Bounty

I am so grateful.

There is a gravenstein apple tree in my life just now. It is an older, full-sized tree loaded with bright green apples, some blushing shyly in pink. The tree stands central and majestic in the garden of a friend's home I am stewarding while they are away, and its very bounty speaks to me.

Last night, the boys, Seda, and I loaded into the car (we did have many boxes of apples to transport, after all) and crossed four blocks to the tree that awaited our picking. We discovered that one of its great branches had broken in the waiting. Apples hung from heaven to earth with a painful reminder in splintered wood that so much fruit can be too much to hold. Windfall apples underfoot across the sparse lawn settled into boxes to be sauced this week. The boys took turns with the "apple picker" tool comprised of an open metal cage on a long stick to collect the harvest. Seda climbed with boxes up and down our tall orchard ladder.

I sat on the grass, so many apples spread before me. I sorted "B grade" apples into boxes for dehydrating, "C grade" for saucing, and I wrapped "A grade" apples individually in newspaper for autumn and winter eating. As my family laid them before me, I marveled at our teamwork, a harvest in itself. The apples, in both quantity and quality, warmed my heart with hope for a cold winter ahead. We will be fed.

"Look up!" said Sam. The summer sun had released its candy pink hold on the clouds overhead, and as the golden globe had slipped under land, only a blanket of sky behind held the memory of its light. Now the clouds took a monotone blue grey over a background of bright orange gold, fading to an other-worldly lavender, and finally to blue as the scene stretched above us. We all paused to watch.

Almost too much beauty to take in. We packed up our load and headed home, bleary eyed, into dishoveled beds. The house had been ignored in the presence of summer picking. This morning, I awoke in my smallish bed that is piled with four days clean laundry to fold. Both of my boys, after various middle of the night reasonings, snored beside me. And the dog.

So much bounty. May my heart find strength to hold the weight of it all.

Unclocked

In the final hour before Trinidad's orthopedic appointment, my yard vibrated with the harmonic resonance of many, many hands helping. An NVC student of mine bent to earth with buckwheat seeds for the sowing. A three year old neighbor took our water wand to the lettuce bed. My eldest son and his seven year-old friend picked a panoply of green leafy weeds from the garden to make "rabbit salad," and three more children, aged 4-8, sat down on the deck to sort garlic into piles by size in preparation for braiding.

I looked at the clock: 30 minutes to departure by bicycle to the fancy new skyrise across town. Hmmm. Time to check the bees? No snacks had been packed, no faces washed, nor shoes located. Two families of children and one adult would need to make their transitions homeward in those final minutes. Still, the flow moved me; honey called.

Turning my back on the clock, I swept up my hive tool, brush and bee veil under one arm. Those not engaged in Serious Work watched me light up the smoker and wove themselves into the story of the bees in summer harvest. Why does the smoke calm them? What do the bees do? What will you be looking for? Their wide eyes watched me as I crossed the yard and pried the boxes apart, lifting each frame to measure capped comb. These children have seen our bees emerge for their first spring flights last March, and they will follow the honey flow as it is pulled from the hive next month. Each will go home then with sticky hands and stories to tell.

Parents returned through the back gate and gently collected their children. The bees circled round in seemingly chaotic loops, an insect ballet, each returning to the hive with food for the morrow. All of these circles, sacred, and me, through a beeveil, watching.

I set my tools aside and announced our imminent departure. Another miraculous season well-timed from planting to harvest with little thought on my part, all hands and heart in the working. My boys met me on the driveway with shoes on their feet. I grabbed a water bottle and slipped the afternoon sandwich outcasts into my backpack.

We had twenty-five minutes to bike across town, and we arrived exactly on time.

Lavender World

I am not at home. As I type this, I can't read the title of this post and the body is in a text size view of 1 inch. My mom's computer does these contortions, and I haven't even asked why. Isn't that what it's like to visit moms? We go about our daily work, but suddenly a lens is cast over us -- by ourselves, by the habits of old family -- that distort even our daily rhythms. I'm actually more amused than anything. The experience has been a very gentle one so far this trip.

My sister, Robyn, the boys, and I have come to my mother's organic lavender farm (Harvest Moon Lavender) to help with the harvest. Robyn and I have been out cutting lavender (thank God for the Felcos being such a pleasure to hold) for hours each day, kids wandering, hunting lizards, riding the tractor trailer, and swimming.

