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From Nathan Kurz, Webserf:

Hi! I'm Nate, one of the Research and Development programmers here at Tripod. It's a rainy summer day here in Williamstown, but that's not such a bad thing. Sure, the parking lot gets a bit muddy, but the garden can use the rain. And the corn really needs all the help it can get.

Tripod's garden is a small four-by-forty foot strip at the edge of the parking lot. There are a few coneflowers donated by Janet, but otherwise it's a proud and hard-working vegetable garden. Tomatoes and basil dominate, but most of the usual vegetables are present, at least in token quantities. Lettuce, cucumbers, broccoli, beans, melons, sweet corn, radishes, and peppers are all represented.

The garden started in late March in my kitchen. With snow still on the ground, I planted several flats of seeds and a number of peat pots. Apart from the cherry tomatoes ruined by a wild rampaging beast known as TriPup, the seedlings did really well. Occasionally my compassion for a particular seedling would get the best of me, but this time I even adhered to my plan of thinning ruthlessly.

In April, Ethan and I chose a spot and asked Bo the CEO if there was any problem putting a garden there. Bo negotiated for options on the early cherry tomatoes, and then passed the decision on to Bruce, the keeper of pursestrings. Bruce thought about it for a moment, considered the (absence of) financial implications, and decided that there was no problem. The next day we stripped the sod and started digging.

And digging, and digging, and digging. The digging took a bit longer than we had planned, perhaps because we were overly ambitious regarding the depth of the bed. Like true R&D; folk we took into account the unlikely eventuality of someday planting asparagus, and turned the first trench to 18 inches. The second bed was a more reasonable 10 inches deep, and we received far fewer grave-digging jokes.

In the first week of May, we planted. I brought the seedlings from home and we opened the seed packets. Like the digging, planting took a good deal longer than expected. Humming appropriate REM, we finished planting by moonlight. In the interests of expediency, we decided not to label the rows. Like programmers worldwide, we figured that there was little need for documentation when you have source.

Apart from the snow peas which never came up (despite a second planting) and the spinach which withered and disappeared the first week, everything looks quite healthy. Some of the corn is a bit stunted, easily attributed to being in the shady side of the garden, but it looks like it might produce. The melons are spreading, the broccoli is forming heads, and the peppers are in bloom.

I've already been eating beans, carrots, lettuce and cucumbers. There are tons of green tomatoes and there is going to be enough basil for a spectacularly large batch of pesto. Sometimes I wonder how many other Internet startups have vegetable gardens. Not as many as should, I'd wager.

C you later,
++Nate

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.

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