The Ugly Marigold: Miracles of Composting

When we bought the house we live in now, and that for only Eight More Days, there were two gnarly swaths of green in front of the house like Einstein Unibrows. The sidewalk and stairs shaved a path between the big green lumps that reached almost to the top of the porch rail and prevented you from seeing the front yard at all if you were sitting on the front porch to take in the evening air or usher in a rolling thunderstorm from the west.

Almost needless to say, they had to go.

And I say 'almost needless' because I did have a couple of people say that bushes look so nice in front of a house. Well, bushes might, but not shrubbery clearly under the influence of the Knights Who Say "Ni!". So one fine Spring day I sallied forth with a little handsaw wearing too much clothing for such beautiful weather. I spent the next 3-4 hours crawling under, cutting down and disentangling this series of overgrown, pesky bushes. At the end of it all, they were gone, sitting in front of the house to be chipped by the city clean-up folks, and my hair was full of spiders.

Left behind was earth full of roots and completely sapped of any nutrients at all. So began our efforts to rehabilitate this scraggly stretch of land. We compost, so we used our compost and some fresh dirt to fill in around the roots. At the end of the summer I threw out some seeds that my Mum had saved back from her flower garden. A few came up.

This spring we home mulched and pine-bark mulched and planted some flowers after installing new lattices. We planted a little early, but we were putting our house on the market and the barren scrag of land needed some love. Most of the flowers did fine, but you can tell that they are not planted in healthy soil.

ONE DAY, My husband comes inside and announces that a marigold from last year came up, but it was in a bad place and looked kind of awful, so he transplanted into a spot on the other side where it might get better sun and have more room. I looked it at, and indeed, it looked all crumpled. I doubted it was a marigold, but I could not figure out what it was, and my husband was convinced. So it grew and grew and frankly we forgot all about it.

Last week we were coming out of the house and my husband stopped me. Well, he said, I guess you were right. It is NOT a marigold.

It was now two feet high, green and leafy. I took a closer look.

AH HA!! I knew this plant looked familiar! Look at the tiny yellow flowers near the leaves on this branch here.

TOMATO.

We have a tomato plant in front of our house. We can't tell what type it is yet, and Lord knows if the seed came from our garden last year or from one that we bought. It must have stayed viable in our kitchen compost. Hopefully the new neighbors will enjoy it, whatever it is.