Keeping my garden$ watered; only few more days to vote for Tessa or the BadKitten as chief staffer

Yipes. Our water bill for the 31 days of July arrived this week: $217.40 (not including charges for sewer, garbage and street lights.) The bill is more than twice our normal charge – and probably similar to the surprise many other impetuous gardeners got in the mail. My husband and I don't water our grass, and a timed, nighttime drip system irrigates all of our vegetable beds and some of our flower beds. Even before the bill arrived, I had been watering our two large, front yard flower beds by hand. The only time I took the easy way out and set up an arcing sprinkler, I felt a deluge of guilt when I saw the water pooling on the sidewalk, driveway and into the street. So I retired the sprinkler and rely solely on my trusty hand-held wand for targeted, less wasteful watering. Lee and I try to be responsible, but this summer's drought means we're paying big-time for the privilege of keeping our flowers and vegetables hydrated. I only wish I had more to show for the money, veggie-wise.

 

Because of my unfortunate, though well meant, decision to let a few volunteer sunflowers share space in the tomato patch, the odds of BLTs with home-grown tomatoes are looking even slimmer than usual. A few green cherry tomatoes are hanging on the vines. But above them loom lofty, healthy stalks of golden sunflowers, magnets now for bees and, later, as the seeds ripen, for the small birds I love. Their bed is just below the window of my study, and the plants have grown so tall that I'll have a great view soon of the birds snacking at the Rozen cafe. Meanwhile, the sunflowers' bed mates – my hapless tomato plants – must be cursing me daily for letting the big guys steal all the nutrients and sunlight and suck up most of the precious water.

In our side yard, the raised vegetable beds, also kitted out with a drip irrigation system, are batting below the Mendoza line (.200 for non-baseball fans). Planting three zucchini seeds was two seeds too many for me this year. It took all my willpower not to become a cliché: leaving surprise gifts of enormous green monsters, under cover of darkness, on our neighbors' doorsteps. I grew the Zs for the wrong reason: to avenge last summer's humiliation when the entire crop failed. Pride blanked my memory that my husband truly dislikes the sometimes-mushy results of baked or sauteed squash – and let's not even go near the idea of boiled zucchini. So I'm the only Z-eater left – and have slowly been turning grayish green from too many dinners where it's my main course. I don't eat much sweet stuff, so zucchini bread is out. If our children were small and at home, I would certainly have embraced the brilliant practice of disguising shredded Z in meatloaf, spaghetti sauce and – who knows? maybe oatmeal or mashed potatoes, too. But my husband never complains about my cooking, and I'd feel like a jerk for sneaking his nemesis into the pasta sauce just to use up the latest green torpedo.

The two raised beds of Italian shell and French green beans are growing enthusiastically, but the sugar snap peas look spindly and sparse. It's the result, I think, of early raids by crows or quail, and hanging out at the end of the drip-watering line. By the time the flow reaches their bed, it probably has lost its oomph. As for the broccoli bed, I committed the same mistake there and let a few sunflowers shoot up among them. The brocs rallied more strongly than the tomatoes and formed fat heads last month. But before I could pick even one side dish's worth, the neighborhood rabbit apparently went grocery shopping in the Rozen produce bed. Instead of broccoli heads, I found only gnawed off stalks. Tiny side heads are forming now, but I bet the cute little critter will come back for seconds soon.

We will continue to use our watering system until summer's end, even if the vegetable yield has been puny (except for the dratted zucchini.) Letting the plantings go dry isn't an option– and we'll pay the water bill and be thankful for it. Our alternative, my husband reminded me, is to grow cactus. I vow by the blue delphiniums, yellow and pink Peace roses, and pink, lavender and white Canterbury bells flowering in my garden, I will never grow a prickly, spiny, unfriendly cactus in my Church of Dirt and Flowers. 

 

Readers, you have one more week to vote for who should be my chief garden staffer. Your choices are the incumbent (although, this summer, he has mostly been recumbent,) Benjamin BadKitten, or his challenger, Tessa the Vague, whose name describes her response to her environment. You may vote by posting a comment at the end of this blog post. I will announce he results next weekend– but here's a hint: In early returns, the BadKitten is tanking at the polls. No matter which dubiously qualified candidate you choose, guess who will still be doing doing most of the garden work?