This summer, ‘sandbox’ took on a different meaning.
This little vegetable garden sandbox is currently a comfy bed to some varieties of vegetables we planted from seed earlier on in the spring.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014
Due to their quick maturing time, radishes can be planted successively through the seasons for a more consistent harvest.
The happy looking cherry belle reminded me of Robert A. Heinlein’s brilliant writings, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961, 1991:86) when the man from Mars, Valentine Michael Smith first encounters grass designed to be used as house rugs:
“Jill sighed and wiggled her toes in the grass. “Gosh, how my feet do hurt!” She glanced up and saw Smith watching her with that curiously disturbing baby-faced stare. “Do it yourself if you want to. You’ll love it.”
He blinked, “How do?”
“I keep forgetting. Come here, I’ll help you.” She got his shoes off, untaped the stockings and peeled them off. “There, doesn’t that feel good?”
Smith wiggled his toes in the cool grass, then said timidly, “But these live?”
“Sure, they’re alive. It’s real live grass. Ben paid a lot to have it that way. Why, the special lighting circuits alone cost more than I make in a month. So walk around and let your feet enjoy it.”
Smith missed much of the speech but he did understand that the grass was made up of living beings and that he was being invited to walk on them. “Walk on living things?” he asks with incredulous horror.
“Huh? Why not? It doesn’t hurt the grass; it was specially developed for house rugs.”
Smith was forced to remind himself that a water brother could not lead him into wrongful action. Apprehensively he let himself be encouraged to walk around – and found that he did enjoy it and that the living creatures did not protest. He set his sensitivity for such things as high as possible; his brother was right, this was the proper being – to be walked on. He resolved to enfold it and praise it; the effort was much like that of a human trying to appreciate the merits of cannibalism – a custom which Smith found perfectly proper.”
The Cherry Belle Radish.
These radishes are grown from seed and makes a quick harvest for the home vegetable garden.
These young pea plants will soon be interspaced with the radishes, with a stake and string support for the climbing vines.