I imagine my family thinks me a bit odd, avoiding sugar and artificial additives in the kids food on the whole and letting go to the holiday spirit completely as I am overcome by it. Yesterday, Robyn and I made a trip into town with the kids and stopped at a natural bakery/grocery. While Robyn picked out a wine for dinner, the boys used their money to get a GIANT chocolate cupcake with equally enormous frosting. By the time we left the store, Trinidad was barking.

We went to the Arcata Plaza where Trin and Sam broke out their new street hockey set from the dollar store and played hockey on concrete for an hour or so. They were sweating and running furiously. Auntie Robyn came along and became audience to the flight of rubber band launched jets ("Watch out for the bicyclist... oh, the bicyclist... Sorry!"), catapulting plastic flies, and (get this) an almost remote control cockroach. We decided not to take that one to my favorite Chinese restaurant.

So far, mother, two daughters, and grandkids have survived peaceably under one roof. Three and a half days without dispute has got to be a record. I am grateful for their hosting and the fact that over the years of my adulthood, we have learned more and more ways to weave our days together more effectively and beautifully. I am thrilled to have meaningful work to do here, cutting flowers. Meditative, too.

Poetry comes with no pen to write, given over as the clouds trace their truths across the open sky and release their empty words to the western wind. Such is the harvest.

Masked Bandit On My Side

The snails and slugs have taken out 3 of 5 cucumber plants and a couple of winter squash at the base of the stem. I considered giving them a beer party soon. Then, this morning, nature reminded me of my intentions to create a garden where earthly balance, not human intervention, supports growth on a macro scale.

At sunrise, a raccoon wove his way through the raised beds and found a comfortable spot on our deck. He reached out and plucked a snail off of the kale plant beside him, carefully cracked and peeled its shell, and popped the slimy morsel into his mouth. Some interesting facial expressions ensued. He ate another. And another. In the end, a half dozen snail shells sat in a neat pile where he had dined.

Another intention that found fruition in unexpected ways. (Ya' think I could get him to stay and help me make pickles?)

Our Community Garden

Rick Valley inspired me to grow my own flour corn and told me how to do it on mulch in such a way that I could picture getting it done within 3 weeks. He also gave me a little seed.

Anami, up the street, reminded me that I could incorporate beans and squash. Why not? She has come to check my progress and offer Master Gardener worthy advice.

Tim, across the street, said "Sure. You can use my front yard. I hate to mow it anyway."

Dan and Dana lent their pickup for carting leaf mulch, compost, and cardboard.

Jetta, their daughter, helped me test all of the irrigation tape that would water the garden.

The boys and Seda helped me load leaf mulch. Joellen, Jetta's 12-year-old sister, helped them catch crickets when they got bored.

People from all over the neighborhood chatted with me and kept me well-connected while I worked from dawn to dark most of the past week or two.

Jack supplied more seeds and squash plants. He helped shovel leaves and provided irrigation materials and know-how. The cornbread that came out of his oven, baked with local corn, convinced me last autumn to make the effort to source my grains locally.

Sat Hari explored philosophy and spirituality with me from the phone in her own garden, to keep my mind and heart focused on what is real. She asked how I built this garden so she might create one, too.

The children played up and down the street at Evelyn's, Tesha's, the Gormans and the Otas. They ate dinner abroad. I popped in occasionally to supply h'ors doevres or do dishes.

Anne came today and helped me, as I struggled with the blues and a cold, to finish the last pockets of compost and plant rows of corn and beans.

Less and less do I wonder what is mine and what is not, what I do for me and what I do for others. Less and less do I think about what or whether to do, but rather just do what is set before me to do, spending the time in action and intention alone.

The Otas don't mean to push me, but... will I still have time to plant a plot in their back yard? This Sunday, they will be home to help clear the space.

So grows our Community Garden.

Too Sharp for Witchcraft

Here I am, flying low on my pitchfork over the mulch garden I'm putting in at a neighbor's. It is to be sown with corn, beans, and squash. I'll put more details on in the next 24 hours, I hope!

Seeding Hope

All irrigation systems have been tested clear! A seven year-old girl from up the street helped me to lay out and attach the lines to 2 systems I built independently. Then we planted onions together. She and I discussed the many phases of plant life and growing food, fixing nitrogen and mulching. My passion landing as so many seeds scattered through our neighborhood on the wind. Her bright heart, talent, and skill taking root in our garden.

Companion planting at its finest.

Darn Near Perfect Day

Yep. Today was it.

Pushing the envelope: I developed a new skill (thank you so much, Jack, for teaching and patience yesterday) that involved tools. I started at 7:30 a.m. testing drip tape and hooking up an irrigation system in my backyard garden. I've never touched so much as a hammer if I could help it, having been married to a terribly handy man for sixteen years. Gloria Steinem, my apologies. But I do make a dem fine cornbread.

