You can print these guys out and color them!!!
Hello, garden!!! That’s what I say each morning when papa lets me out to do whatever it is I do when I’m let out. Mama gets these big sacks of lovely dry paillis, straw to me, which she proceeds to spread around all of her plants and seedlings to keep the moisture in and to cut back on so much watering. I hear that in California water is already being rationed and it’s not so abundant in many other places on our poor earth, so we’re trying to stop watering so much and do rain dances to help out.
But oh, that straw. Mama has a book called How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back by Ruth Stout, now long gone to her compost pile in the sky, and Ms. Stout’s premise is that if you mulch enough, you’ll never have to weed or worry about insects and snails and slugs and all those things that make a gardener want to lay concrete over the whole thing!
Well, not really, but mulch is the magic, the secret of a successful and work-free garden. Mama lays down the mulch about 5 inches thick, maybe more in places around the tomatoes, because when they flower, she stops watering so much and they don’t get yellow and attacked by diseases. Of course, now, she has resistant VF Roma tomatoes and others from Burpee that are bred to ward off those horrible maladies that make your tomatoes look as if they have a headache and the flu and leprosy all over their leaves.
This is straw made from the hemp plant!!! Hmmm…..
Mama says it feeds the garden naturally as it disintegrates so that she needs no extra fertilizers, but I happen to know that she gives organic drugs to her plants on the sly…
Mulch for the seedlings, YES!
I love to roll in the straw, and do, and then I come in to show mama how much fun it was and it drops all over her desk, along with some of the garden dirt, and she says, Loulou, go outside this minute and let me brush you—you are a mess and please don’t drop straw in your computer when you write, PLEASE!
Well, that’s about it on straw. It’s the same material for stuffing a scarecrow, but guess what—when you use mulch you don’t NEED a scarecrow.
Besides we have no crows, duh. This is what we have instead and they help the garden:
Is that my cousin?
Hey, our neighbour is starting to mulch, too!
Yay! Hemp straw to roll in and a “tuxie” Magpie (is it a Magpie?) to chatter at. Loulou, there must be a post as a garden style editor going somewhere, with your name on it. Your choice of colour co-ordinated garden bird is excellent. Very tasteful (and tasty)
Hehe
Mungo xx
That birdie comes every morning and washes in MY birdbath–I DRINK FROM THAT WATER, BIRD-BRAIN!!! But he’s very clean so….