Uh oh, now I worry that I’ll be giving them a complex. “Problem children? She’s calling us PROBLEMS?? Oh, we’ll show HER problems….grumble…” Oh yes, the seedlings have minds of their own, have no doubt about that. And there’s the crux of the matter….the seedlings are a hard taskmaster. Once you get them going, they require constant attention. Between the watering, moving of lights, shuffling them around to make sure they get equal light, spritzing them with chamomile tea so they don’t keel over from damp-off, and of course rotating the fan that’s blowing on them so that they grow up nice and sturdy…well, who has time for anything else?

So, that’s my excuse as to why my journaling efforts fell off a cliff. It’s all the seedlings’ fault, I tell you! I had the best of intentions, even taking pictures of their progress. Alas, intentions were as far as I got. To make up for it, I’ll share a few shots of their toddler weeks from last year:

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Here are the seedlings in prison. Or, if you prefer, the penalty box. They go to the box, they feel shame…and then they get free.

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Here they are protected from the monsoon-like howling winds that Chicago (aka Kansas during the Dust Bowl era) has had the last couple of years. There was an unspeakable tragedy last year when the wind was so strong that it actually picked up a BRICK, for god’s sake, and hurtled it onto a batch of seedlings. Sigh. Black Cherry, we hardly knew ye…

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Here’s my backyard in June, with the climbing rose that has grown into a lovely arch of sorts. Thorns be damned!

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I emerge victorious with the Cucumber Canopy™!. I had this wacky notion of stringing a rope from the fence on one side to the trellis along the garage on the other, so that the cukes could climb up that string and form a lovely canopy. It actually kinda worked – the mind reels!

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Ah, the picture you’ve all been waiting for, i.e. proof that I can actually grow edible things, as opposed to just seedlings. Here’s a day’s bounty from the plot out by my mom’s, where most of my plants actually wind up. Aren’t they lovely?

So there you have it, a pictorial view of last summer. This year, the madness begins again, though I’m trying to pare it down to less than a 100 tomato varieties. We shall see. Today I’m off to the annual Flower and Garden Show downtown, which I hope is a bit more exciting than last year’s – where I believe the theme was “Stuff you Can See in your Own Neighborhood!” Blech.