In my imagination, I'm a gardener. I grow tomatoes and peppers, sunflowers, and rather ambitiously I even grow (in my very fertile imagination) loofas. I just found out a few years ago that you could grow loofas in a garden. I had previously thought them to be a rather unfortunate sea creature who had given its life in the name of exfoliation.
In my reality, I'm a serial plant killer. Every year I either plant seeds or buy a few plants. My seeds sprout dutifully, then the carnage. I occasionally coax a plant into flowering. I very rarely manage to convince a plant to produce fruit. I generally end the summer with a 'crop' of two small tomatoes and a shriveled up (single) okra finger.
I bought a composter a few years ago. I composted all kinds of stuff. I wasn't a good compost master. I would forget to add 'browns.' I would forget to add water. I would put in large bits of stuff. (I kind of wanted to know what would happen to them.) There were maggots in my compost- I don't know if that was good or not. I should have given it a starter, I should have given it worms. I should have cared ... meh. I'm a terrible composter.
I bought a small collapsible greenhouse this spring. We got it put together and placed neatly outside my kitchen window where I could attend to it more easily than the composter (which was inconveniently out in the back yard.) I had a few dead plants in there. It was made out of plastic canvas, and metal rods. It was very tent-like. It had been blown around in the wind a few times, so it was anchored down with two cinder blocks. I hadn't used it much in the spring, as we were late in getting it ready, but I thought surely I'll have use for it in the fall when the temps start dipping and I need a place to keep my not-dead-yet plants covered.
Last week I learned there was a beehive of probably 10,000 bees living in my composter. While I don't know the exact date of my last interaction with the composter, I know it was between 6-8 weeks ago. Bees can swarm and start creating their hive in a matter of days- so even if it hadn't been that long this could have happened when I wasn't looking. Once we realized the bees had moved in I called a bee remover (and keeper). When he saw my composter he said, "Oh, those are good little composters, but they are even better bee hives!" and "this is probably the 8th removal I've made from models just like that." and "I can take the bees out, but most likely other bees will move in, since they will smell the last bees and figure it is a good place." Ugh! For $50 and the cost of the composter, my bees have been moved to a nearby farm to live happily ever after.
The story of the greenhouse is less redemptive. I went outside this morning after a 'microburst' wind storm last night. and I saw a cinder block in the place where my greenhouse used to be. Just one cinder block, and no greenhouse. It wasn't blown over, or broken, or blown out of place, it was straight up gone. My husband drove all over the neighborhood looking for my greenhouse. It was not in our yard, the neighbors' yards, the street, the drainage ditch, it was not here, it was not there, NO! it was not anywhere!
What this means to me is that either 1. I should give up gardening or 2. find a way to get a better greenhouse and a better composter. (And figure out a way to stop murdering my plant babies.)
