Digging in the Dirt: What a Difference - Dominica Myers

Planting potatoes

Digging in the Dirt:

What a Difference

by Dominica Myers

When I was in college, my Mom turned me on to the music of Dinah Washington, and as Ms. Washington’s signature song so aptly states – What a Diff’rence a Day Makes.

Well, it’s more like a week in this case…what a difference a week makes! Last week, I was practically paralyzed in overstimulated fear standing on the seed packet aisle at the local department chain store. Today the heavens opened up and introduced me to the family-owned and infinitely friendly Sky Nursery in Shoreline. I’d had several green thumb friends recommend Sky and it’s a good thing I finally took them up on the advice. What an oasis!

I started my visit there less than 30 minutes before closing, after a long day of work, with the same glazed-eyed, overwhelmed stupor as my trip to the department store last week. But this time, some friendly soul came up and asked if I needed help and then passed me on to an edibles gardening specialist named Karen, who showed me exactly the vegetable starts I showed interest in and carefully explained the difference between the varieties. Jack was his normal, jumping bean, precocious self, so Karen kindly pointed him to the next aisle over where there’s a little station with crayons and paper for the kidlets.

While Jack colored his rainbow rainy day umbrella ditto, Karen showed me to some starts for sugar snap peas, Buttercrunch and Romaine lettuce, spinach, and two varieties of strawberries. We also picked up seeded white and red potatoes for planting in the burlap sacks that we got last week from the community school dad, and a big bag of organic potting soil. We had also wanted carrot seeds, tomatoes, and maybe some flowers for a little color and fun, but had decided to wait until next weekend. After all, we were gonna start small, right? Plus, the nice lady on the way out said I don’t have to start the tomatoes until the weather warms up after Mother’s Day. Score!

We finished about 10 minutes after closing time, but they never mentioned it or hurried us out. I didn’t even notice until I turned the car on and saw the time.

Jack was super excited to be sharing the back seat with the vegetable starts and even more excited to get home, rinse out the kitty litter containers, and get some dirt in them! We’d picked up some gardening gloves and mini-shovels from the Dollar store weeks earlier, so he wanted to bust those bad boys out and start…ninja fighting.

Amidst the ninja fighting shovels and consequent sound effects, we rolled down the sides of the burlap sacks and planted the seeded potatoes in them – three inches of soil above and below, and one variety in each bag. The potting soil bag only turned out to be enough for the potatoes and two varieties of strawberries, so we’ll have to go back for another bag tomorrow or the next couple of days. I forgot to poke holes in the bottom of one of the buckets for drainage before putting the soil and strawberry start in.  We’ll have to figure that one out…

Seattle forecast is calling for lots of sunshine this week (happy dance!), though a bone chilling 38 degrees tonight (ugh!). I hope my strawberries are okay out there. My semi-maternal instincts decided to semi-cover them with lids to keep the cold out. I hope that was right. I’m poking around in the dark a bit here, but at least I’m feeling inspired and accomplished. What a difference a week makes. Let’s see if something grows!

Seattle native, Dominica Myers, is a theatre artist, writer, and arts administrator. She lives just outside Seattle with her small family and two cats, and enjoys writing most when it rains.   Follow her on Twitter.

(Above photos by Dominica Myers)

Digging in the Dirt: Start Small by Dominica Myers

Jack and the starts!

Digging in the Dirt:

Start Small

by Dominica Myers

I could use a Dolly Parton moment these days when it comes to this whole gardening idea: that moment at your first Dolly Parton concert when the curtain drops and there she is, live and in dazzling rhinestone color, radiating love and down home happiness in all of her shining Dolly glory.  Right now I’m feeling more like a drunken frat boy at the local karaoke bar pretending he knows all the words to 9 to 5.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but I’m definitely on gardening research overload. Seattle latched onto the urban farming thing years ago, and has managed to make raised beds, bean trellises, and compost piles look damn cool. I’m well behind the curve, and perhaps putting unfair pressure on myself to perform. But I’m sticking to it.

One of the community moms from my son Jack’s school loaned me a locally written gardening book. The advice from it that struck me most is to start small. Jack and I made a list of vegetables and fruits we like to eat. His list is not long, so this should be pretty easy – carrots, peas, corn, and strawberries. I added lettuce, spinach, potatoes, and tomatoes. It’s a good start.

The chapter in the book on growing edibles in containers offered the best solution to our lack of soil, so I’ve been sorting through the empty kitty litter buckets from the laundry room to use for containers. One of the community dads also brought us two burlap sacks for growing potatoes in. This could be cool!

Empty buckets

I made a small list of the vegetables best to start planting in spring, and whether to use seeds or starts. I thought I could just pick them up from the gardening section of the local department store because they had a weekend sale. But I discovered there can be several confusing varieties of simple things like lettuce or tomato. The rows upon rows of starts were clearly labeled and organized, but in my sensory overloaded panic of “uh, which one do I get?” they all blended together. The shelves of tiny seed packets morphed into one giant packet of being kicked in the shins by the neighborhood veggie bully. Not to mention, Jack was now running, hopping, jumping, and weird noise blurting all up and down the aisle like those annoying children in grocery stores whose “inattentive” parents you swear you’ll never be.

I went home hungry, dismayed, and empty handed.

This next week’s tasks will consist of washing out the kitty litter buckets, placing them in my carport, and heading to the local family-owned nursery, where hopefully I’ll gain the courage to purchase at least one thing that grows…and plant it. Start small. Think Dolly and shine.

Seattle native, Dominica Myers, is a theatre artist, writer, and arts administrator. She lives just outside Seattle with her small family and two cats, and enjoys writing most when it rains.   Follow her on Twitter.

(Above photos by Dominica Myers)

Digging in the Dirt: I Dream a Garden by Dominica Myers

DIGGING IN THE DIRT:
I DREAM A GARDEN

by Dominica Myers 

“You are all parts of your dream. You are the symbols, you are the actions, you are the scenery, you are the people in your dream, you are you. You are all parts of your dream.”

- Janet Myers

My mother was an interpreter. Dreams were always safe to be dreamt, often and wild, because I knew they meant nothing and everything. I knew when they were sacred, prophetic, and voiced from the stars. I knew when they were fanciful and baseless. Waking up in the morning meant new dreams and new reasons to call my Mom, for she was an interpreter of Dreams.

My dream today is very simple: I want to plant a garden. I want to plant a nice organic vegetable garden with a sprinkling of herbs and berries. I’ve actually wanted to plant a garden for quite some time, but I’ve always had excuses. I’m a renter, a solo mom, a serial houseplant killer. I don’t know a thing about how to plant or where or when or what to put it in. I had started to try to dig and weed out an overgrown rose garden in the yard of a North Seattle rental cottage year before last, but there was a reason it was overgrown with relentless, writhing, Walking Dead weeds. I was clueless on how to tame the beastly richness of it, so that didn’t last long.

Part of me wants desperately to be like my Depression-era Grama who purposely only owned three pair of shoes – everyday shoes, dress shoes (worn maybe once a year), and garden shoes. Her vegetable garden was majestic. It was so big that it had rows that required annual rototilling. She dug in that bad boy every day I can remember. She grew carrots, parsnip, zucchini, strawberries, rhubarb, pumpkins, squash, peas, potatoes, all kinds of edibles. And flowers – flower beds everywhere! I remember planting sunflowers with her when I was six years old and they grew to be twice my height. I lived with my grandparents out in the boonies for six years of my formative life. How in the world did this gardening thing not rub off on me sooner? I asked Mom once how Grama knew SO much about gardening, and she said it was just something old ladies got into as they aged, and that someday I’d be an old lady and get into it too. Technically, Mom was older than I am now when she said that, so I’m not sure I’m buying the old lady thing. But she was right about one thing: I really do want a garden.

More than want, I need a garden. I need to grow things and feel accomplished at something that requires more work and diligence than talent. I need to feel close to my mother and grandmother again in places that can only be cleansed by dirty hands in soil plucking weeds and touching wormies. I need to feel like I could grow my own food in case of the zombie apocalypse. I need to grow a garden. Maybe not Grama’s epic earthly manifesto garden, but maybe I could start with something small. Maybe something in pots or containers.

Our current rental is a lower level mother-in-law with a covered carport, which I share with my six year old son and two cats. With no soil, and an average of only 45 days of sunshine per year in the Seattle area (not to mention, almost no gardening skills, tools, or knowledge whatsoever), I will have my work cut out for me.

But I am all parts of my Dream, and I dream a garden. I’d like to take you with me on this journey to keep me company in my fumblings, and keep me honest in my intentions. After all, you are part of my Dream too. Come along with me, yes? Let’s grow a garden. 

Seattle native, Dominica Myers, is a theatre artist, writer, and soccer mom. She lives just outside Seattle with her small family and two cats, and enjoys writing most when it rains.  Follow her on Twitter.

Editor's Note:  So excited to be launching this new sereies with the lovely Dominica Myers!  Check the Zestyverse on Fridays for new posts on her progress!