Going on a Quest

The sun is out. We magically made it set later (don’t worry about it). The snow is GONE and shouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. Everybody’s feeling frisky. Spring is here!!

Yesterday I ate a whole cantaloupe for lunch because I was lost in the Sunday mystery vortex and it was a really delicious cantaloupe. I went so far as to toast the seeds for later snacking (they’re good for you and taste more or less like pumpkin seeds, and I don’t buy chips anymore). My worms even got a few pieces of the rind, though not all of it because I don’t want to overwhelm them.

I set aside a few seeds and poked them into a pot with some aloe because I’m an excruciatingly lazy gardener and a cursory search revealed that I can totally grow melons in my zone. Considering cantaloupes are only $2-5 a pop, I can’t say this will be anything other than a fun experiment, but I had an opening for a vertical climber in my garden plans. I’ve got some tomato seeds going for the true value add, and I want to get a berry bush too. There’s truly nothing better than a sun-warmed blackberry straight off the bush. One of the things I miss the most about my old town was the prevalence of black raspberry brambles on hillsides and scattered around neighborhood lawns. Those suckers taste like battery acid up until the ten minutes between becoming perfectly ripe and getting horked down by birds, but damn did it feel special when I could catch them right in that window.

So this year, being the first year I’ve got a (teeny tiny) yard with raised beds, I’m going for cantaloupes, tomatoes, some kind of berry, hot peppers, lemon balm, basil, and nasturtiums. I scattered some chamomile seeds because that’s worked better than expected at a previous apartment, and there’s a crapload of garlic popping up from…well, I don’t know. It’s all over the place in seemingly random patches, and the previous owners didn’t seem super organized in any department of their lives, so I would guess their approach to gardening was to stick extra cloves of garlic directly in the ground if they were going stale. The raised beds were left completely empty, which suggests they had some vague plans at some point and dropped them.

The arrival of spring is a huge relief. Growing a little something is so hopeful. Knowing I can improve this little patch of ground over multiple years is just another benefit of finally being a homeowner. At my last apartment, where I stayed for three years, I managed to grow a few peppers and enough chamomile for one (really lovely) cup of tea. I hope I’m lucky enough to have “too many” tomatoes to harvest in the summer. And a cantaloupe or ten. They’re so good. But ultimately, it’s just nice to go outside and tend the earth.