have a brief respite from her pink eye. Spoiler alert: COVID will rear back up with strep throat later this week.

three sisters are looking amazing but no fertile activity yet.

A view of our garden from the left. Can you believe the weeds used to be so small in our neighbor plots? We can’t either.

Around this time, Jeromey and Micah start talking about reaching out to the City of Denton about the plot to the left of this picture. They met the plot owners early in the season but the owners haven’t been back and the plot has been mowed down at least once by City of Denton tractors because it was overrun by 6 foot sunflowers as weeds. We thought maybe they’d let us buy them out of their plot or at least borrow it until they’re ready to use it. Or maybe they’ll help us eat some of these tomatoes. It takes another ten days before the city finally gets back with us on this question.

MAY 9

More parsley cooking by Micah, this time it went into lentils —

MAY 10

THE CANTALOUPE ARE FLOWERING OMG

Once this starts, Micah has to get serious about her plan to make the cantaloupe go vertical. Jeromey was so skeptical about planting cantaloupe because once, long long ago, he planted cantaloupe and it sprawled “all over the damn place” and got eaten by squirrels. Or something like that. Micah promised this cantaloupe would hang on a trellis. Here’s hoping she figures out the physics of that sometime soon…

More glamour shots of the cantaloupe flowering.

three sisters update: growing like crazy but no flowers yet

Right now these cucumbers look like they might have bald patches. Jeromey is concerned that too many of them have died. Micah points out that there is one per trellis pole and this will work out perfectly.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH…this strawberry plant is growing mushrooms.

We’re fairly certain this isn’t right and is an indication of a water issue. Jeromey is all shrugs while Micah is wagging her finger at him like “STOP WATERING HER” and he keeps pleading “she is soooooo thirsty.” Micah wins this debate and the strawberry dries out in the hot sun for one day. The following day, all the mushrooms are gone and it began flowering again.

Maybe the secret to our success is the things Sophie leaves in the yard. Voting stickers. Half-chewed crayon gum. Thanks, Soph, you’re a pal.

MAY 12

Someone did something really cool during all this gardening…

That night we made all the party guests come visit our garden. It was past dusk and hard to see, but the plants were so beautiful. No chiggers, even.

“Hey Mom, check out my corn!”

These cantaloupe are growing vines!

“Jaron, my child, gaze upon my plants” probably

MAY 13

Charlie’s Pirate Jane was a huge success and we had some extra special visitors too.

Charlie, Nora, Ida, and Sophie are cousins and friends.

But also, look what our cucumbers did —

It picked the pole! It picked the pole!

MAY 15

This was a busy day. We began the day by taking the girls to school —

Sophie next to all those cherry tomato plants that need a home. Hopefully we will hear from the City of Denton soon otherwise we have to plant these beauties in our yard???

After school we got some ice cream and then headed home where Micah stepped on a large decorative tack. OUCH. Jeromey’s eyes started turning EXTRA pink. But that night, there was a beautiful storm that surprised us around 8pm.

That frog pot (and this wet muppet) are looking really great. Come back toad!

Weird colors mean weird weather, right?

Just incredible clouds

When it finally began pouring in earnest, we sat out back and watched the rain. It was beautiful and sprayed all our patio plants (even the ones who were not supposed to get water…looking at you strawberry).

MAY 16

The next morning, Janis(ce) visited us again —

Look who is hiding between the basil and the basil. 🐰

MAY 17

We did a bunch of work in the garden this morning but mostly we took pictures of were these cute little red bugs.

Harlequin Bugs

So many fancy little bugs.

So we looked these up and they seem ok for our garden. They’re just adorable. (Spoiler: on May 25 we realized this is not so and nearly cried)

Okay also OUR SQUASH IS FLOWERING and OUR CORN HAS TASSELS and OUR POPPIES ARE IN BLOOM!

Squash flowers!

Look at this beautiful orange poppy! Perfect to attract pollinators to those flowering cucumbers, cantaloupe, and squash!

This corn is VT and it has tassels! It is single and ready to mingle (with itself).

This is our beautiful garden.

We put up little cages for the tomatoes (too small) and the cantaloupe needed some help learning how to climb its trellis (zero surprises here). Everything is looking lovely.

BUT WAIT

That afternoon, on the way home from getting the girls some fashiony new haircuts, we got a call from the City of Denton! They said, no only is the neighbor plot (29) open, but we can have plot 22 (to the south of 29) as well. Holy moly!