Thinking: Hmm. An exploration of confusion in which I did not get lost. Decided that in the presence of opposing truths, I can peacefully hold them all, but live only my own. Walking this truth with my feet to earth is a living acceptance of my current best understanding of me in the all. Humility itself.

Looking hot: complete raingear and carharts with a red silk scarf and Ketchikan sneakers (Alaska rubber boots). Redefining sex appeal. Seconded by dear friends stopping by.

Connecting: A lovely long phone call with a friend from high school days who lives only blocks away and sent pics email of the garden I helped her install this spring. She is full of excitement and gardening plans. Other friends called in or showed up for brief visits while I worked -- such a treat that these dear ones know how much I hate to leave home in the spring and shift their paths to include mine.

Parenting: A loose definition. More enjoying than actual supervision. A twelve and seven year old from up the street joined us for the whole day. At lunch we took turns making strange noises and teaching each other how. A message from the nextdoor neighbor that Chicken Pox have arrived in the 'hood. Total mayhem reigned indoors while I continued with focus out of doors. The Cherry Poppin' Daddies blared (I checked in with the other kids' mom about her comfort with "inappropriate" lyrics), oranges were peeled, squeals of laughter echoed through the house, and when I finally came in, I found all four sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a live mouse in a clear plastic piggie bank dropping oats through the penny slot. "Wait! Let me get my skateboard!" called Sam.

And blessed focus: A whole day (minus 2 hours for lunch, prep, and clean up) gifted me to walk the line looking for leaks, blister my thumb and forefinger pressing in plastic parts, laugh hysterically at my own forgetfulness and everything else I could think of, look to the clouds measuring so many hours passed, and to be grateful, so very very grateful, for the fully perfect life I lead.

What I Was Afraid to Tell

So I read the Solvay book's treatise (OG gardening on Martha's Vineyard) about the benefits of urine as a fertilizer in the garden. Human urine, amongst others. The author points out, quite rationally, that we are simply dispatching with one of our greatest natural resources while using loads of energy to do so. I thought about that.

Being a garden addict, I have found myself more and more reluctant to go inside to pee. So now I eat, sleep and even pee in the garden. During the winter, it's a challenge to find a green screen. But now, spring is here, and the raspberry canes are three feet tall. Which is not quite tall enough. Hence, when I crouched next to them in a hidden pathway corner, I thought to myself that they themselves, could use the fertilizer.

I hid a blue bucket in the corner of my "sanctuary" garden and began to collect a sample for my own pilot program. I didn't tell anyone. Not even Seda. Frankly, I thought it was rather over the top and expected that my neighbors might really wonder (as in, "Yes! I fertilize with my own urine -- would you care for a salad with lunch?").

I shared the news very quietly by phone to my best girlfriend in town. She's known to be conservative on many points. "You're whispering this because you don't want your boys going around the garden, peeing randomly?" she asked.

"Oh no. I encourage that. I guess I don't want them to know about it so they won't put it into any new-fangled 'potion' that they offer as samples to the neighborhood."

She laughed. And I realized that I worried about both telling and not telling the kids about what I was up to.

Then, this morning, the universe gave me another gentle nudge. I overheard the boys talking about the younger's "job" to make a habitat for the latex frog they were having trouble sharing. Younger brother went outside and got busy. I sighed with relief and kept gardening; another conflict resolved without intervention.

Then I came around the corner and saw my blue bucket with stones and branches carefully arranged in the existing "pond."

I had some explaining to do.

What Grows In Good Dirt

This week has marked a shift in my eldest son's development: he has become project oriented. I have to say that this new phase delights me no end. Sometimes I wonder how I've managed to be a focus-divided, careshowering mother for so long. As Trin helped me shovel 2 yards of compost out of the back of our neighbor's pickup, I sighed deeply to a small voice inside: "This...this is what I've been waiting for." (With the niggling embarrassment and sadness that I would not be entirely delighted with the present always, that I would "wait" for anything my children might or might not have to offer. And a smile of acceptance as well, for me in all my hopeful presentfutureness.)

It felt like an imminent drumroll, this determination that Trinidad suddenly showed around Working the Garden. I have fostered and supported his workplay for years: endless bug collection, weed transplanting, making and selling "good garden dirt" to neighbors, bizarre concoctions of "tea" to be fed to plants, chicken-catching, bee watching and rabbit shepherding.

