Four Under Five: My Garden in March

Several challenges face the desert gardener.

First, the desert gardener is forced to find, establish, and maintain a water supply to the plants.

Second, the desert gardener must expect a certain amount of plant casualties over the long hot summers, and must prepare emotionally and financially for the prospect of digging up and replacing these sad little corpses come fall.

Third, the desert gardener must fully appreciate and enjoy the beautiful spring weather when it shows its face, because it is very brief.

Finally, the desert gardener must come to a point where they understand that they will never grow hydrangeas. No matter how much they love that beautiful plant, they will never get it to survive through the brutal summers in the low desert.

I am a desert gardener, and I take these challenges and eat them for breakfast!

Not really, I have to deal with them, like everyone else. I just like to act tough.

So I love gardening, but I haven't been able to step foot outside my house for this purpose in about 27 months. Strange, how that correlates EXACTLY with my most recent pregnancy and the arrival and maintenance of two little people we like to called twin-time. The weather this last week and a half has been close to perfect for springtime in the desert. When this happens, I immediately look out at my yard, grab some clippers, roll out the green waste bin, and go to town! I have spent a whole lot of time out there raking, weeding, and trimming my plants. They are happier, and so am I, this is therapeutic for all of us. Then I looked around and realized the landscape needed a little happiness, a little color.

Does this area need a whole lot of work, or what?! I had two artemesia growing here, but they had gotten kind of spindly and dried up, so I tore them out (actually my handsome husband did the dirty work), and I watched admiringly from behind.

One of the neighbor kids came over to survey the work, nah, she just wanted to hang out with the girls. Check out how G is already kickin' it with the big kids. Wait, where's J.D.? I swear, I utter that phrase 200 times per day.

Yeah, I hit up Lowe's and Green Patch. I go a little nutty in the spring buying lots of colorful plant. I do give some thought to what will go where, and what colors I want to go together, and the water needs and all that, but mostly it's just what I like in the moment. (As Danny reads this, he is wincing.)

I could just plant them in the ground exactly like this, wouldn't that be gorgeous?! Well, actually the plants would get bigger, and grow into a gigantic tangled mass, but hey!

So then I had to scope out the backyard to figure out where I could stick all these plants. A few years ago Danny built me a raised flower bed with three separate gardens.

The first garden holds flowers, in this case snapdragons and phlox.

The second garden holds some sweet pea that has gone wild, a desert wildflower and a wayward flowering broccoli plant.

The third garden is supposed to be my vegetable garden, but has been neglected for so long that the veggies went straight to seed.

Anyone want some cilantro seed?

............Anyone?...............Anyone?

Sometimes when I dig through the garden to clean it up and churn up the soil, I find some happy surprises.

Wow! A carrot from last fall! What a monster!

I grew some basil? Wow, who knew?!

Isn't this soil gorgeous? This is why I wanted raised beds. You can add whatever you want in there to make the perfect garden soil. My yard is full of clay, so this soil is heavenly to work with compared to the heavy clods.

So here's what I did. I cleaned up the bed, planted some ranunculus, larkspur in the back, and cosmos on the far right side. Then I watered it, and celebrated my first gardening venture in a little over two years. I can't wait to see how this looks in the late spring!

And now comes the time when I get to have fun with my two favorite hobbies: gardening and photography. You can use these shots to quiz your pre-schooler on his or her colors.