Journal 4-20-08

It's been raining pretty hard all night, but the sky is clear at the moment and the stars and the full moon are out.

I surveyed the garden yesterday and experienced a mix of joy and chagrin. The eggplant has TWO! healthy purple flowers on it, and the pepper is growing little buds.

In the bed, things are not so rosy. The begonia, which I put where the pepper had been, is dying. The sunflower that was near that spot is dead [click on the pictures to see better detail].

The rose seems burned and the tomato is rather crusty too. Only the nasturtiums and lavender are ok (though something has been eating holes in the nasturtium leaves--no biggie, at the moment). Zach and I were puzzling over it and we had an idea. The "blight" that seems to be sweeping the wall bed looks rather like burning. The dogs up above pee near the edge of the wall. I'm wondering if it either seeps down the wall and comes out in the bed (the wall being stacked volcanic rock) or if Kekoa--the male--may spray a little and get some on my flower bed. In the photo I've included you can see the area above where the dogs pee and the area below where my flowers are trying to grow.

The rosemary that grows above the wall has a huge brown spot of burn, and I often smell urine from up there, so it seems plausible. The sickness seems to be most concentrated on the one end and becomes less pronounced further down the bed.
If this is the case, I think that I may have to abandon that bed and move everything--perhaps to the bed under the stairs. That would be ok, as everything over there is thriving. Maybe I can just leave the nasturtiums, which seem to be unaffected, and let them take over the wall bed. If they can survive, it would end up being very pretty when they flower.

Gardening seems to be an exercise in patience, faith, and hope--three things that I have in small supply most of the time--I perhaps I'll end up growing with my flowers.