A DREARY MORNING

It's a dreary morning made more so being preceded by a series of beautiful sunny spring days during which we have hustled around to get the gardens in shape. We got a late start but it seems we are in a good position to see some success.

The grass is looking healthy too. A bit too healthy. It'll be handled soon but it seems a bit damp to try just now. I'll get over it.

Over the years, we have tried growing just about everything in our garden. We have filtered out much that would be nice but ends up not doing well or not at all and the cost benefit thing makes us come to conclusions like: we can buy the stuff and plant something that works.

I like to plant the fun stuff. Tomatoes, peppers, carrots, squash (delicata and zucchini), leeks and onions, herbs and my favorite - garlic. The tomato gods, however, have frowned upon our efforts lately so we are doing most of them on the deck with a couple of Beefsteaks in the garden. And although we have made every effort in the past to adhere to organic principles - and we intend to keep to that high road principle in so far as it is practical - we intend to fertilize and augment with whatever works, by all the gods that care about such things.

I am reminded of our last sojourn to PEI where we stayed with the Elizabeth and Doug Borman in Cable Head on the north shore. She was a gardener and everything she grew looked like the examples in the slick magazines. We walked out to her patch of cultivated red dirt and there were her tomato plants laying all over the place - not a stick or cage in sight - with grapefruit sized tomatoes glowing like the setting sun all over the ground. I couldn't believe it.

I quizzed her at breakfast about her secret. After some prodding she admitted to using commercial stuff to feed her garden. Read: Miracle Grow! There are other things but she adamantly refused to use chemical weed treatments or other toxic substances to retard insects. She minded her crop manually.

I grew up in a garden with my maternal grandfather, Shug showing me how to pick those horned tobacco worms off the tomatoes with my bare fingers. He did this daily. He did the same thing with squash bugs and other pests. I also remember Shug applying some grayish powder fertilizer, that he purchased down at Hebert's Hardware, on the roots of those tomato plants at certain times. The results were memorable.

Well the clock is ticking on the garden of 2014. I'll let you know what happens. Don't hold your breath.