Garden Update: Bio-diversity?

Took these pictures yesterday. The large overview picture makes it hard to tell just how much everything has grown from the earlier picture but when you are standing or if you look at the picture under all sizes, original size you can tell how much bigger the pictures are getting.

The other thing that you can see is where I put in the mulch based path. This will allow us to get in and inspect the garden with kids in tow and not have up to 6 sets of mud covered feet to deal with. It was really a great visual indicator for me to plan out different blocks of the garden. I had thought about having more paths but I consolidated down to a simple "L" shape. The path starts on grass and ends at the compost pile.


This is the west side of the mulch path, the cucumber bed. My goal is to vine these cucumbers over the top of each other providing for some shade and protection when August gets here and hopefully extending the harvest season. I haven't decided if I am going to get any trellis to let them climb onto or not or if I will just use the chain-link in the back.

If you look to the right of the 2 wooden stakes that is the beginning of the area above the mulch path in the top picture. That part of the garden contains 7 bell peppers, 10 tomatoes and 3 eggplants. To the right you can see the onions that are coming up. I bought two bundles of Yellow Texas sweet sets. They are taking off, getting big and starting out new leaves of their own.



Directly behind the onions you can see one of the two dill plants. This one has grown about 2 inches since i planted it just about 1 week ago. On the right hand sid of the picture you can see some of the other herbs growing but it is hard to see them clearly but they are getting bigger as well. As they get a bit bigger I am going to take some of the information from here and other stuff we have learned and try to highlight each one.



Now, as to the whole question of bio-diversity that I mentioned in the title of the blog. Bio-diversity in a garden or a yard is nice way of saying that I have weeds. I am using my grass as mulch instead of putting it directly back onto the lawn or bagging it and throwing it away. The only problem is that my grass, Bermuda, isn't quite growing quick enough for me to have enough clippings to have most of the area in the garden that needs covering covered. The neighbor's maple tree also released thousands of those fun to play with helicopters and they ended up in my garden as well. So, every now and then I have to pull one up out of the ground.

It isn't that I have something against trees because they are trees but because I don't want a tree in the middle of my garden. Everything has its place and we must tend to our gardens as we tend to our lives. If something in our lives is keeping our garden from growing, be it a weed, hobby, or the shift of our job we have to pluck it out and start anew. This is what St. Therese was talking about when she asked, "How does your garden grow?" I remember reading Story of a Soul and Voltaire's Candide and comparing their ideas in college. They both used the image of a garden.

The other person that talks about gardening alot in philosophy is Kiekegard. Right now in my life I am looking really closely at how my garden grows and the past week has been a blessing. I see a few weeds and maybe even a shade tree or two blocking the sun. I think some weeding or at least some pruning is in order.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S.