Doing the Lord's Work

I love the expression "Doing the Lord's work", or, more specifically, "Doin' the Lord's work" (gotta drop them "g's"!). Used in a non-religious context, I see it like the phrase "Fighting the good fight", but more fun and dramatic. I say it all the time at work when somebody else is making coffee (which, I need to stop, because everybody thinks I'm weird enough as it is). I think it when I see somebody returning a cart to the corral at the grocery store. I also love the expression "Come to Jesus", as in "Somebody needs to have a 'Come to Jesus' with Nancy about her ham salad. She uses way too much mayo!" But that's neither here nor there.

Despite the threat of rain looming overhead, I got up early this morning and decided to do the Lord's work with some of my plants that were in pots simply too small for their ever-increasing girth. Let me tell you, repotting established plants SUCKS. I hate it. Last year, I wound up actually taking a hammer to probably $100 worth of terracotta pots (cry) instead of attempting to extract the root ball. Weak, and this year I attempted to avoid this by planting in pots that I *thought* would be big enough. Well, I thought wrong, so that was a fun hour and a half.

I started small by taking my serranos out of one of those long planters, which, even as seedlings, they were threatening to outgrow imminently. That was fine because they were tiny. From there, I moved on to one of my Brussels sprouts, which was flourishing yesterday, but today looked sick and sad. Since it's just one plant, it went along relatively smoothly and without incident. And finally, I moved on to my globe or cherry tomato, not sure which, and that was a nightmare.

I mentioned in a previous post that my tomatoes make me a complete basket case. This is because I'm scared I'm either doing too much to them or not doing enough. Nothing seems right. Also, the squirrels, or some vile animal in my neighborhood, will straight up attack them, just kill the damn tomato but not actually eat it, just leave it mangled and rotting on the vine. Infuriating.

Anyway, my globe or cherry tomato plant is starting to get brown leaves, and I think it could have been one of two things (or a combination thereof):

1. The pot I started it in was much too small, and/or
2. There are actually three separate tomato plants that came out of that seed pod, and they're fighting with each other. Whoops.

Both of the above statements are totally true, so I decided to do something about it. I took the one tomato plant that was off to the side of the pot and savagely hacked at the soil in the original container until it had started to knock free of the rest of the dirt. I then ripped it out of the pot, and put it into its new home. The other two plants I see as Siamese twins, there's no separating them without doing major, life-changing damage to the whole. So, they went into a new home by themselves. I'm just going to take a wait-and-see approach to this, and just hope that they thrive apart as they (previously) thrived together.

To wind down my morning of manual labor, I decided to stake my peppers, which I find super fun and exciting because it's easy, and I get to poke sticks in dirt. Last year I didn't have any twine, so I had to tie the stakes with gold sparkle ribbon. But this year, it's a bit more appropriate. (Although, between us, I'm not quite sure the habaneros really need to be staked? It seems to be growing more as a bush than a tree. I'll keep an eye on it)

Also, I decided that I need to get more aggressive about my basil. I'm obsessed with basil pesto, and my one plant, while robust, won't provide for my pesto needs. So, I'm took some cuttings, and when the roots develop, I plan on sticking it in the windowbox that formerly held my serranos. And then I will have PESTO FARM 3000!

The rest of this post will be basically a picture dump because I need to be praised for all of my hard work and because I have probably another hour to kill before I can grill my Thai pork fail Mu Ping.

Here's my partial shade group--cilantro, parsley, and artichoke. They're so easy. I really, really hope that artichoke plant produces in the first year.

Most of the herbs, also super easy and thriving. You don't hear the dill complaining to be repotted! I'm talking to you, tomatoes!

My beloved beagle, Pickles. Such a brat, though. But still, cute. Here she's "helping me garden". Oh neat, and there's my computer chair. It's famous!

My repotted Brussels sprout. Seems to be doing ok.

My crown jewel and white whale, tarragon, which seems to finally be growing (!!!!!!).

And here's what I see when I look out the sliding-glass door: the majority of my garden, my favorite hobby, and what will hopefully become the well-earned results of doing the Lord's work.