Sophie marking the new southern boundary of our garden

Oh lord, its time to till again.

Today is the day we began getting chiggers. Could be the time of year. Could be tilling down tons of overgrowth. Could be both Could be neither. Either way, this was sure to be a big problem going forward as we came home covered in bites.

Gardening was no longer going to be a leisurely activity where we pop by and see what’s happening. Gardening meant getting fully decked out in long sleeves, socks, pants, boots. It meant covering our clothes in permethrin AND STILL covering our bodies in DEET. Then immediately putting our clothes in the wash on hot cycle and scrubbing our bodies in the shower. AND STILL, getting bitten. Honestly, we don’t know how we are going to solve this problem. We found a spray that might kill them and we contacted the city. Hopefully something helps.

MAY 18

Let me tell you what, this garden is in BLOOM. First, our squash is fruiting!

Look at these adorable patty pan squash!

BUT WAIT what is that? Our corn is SILKING!

omg are we going to have real corn? R1 established!

oh hello tassels. nice to meet you, i’m silk.

By our math that means our corn will be at physiological maturity (R6) around July 18!

Click this image for more information on corn!

R1 begins: May 18
R2 begins: ~May 30
R3 begins: ~June 7
R4 begins: ~June 13
R5 begins: ~June 23
R6 (maturity) begins: July 18!!

Also, time to trellis these cantaloupe or else! They’re everywhere!

For real, cantaloupe, get on the trellis!

Cucumbers are FRUITING, ya’ll oh my gosh our babies are growing up.

Can you spot the baby cucumber?

And even the BEANS are fruiting!

and back at home, Mouse got to eat some more cat grass. 😍

Well, that didn’t last long.

Meanwhile, Charlie has strep throat and a high fever (103.1F).

You might not know this about Samantha but, she is a nurse cat. She always shows up if someone is hurt or sick and comforts them with her silky fur and warm body.

MAY 19

This looks like a real cucumber!

Later this evening, before we ran over Jeromey’s iPhone, we landscaped plot 29.

MAY 20

Now that we have plot 29 all sorted out, its time to plant the other tomat…WHOA THIS TOMATO IS FRUITING!!!!!!

Chadwick Cherry

What’s great: we have three plots! What’s bad: we have three plots. Watering these babies takes ~45 minutes a day now. Sheesh.

Seriously it takes forever.

By now, we have standard long sleeve/long pants/socks/shoes/hats attire that gets washed each day.

MAY 21

The permethrin was supposed to last for 7 days on clothes but, we think, after we washed it last night in George Washington (our washing machine) on sanitize, the permethrin came off in the steam sanitize cycle because we got completely destroyed by chigger bites this day. Maybe we need to till plot 22 also so we can be done with all these chiggers.

Okay, all of the tomatoes are in the dirt. Hibiscus zinger plants are planted along the front of the new plot. If you zoom in, though, you can see that we still have tomatoes in cups along the walkway because SOMEONE can’t bear to cull them and no one will take our tomato plants like…we have run out of donees.

Charlie and Jeromey re-planting the okra that Jeromey saved from being culled when we cleared the rows for tomatoes like a month ago.

Charlie is corn. Sophie is holding our new hoe, Heather.

Charlie is still corn.

MAY 22

Well, we stayed until after the sun went down so we could till plot 22, put up FORTY SEVEN TOMATO CAGES, and plant pumpkins, onions, and strawberries. Good thing the girls’ school is basically done. Oh and we ate more Subway at the garden because we have a problem.

Sisters eating and admiring the garden.

Watering takes EVEN LONGER now. Whew. Good thing we’ve got a plan for this. The rules say you cannot set up irrigation on a timer. Ok.

Sailor Pluto

Sailor Mercury

Tough way to find out chiggers are nocturnal. But hey, we mowed down the other plot so everything should improve starting now right?

To read about everything after May 22, check out our Garden Blog!

🪴GARDEN LINKS🪴

🌱 Our Garden Timeline
🌱 Garden Blog
🌱 What’s growing right now?
🌱 What we’ve planted this year
🌱 Live Look *coming soon*

As always: if you have well-meaning advice that may or may not be an attempt to show off your bad ass knowledge on gardening, parenting, farming, weed control, aphids, jesus, fashion, some other god/goddess worthy of worship, or how to be a better person in general please click here.