Great Big Gardening

Tennessee's crazy weather - with it's warm and cold fluctuations, has me all excited about spring. I looked up today and noticed that my trees were starting to get little red buds on the branches - and the warm 70 degree weather today felt like spring was on it's way. (shhh - don't remind me that the weather man keeps saying we might have snow next week - I prefer to stay in denial -
thank you very much)

I've been reading on all of my favorite blogs about how all of the more organized gardeners are pulling out their gardening planning journals, designing their spring gardens and going through last years' seeds... HA - I amd the most disorganized gardener you will ever find.... My gardens take on a life of their own - and anything that grows out of them... well - I'll show you what I mean...

When we bought our first house - we were the lucky recipients of volunteer cherry tomatoes... meaning - I didn't do anything - they just grew out of the old garden the previous owners had left behind.  That spoiled me - so I decided the next year to plant some of my own.

In typical fashion - I didn't really plan what I was going to plant - just walked through the garden center at the local Home Depot and grabbed whatever plants caught my eye.  Thus... my garden had a crazy mix of tomatoes... peppers and... for kicks - I thought I'd plant some yellow squash.....well - just ONE yellow squash plant.

My tomatoe plants did fantastic... I had mountains of tomatoes - in fact - my friends started to run from me by the end of the season - - no more tomatoes.... please!!

My peppers, however,  would never make it off the ground.  I would plant a sweet tender plant only to come back the next day and find a twig where the plant used to be.  I couldn't figure it out.  I thought it was my dog - and watched him like a hawk - but he never went near the garden....and then one day while looking out my window I saw the culprit.... A loud, obnoxious starling walked right over to my little plant - took his beak and starting at the bottom of the stem - ran his beak from  bottom to top - cleanly stripping off every leaf.   To what end I'm not sure - it's not like he ATE the leaves.... he just stripped the leaves and then flew away...laughing all the way home - I'm  sure.  

I think the starling was working in collusion with the one squash plant - because with no competition for the garden - it soon
took over the WORLD!

It dwarfed my tomatoe plants - and pushed out any chance I had of anything else growing  by shadowing the ground completely.  And let me tell you - anyone who hasn't grown yellow squash has no idea just how bad those plants can smell.... it almost broke me of eating yellow squash completely!