Posts under ‘Status check’

Late last week, an email came through from a coworker asking for a plantsitter for the week. She and her family would be on vacation, and the last time she left her two plants for a week sans an official watering agent, they nearly keeled over from dehydration. I will admit not immediately hitting reply [...]

On Sunday afternoon, I returned to the scene of my planting back in December. Although I’d seen pictures that demonstrated actual seedling growth, I did have some trepidation, imagining the bed that I planted to be barren (again, I had seen pictures of radish seedlings, but they were up close and, well, PhotoShop is a [...]

I did, after my extended stay at O’Hare, finally arrive home over the weekend. I’d been gone for 12 days on what felt like the longest business trip of my life, including stops in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. When I left Iowa, the snow had indeed begun to melt, but was still shoulder-high and [...]

So here’s what I did to resolve my aloe problem: I attempted benign neglect as a resuscitation solution. This, my good readers, is the botanical equivalent of scrunching my eyes shut and wishing everything would go away. That being said, it had been recommended by commenters as an approach, so I assumed it would actually [...]

“Have you figured out what you’re planting yet?” asked Betsy’s husband during dinner tonight. We had escaped into the Old Capitol Brew Works for the only thing that, tonight, would really take the edge off the weather: a burger, fries and a beer. “No,” I sputtered. “I haven’t even really thought about it.” I talk [...]

In the summer, traveling away from my garden makes me cranky. I might miss a small shoot of something, or the peak of a particular vegetable. The person assigned to watering in my absence might bail on me, or Iowa might flood. There is so much that could go wrong. Lately, though, I’ve been on [...]

Apparently Steven’s comment was right—there are many more beans to come. I harvested another handful this week, and they are destined for some good eatin’, although I have not yet cooked them. I’m a little overloaded with vegetables, still, and have hit that point in the season where I’m a tired of dealing with them. [...]

As I was writing an email yesterday to someone here in Iowa City who has had a profound influence on my life during the past two years, it occurred to me that, in fact, it had been exactly two years. Two years since I arrived into town, shell-shocked by circumstance, already missing my friends back [...]

So. The tomato in the stump? It’s blooming. I still haven’t done anything to it–no fertilizer, no water–and am just watching it and seeing where it goes. It’s not likely to last much longer, the season being what it is, and I have no idea what kind of tomato plant it is, because, well, I [...]

I’m still grasping firmly to summer as if it will never go away, but the fact of the matter is the seasons are changing. It’s a lot more comfortable to hang out in my apartment than it was a month ago, and there’s a tree on my street that persists in changing its leaves to [...]