i wanted to grow things to occupy my time and because i’m cooking a lot but my backyard is steep so i reached out to my sister @schanmalik to ask if it were possible to have a garden and flowers in this kind of space. she suggested a container garden.

red, green, yellow peppers, two kinds of tomatoes, collard greens, string beans, thyme, greek rosemary, basil, lavender, calla lilies, other kindsa flowers and green grapes. i don’t know if, and if so how, these things will grow but it felt good to get in the dirt.

i want to grow things, to see things flower and unfold. and bloom. and breathe. and be.

this is my prayer.

it rained last night. my babies are growing. and i can smell the lavender and rosemary. joy.

these were seeds when i planted them friday. they’re already budding. collard greens. i guess imma have a lot of them. i’m excited because they’re blooming. living this life is so absurd. and, still, things unfold and grow. amen.

look at my babies thriving. the top left are some of the string bean seeds breaking through the soil. the top right are collards. the bottom two left are the tomatoes and green peppers. it’s fun to water them daily and watch them grow. and bloom.

look at my string bean babies, flourishing ... we gon be eatin good soon (i hope lolol)

my babies are growing ... the string beans and collard greens are particularly coming in nicely

so on top is the sprouting from strawberry seeds that i’d cut off a strawberry. wasn’t sure if it’d even germinate but it did! the bottom left are the collards. look at the leaves! and the bottom right are the string beans.
#plantdad #prouddad #thissocialdistancingisgettingtome

and still flowers bloom. the second pic is of the string bean, tomato and some of the pepper plants and the last pic is of the collards.

this is the mostly veggie tray. the top is the first day i planted, may 1st; the bottom is today. bloom.

no but forreal, my collagreens are growing hella hella fast ... these were seeds four weeks ago!

they’re flowering! first one is one of my pepper plants. the second is one of my tomato plants. life. it blooms.

a little lesson and sermon from the garden. i was over-watering the flowers. sometimes, i’d water them 3xs a day. bc in my mind, flowers need water, obviously, and unless it rained, i thought they’d only grow with being watered multiple times a day. and they were struggling.

(that’s why i’d only mostly show the food growth lol.) anyway, once i learned that over-watering is possible, i cut back. so far, only 2xs this week (instead of, say, 12 times by a typical wednesday, for comparison). and cutting back is allowing the flowers to bloom more freely.

learning the difference btw watering and tending. tending means having a watchful eye, pruning and removing dead leaves and petals. tending includes but is not only watering. so i’m trying to tend to things. the garden teaches me about patience and slowness. and joy. always joy.

bloom.

this wasn’t fun. at all. i’d been noticing the yellow and brown spots on the tomato leaves but had mostly been ignoring them hoping they’d self correct eventually. i’d cut one or two leaves before hoping that’d be enough but it kept spreading.

googled and found it’s a bacterial infection and the solution is to prune all of the infected leaves. the tomato plants are growing so much the very thought of pruning was difficult to imagine. but i did it. and i’m hoping it’ll help a lot. learning so much.

blooming.

!!! i don’t know if yall can tell but the first is of actual tomatoes, they’re finally coming in after flowering and the second pic is of peppers, too, coming in after flowering!!! i’m so excited!

bloom. indeed.

so in the gardening and food justice group i’m part of, there was a presentation sunday about bees. it was so good. we need bees urgently and it’s so much fun to see my little friend daily play with the lavender. thankful for the small things that help me breathe.

the first time i pruned, i tried to avoid the bigger leaves on the tomato plants but i saw today that they, too, were infected with the bacteria so i cut them down. it was rough the second pic is of the growing string beans, the third of the developing tomatoes. bloom.

you probably can’t tell but this is a grape plant for green grapes. i’d stopped paying attention to it because it’s surrounded by flowers and it looked like it wasn’t growing at all. then today i noticed a bud coming out.

then i moved the flowers from near the root and noticed a long leaf (vine?) growing. i’ll likely have flower buds soon ... i’m excited! bloom.

a green pepper. tomatoes. string beans flowering. today’s garden lesson: growth happens how it will. bloom.

still taking a break from social media (i’m tired ... of everything) but my string beans are actually string beans (and no longer just seeds or leaves or flowers) and i’m so happy things still flower and grow and change. breathe. bloom. be.

they were seeds initially and now this. not a lot at all yet but i’m proud of myself and what’s bloomed.

eating my very lil bunch of homegrown string beans, first food from the garden i’ve eaten that ain’t herbs.

they were GOODT!