A Hesitant and Completely Uninformed Beginning

Thus begins my garden blog. Many thanks go to Patrick over at Tennegreen for inspiring me to embark on such a venture.

As for the name: Jean-Jacques Rousseau is likely still my favorite political philosopher and was, as is perhaps less well known, an avid botanist and sometime gardener. Rousseau's experimentation and curiousity I hope to make my own.

On this blog, I'll be updating my (many) travails as I begin my first garden. Right now, I have nothing but a yard. My plan, over the course of the next 9 months, is to get my garden ready (i.e. put in terraces, prepare the soil, build a compost box, start plants indoors, etc.) and come April, I'll be ready to plant. To that end, here's what I've got to work with:



As you can see, I have a hill in my back yard. There are some other places that I might put in a garden, but as the hill is fairly useless (and hard to mow), I've been thinking that I'll put in terraces. Hopefully I'm going to be able to procure some rocks from friends (and/or friendly Craigslist people). My original plan was to do two terraces (i.e. two stone retaining walls) on each side of the hill, with a strip of grass separating the two -- a "path" up to the top of the hill.

As of right now, my gardening tools are...limited.

I have some loppers (is there a more technical name?):

I also have one of these things (what the hell is this devilish murder weapon called?) for digging...uh...things up. Like weeds. Yeah. That's what it's for.



Finally, we have two lovely sets of
gardening gloves, one for me, one
for the missus:




I know I need a shovel and perhaps a hoe. Maybe a spade? I don't know. I need to do some research. After doing all my digging (don't worry, I'll be taking pictures), I think I might need to test the soil's pH or something. Who knows. Right now, I'm just focusing on digging and wall-building (at least I've read some about those things).

Some leafier news: I have Chia Herbs! Sara Beth's mom got them for me and, in a spate of kitchen passion, I "planted" them the other day (planting means only soaking the patented Chia sponge, sprinkling the seeds on top, covering with plastic, and keeping watered). I've planted basil, dill, parsley, and cilantro: all the herbs that I use constantly but always have to get more of since I only use some and the rest rots in the fridge. Anyway, some of the herbs are coming along nicely (it's only been a week), so I'm pretty excited.

Behold! The beginning of my garden: