Veggie Garden Virgin is Back!

Like vaccine-preventable diseases, Veggie Garden Virgin is back! Last year’s first-time experience was a mixed bag, but I learned a lot.

I took a break from gardening over the winter, telling myself I would use the time to work on growing readership of my blog. I would start a gardening-related Twitter account, become active in the online gardening community, do lots of gardening research, etc.ID Channel

So how did I spend my winter? Mostly getting more addicted to the ID channel and starting a new addiction to HGTV. The important thing is not how I spent the winter- even though I’m pretty sure I could remodel the heck out of a house and run a murder investigation by now, but that Veggie Garden Virgin is back.

I know that technically that since this is the second year, the blog name shouldn’t include virgin in the title. But I figure I can add something new each year- this season it’ll be a compost pile. That and it’s too much effort to think of a new name.

I had to make a visit to my local garden center to get the garden back in shape after a rough winter, which for North Carolina means more than two snow and ice “incidents.” They can’t be called storms because the accumulation is generally less than a couple inches of snow and less than 1/10 inch of ice. But everyone still empties the bread, milk and eggs from store shelves as if we were expecting Boston 2015 type snow.

But back on topic, more about getting the garden back in shape in my next post.

I’m just glad that the dreariness of winter is over and spring is back. In celebration, enjoy the photo below of  azalea blooms!

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My Garden is Growing!

You can see the tiny green sprout if you squint really hard and look closely.

You can see the tiny green sprout if you squint really hard and look closely.

Little seedlings are starting to sprout in the garden bed! It’s been a little over a week since planting and they’re very small right now but I can tell that they’re seedlings and not just the beginning of weeds. It looks like I’ll have some vegetables this summer! You gotta take the victories when they come, right? Even if they’re small.

While I have my first small success to enjoy, I also have a potentially big problem.  Tending to my garden recently, I noticed that something had ruined my nice distinct hills. Some unnamed animal had dug up a couple of the rows and then decided the garden would make a nice toilet.  This is an issue for multiple reasons the least not being, the animal messed up my pretty rows!

Garden dug up by undetermined animal

Garden dug up by undetermined animal

Now I have to play detective and figure out what kind of animal this is so I can properly deal with it. Which is great because I love the ID channel and I love playing detective. Like the time when I noticed my neighbor was out of town for an extended period of time but there was a strange car at his house and a couple of strangers going in and out. I became convinced that the two people had killed my neighbor, hid the body and were squatting in his house. Well, a few days later, my neighbor reappeared safe and sound. It seemed he was just out of town and the two strangers were house sitting. I guess being obsessed with the ID channel is not a good thing. Hopefully I won’t be wrong in this case of playing detective.

I’ll put my detective hat on and report back.