Okay, I am letting one of my alter-egos take over for me today. Let’s just say that if god depended on me to provide food to the world, *all* of the plants everywhere would die and we would all starve. I am entranced with gardening and farming but somehow I just don’t have the guzzinto to make it happen in my own back yard. I mean I can go out and buy 29 packages of various seeds with all sorts of grand plans and come home and stash them somewhere for 15 years. And yes, I did that once… A couple of beach urchins were helping me choose them… It is sometimes a wonder to me that those urchins managed to grow up into responsible adults with a pushover mother like me…

Anyway, here are the rules:

— Do not buy any plant (ANY PLANT) that you don’t actually plan on *planting* into something (ground or pot or whatever) within 48 hours, preferably as soon as you get it home.

— Do not buy seeds. Do not buy seeds. Do not buy seeds. Do not buy seeds. What did I buy today? Among many other things, two packets of lavender seeds… Sigh…

— Buy soil if you don’t want to make your own. I *can* make my own. We have an active compost heap and we *can* make planting soil. But I *hate* doing it. When I get around to potting my impatiens, the GG is usually around to make some good soil for me and fill my pots up with it. This year he was not around that day. I bought soil. Alas, I didn’t fill my pots properly and actually they are not doing very well. Sigh.

— If you are not into tilling a huge plot of land… Huge in my case being greater than about an 18 inch diameter pot… don’t try to do it. Buy things (like tomato plants) that are already started and put them into some of those old pots that are in the back of the shed that haven’t been used in umpteen gazillion years. I am not exactly sure why we even have all of those pots. I used to think it was “cheating” to buy plants that somebody else had already started. I would buy tomato seeds and “start” them inside the Landfill. And I would forget to water them. I think I might have managed to get one or two cherry tomatoes one year using that method. This year? I bought some plants. I don’t know what we’ll get out of them. I’m sure I’m probably doing something wrong. But they are doing well so far and even have flowers on them!

— If I don’t get tomatoes, I won’t sweat it. I’ll do what I usually do, which is buy them from Farmer John at work.

— Er, let your children use your yard to garden… If they live close enough to you to do that of course…

P. S. That is Farmer Bill back there digging out clay so he can fill in that little plot with the yard of soil we bought today.

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