Time, it all just takes time

We are currently caught between abnormally dry and moderate drought conditions.  It's been hard on me and the garden.  The garden is my happy place, so to watch the heat and dry conditions wipe out all my peppers a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to cry.  Huge parts of my boxes were just empty and it felt so wrong.  To top it off the community hose had sprung a couple of leaks.  One of my fellow gardeners had patched it, but I knew we needed something new, and more convenient for those of us in the "middle" plots.  So I decided to pick up some stuff at the local hardware store.

I saw a pretty hose stand that had a faucet on it.  You hook a hose to the back end of the faucet and hose to the front end and viola (yes, I know it's a stringed instrument similar to the violin) and watering becomes a million times easier.  As I walk up to the garden, I turn on the main hose and then walk up to my plot.  I do what I need to then turn on hose stand faucet and I'm able to water my garden easily.  The nice thing, because it is a community garden, is so can anyone else.  The blue curly hose someone else brought down to the garden (it was too short to go from the faucet to beyond the first plot so people weren't really using it).  I picked up a standard 50' hose when I picked up the stand and it all worked.

Such a simple thing that makes life so much better for all of us. 

I don't keep the recommended 5-gallon bucket of sun-warmed water because we get mosquitoes pretty badly where we are and after last fall's EEE and West Nile problems, I am trying to make sure there is no standing water in the garden.

My main hope is "Buzzy."  Buzzy is a bumblebee that hangs out in my plot and makes me smile.   He usually hangs out on my walking onions, but he's been buzzing here there and everywhere lately and finding whatever he can land on to pollinate.  I love Buzzy and he reminded me not to give up when I was feeling so low.

He buzzed around my potatoes, he buzzed around the corn and tomatoes and beans.  Just doing his bee thing flitting from here to there and back again, zig-zagging all around the place.  Every time he landed on a different plant, I began to see things differently.  I began to think, what can I do to give me happy and help Buzzy stick around here as a hospitable place?  So I replanted the squash the squirrels ate.  I pulled the bolted broccoli and found some mini eggplant bushes at the local Agway.  I found one of the last flats of peppers in the area and planted lettuce, radishes, and carrots that would come up quickly.  Suddenly everything felt good again.

Then last night the rain came.  We were supposed to have some "unsettled" weather with possible showers.  It turned into a major thunderstorm that made me think Thor himself was coming.  Today I went down to the garden between the rain showers and rolling thunder revue times to see how things held up.   The blue Adirondaks had grown over the box, which I then filled with soil.  I will have to have the guys cut me another set of 2' sections of a 2x4 so I can add another layer as they aren't close to flowering yet.  The red Adirondaks popped up to just over 6" in height so I added soil to them as well.

Talk about exciting!

My eggplants are starting to produce little flowers, the radishes and carrots popped up their greens and everything is just growing and I feel so happy about everything all over again.  It's where things were a year ago, but it's getting there and it feels like everything exploded all at once about this time last year... so patience, patience.

It all just took time.  It always just takes time.