A bit of this and that

I’ve been trying to tune out most of the news and social media drama. One of my adult kids told me about Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon being fired yesterday, because I was working on my little container garden. I don’t really care about either situation – like not at all. I heard the same hoopla when Bill O’Reilly was fired too. Before giving a little bit of an update on my small gardening effort, first I want to recommend this video I saw today that I think is worthwhile:

In the information box below this video, Prepper Potpourri included a video she made 8 years ago, titled, Digitizing Fear, that explained the sensationalism that drives both news media and social media. There really is a lot of fearmongering in the news media and on social media. I realized that I was letting too much of the right-wing online echo-chamber influence me. I avoid the left-wing echo-chamber, because that’s been too crazy for me to deal with for a long, long time. Distancing myself from a lot of that has improved my outlook. Some of the worst fearmongers online insist they are telling the truth, trying to inform people and that they see all these connections between all sorts of happenings – like every news event that gets hyped is part of some grand conspiracy. So far, I’ve been able to manage my daily life without any big drama caused by the economic collapse, the dire climate change, or having to build a bunker in my backyard. Anyway, realistically where I live the water table is high and they don’t even build basements, because they’ll fill up with water, so a bunker is a no-go.

All kidding aside, I see the big crises stuff brewing. I do take it seriously and work on being better prepared, but I’m trying to incorporate my “prepping” efforts into my daily life preparedness. Back in the 1980s there was a TV show, MacGyver, and the main character was the most resourceful person at preventing crises all over the world. He was even more impressive than Superman, because while Superman had special powers, MacGyver had only a vast arsenal of scientific knowledge and could figure out ingenious solutions to save America (and the world) from catastrophe in every episode. I am not very good at mechanical or technical stuff and in fact, my late husband took care of all that sort of stuff. Now I’m in my 60s and trying to learn how to handle some of those things myself. I feel incompetent frequently and I do have to ask my sons for help more often than I care to admit. The chances of me being some great survivalist are slim to non-existent, but I am trying to learn to be more self-reliant, while going about everyday life. We all need to live in the now, not in some imaginary future crises.

Now onto the gardening – I debated even planting a container garden. When I started some seeds indoors, a lot weren’t doing well. Then it was the weird weather – hot to cold, back to hot and cold. It’s been unusual weather here. As my excuses piled up, I finally decided to just get busy and get planting. I bought two bags of onion sets for green onions and two bags of starter potatoes at Walmart, but everything else I planted from seed. I also bought 6 bags of compost and mixed compost with the potting soil from last year. I had spent a lot of money on gardening supplies last spring, to get started, and decided that since I have so much stuff from last year, plus I’ve been buying seeds continually over the past year, that I was going to make an effort to use what I have. We’ll see how things go.

Those 5 pieces of succulent that were given to me last year made it through the winter just fine and it’s growing. I have two planters with green onions – one from a few weeks back and another one I just planted a few days ago. I also have grow bags in the background with some stevia plants I started from seed and two rosemary plants I started from cuttings off my rosemary plant I bought last year. I started some dill from seed too,

Here are 10 containers with better boy tomatoes from seed. I have 10 containers of cherry tomatoes, also started from seed, 10 containers of green bell peppers, 10 containers of Marconi peppers, 10 containers of green beans, 10 containers of fava beans, and 10 containers of cabbage. I have a few containers of squash planted, a planter box of lettuce and one of radishes, some cucumbers, the potatoes, plus I have things still growing from last year. I planted more basil and cilantro, but other herbs grew through the winter, like the two kinds of mint, lemon balm, oregano, rosemary, thyme, parsley and catnip. I planted garlic late in the fall and that’s still doing fine.

Last spring I bought 6 blackberry bushes, a grapevine, an orange tree and a lime tree, plus strawberry plants from Stark Bros. Those are all alive, except some of the strawberry plants didn’t make it, but the ones that did survive are producing strawberries already. I also purchased 4 blueberry bushes at Lowe’s last year and in the fall I planted them in the ground. Those are growing and have some berries on them.

Violas are still blooming and some lettuce seeds from last year sprouted in the container too. I have cosmos and zinnias growing that are from seeds that dropped last year, which feels like a gift.

This is mint I started with a couple cuttings from mint growing in my backyard. That original mint is from over 20 years ago, when I made the mistake of planting some mint cuttings a friend gave me in a flower bed I used to have in the backyard. That mint spread around the backyard and some even migrated into the front yard. I thought it was all dead, but last spring I saw a little bit in my backyard. These grow bags look pretty rough after a year, but they’re still holding up and the mint is thriving in it.

That’s the garden update. I’m glad I didn’t give up on planting a garden this year. Once I got started, it has been fun and it feels good.