I celebrated Beltane last night in the traditional way (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), and today I got some more soil & another planter for my balcony garden. Of course, I didn’t get enough soil, since somehow I always overestimate how much will fill my planters… those bags of soil look like they hold more dirt before they’re opened than after, when I’ve dumped the dirt into planters. And I wouldn’t know a “cubic foot” (which is apparently a measurement of dirt) from a cubit.

Of course, there are a few other minor annoyances related to the garden.

I’ve now confirmed that the local squirrels consider my seedlings to be an all-you-can-eat vegetable buffet. They seem to like the beet greens the most, which is no big loss to me. (I only planted beets for Geoffrey’s sake.) And how, you might ask, did I confirm squirrels were on the balcony, without catching them in the act? Two words: squirrel poo. (Which, I might add, the cats found intensely fascinating!)

My camera’s battery charger got misplaced again, which drives me batty since I want to take pictures of more than a few things in the immediate future, especially the garden. The battery charger needs some kind of huge paperweight attached to it when I find it, so it won’t get lost every time I turn around.

Another minor irk is that when I transplanted the seedlings from their little starter pots into the big planters, I apparently mislabeled some of the seedlings. After finding big fat leaves growing in the planter labeled “carrots” instead of “pumpkins,” I knew there was at least one mix-up. Luckily, I know what sugar pea plants look like when they’re just starting, so those were labeled properly — and they’re growing like mad! But it looks like there’s two different kinds of little seedlings growing in what was labeled “pumpkins,” and neither of them are pumpkins, so I suspect there’s more in that planter than carrots. I just don’t know what else. Therefore, some of my vegie plants may remain mysteries until I can actually see vegies on them!

Luckily the Walla Walla sweet onions, catnip, butter lettuce, broccoli, and cantaloupe were labeled correctly… at least, they appear to be what they’re supposed to be. I had to thin the broccoli patch into 2 planters, since they were growing like crazy, and I’ll probably have to get yet another planter for the lettuce — and maybe the pumpkins, as well. The fastest-growing things (so far) are the butter lettuce, broccoli, sugar peas, and pumpkins. I highly recommend those vegies for other people like myself, who need “Gardening for Dummies” and probably couldn’t grow squat without that fabulous stuff called Miracle Gro potting soil!

Sheesh, I’m the only Pagan I know who has (thus far) been an absolute failure at gardening — and if I don’t get any actual vegies out of this attempt, I think I’m going to just give up.