Cat Garden (3) - accidental success

Nettles grew tall and dense in the Spring and she cut them for mulch.  Cats used them for bedding for a while but they quickly disappeared.  It is hungry soil.

More seeds, this time covered with the bottom half of big 10litre plastic water bottles to protect them from the digging and rearranging.  

Calendula grew and enough managed to survive to produce plenty of seeds to go around.  Three gazania seedlings transplanted from the first garden have hung in there and are just about to flower.

Gia-Gia's geraniums are loving all the compost and 'manure'; they are making a lot of leaves but not so many flowers yet.

The Bay tree loves it there.  It is covered in new light green leaves and has doubled its height.  It is now all of 30cm tall!  (Tree indeed!)

The shutters stand open on the adjoining house (windows at garden level were never unshuttered through last Summer's stink).

A few straggler nettles poked their heads up but the season is heating up and they looked thin and weak. 

Yesterday F went to pull out those nettles and mulch them around a pumpkin seedling that has struggled into existence there.  She took a plastic bottle with the bottom cut out to bury (upside down) beside the pumpkin so that it would funnel water below the surface of the soil and force the pumpkin's roots to seek moisture further down rather than at the surface where it will easily dry out and be a victim of heat and drought.  A litre of water a day (applied on the way to work), goes a long way to keeping a thirsty pumpkin alive if poured under the ground like that.

As the nettles came away, the scene revealed tomato plants, pepper plants, NZ Spinach plants, and a couple of peach (or nectarine) seedlings.  Imagine that! Accidental success growing out of seeds that had gone into the compost with the fruit and veg scraps.

And best of all???  The adjoining windows opened and F looked up from her contemplation of the tiny veg to hear a woman's voice saying how nice it was to have flowers growing here.

Credit to Icon-Art.com 
(Encouragement on a Card)

Today F buried some more water funnels.  Maybe someone else will be encouraged to add a little water sometimes. Folks are always out watering the pavements in front of their apartments; a tiny proportion of that water would change the landscape if it happened onto the 'garden' instead of simply running away down the street.  The vegetables will not produce anything, but their roots will contribute to the gradual improvement of the whole garden, and one day, maybe next year, the whole garden will have flowers that can survive heat and drought (and best of all provide shade and hiding places for resting cats).

Karma is great isn't it?