As we shoveled, side by side, we talked about my work history (from age 5), growing independence, community-building, and his hopes and dreams for the future. We talked about his 2 foot square garden plot. We talked about how much we enjoyed each other's company.

The garden, he tells me, is a great place to grow.

For more on gardening with children, here's an article written by Nick Routledge and me that linked up to the Guardian blog last winter. I welcome any of your favorite "gardening w/kids" articles (links) and references, as I have had a personal request for them. http://www.seedambassadors.org/Mainpages/Guardian/familygardening.htm

Our Failure in the Garden

My friend, Mickyle Lamb, writes to me a question that he is considering deeply as he launches a business in gardening (Ecstatic Gardens can be reached at 541-9612). He is afraid that the two thrusts of purpose he is intuitively drawn to may not be, in some senses, compatible.

Here is the dilemma as I understand it: 1) support folks in creating and maintaining a lasagna-style mulch system garden bed "keyhole" style (almost circle shaped with a path in the middle; see Gaia's Garden) with the intent of making gardening "doable" and "successful" for those with little experience and/or time and 2) experiment with other additives such as biochar, mycelial inoculation, rock dust, etc., in combination, with the intent of adding as much richness and diversity to the soil as possible. The risk, as I see it, is "failure" in the garden.

The "failure," he expects, should not be great -- one nutrient or another not being as bioavailable. But secretly, I think, the question is: what if the client notices?

Here is a lesson from the garden: there is no contract or expectation that the earth will honor of its own free will. What is the relationship that you, as a contractor, seek with the earth to be in your integrity? What is the relationship you wish to promote in your clients as they "meet" the garden?

Our economy is potentially at odds with this course of experimentation and for good reason. Our cultural expectation of "what the Earth can do for us" reflects our transactional and monetary-based (time is money) rather than a need-based, giving economy which includes both short and long term needs of all species and the earth, to the best of our understanding.

My friend is right to be concerned. I will not answer to whether I think it is a "good" idea in terms of our current cultural-economic perspective; clearly risks are posed. But imagine the cutting-edge opportunity to shift awareness from packages of things we buy and add to the earth to a perspective that includes the earth itself in her many natural forms. Imagine if our commitment to gifting her stood unconditional of the short-term bounty she provides us, and our stewardship was not seen as specifically "ours" but one that includes and benefits our community.

For that is where I believe we must be headed. If that is not our hope, what is? My friend, are you willing to take the risk to deliver the gift of possible failure? To handhold a client through a crop gone down (they will, you know, whether you experiment or not; it's only our notion of "faulting" a cause that brings your concern) because that is part of the service you provide?

A midwife cannot promise a healthy baby. True wisdom is in letting go to support what simply is in the natural rhythm of things. The question is not, ultimately, to experiment or not experiment, but how to embrace the notion of "failure" in the garden. And Our Mother will teach us patience and share her abundance in depth and breadth.

Our hands must be in the earth, doing, in every moment possible to fulfill our part of the bargain, to live in balance. And this is the course I recommend. Do not wait for pocket books or theories to be tested. Live it with your hands. And the wisdom will be yours to share.

Big Hope

Well, here it is, folks: my Big Garden Hope.

Two and a half months ago, I started systematically mulching my garden beds with rabbit and chicken manure. I liked the "closed loop" of fertility, and it felt right, but only today have I begun to grasp where this could be leading. My current hypothesis:

*Regular manure mulch spreads will replace fertility and organic matter (combined with leaf mulching, and there is straw in the manure) to maintain bed fertility at a level that other fertilizer (outsourced) will be unnecessary.

*I will not have to DIG these beds (this is a hypothesis -- stay posted), protecting the microherds of bacteria and funghi as well as long-term tilth and fertility. All of that, and my ease as well.

*Because I will not be turning whole beds at a time to mix in compost or manure, I will be able to take out and add in individual plants year-round, relaxing my bed "planning" to a degree. For example, in one bed, there are a mix of young lettuce and swiss chard. The lettuce may go to seed in a month while the swiss chard goes on -- and could last until next winter. Now, I will not need to carefully dig around the chard and risk fertility for those or tear out the chard completely. I can just remove the lettuce and plant something else.

*As I am able to remove and add plants at my leisure, there is a natural movement toward integrating perennials and annuals (as I have been wanting to do for some time). It is a more balanced approach in terms of taking nutrients from the soil and, again, supporting the no-dig bent which will protect the natural processes that support the structure and life of the soil.

I don't know how the rest of you are doing it out there, and I'd love to hear. Post a comment if you have some wisdom to share (or maybe you've been doing this for a year or so and can tell me what's what).

Persistence and Letting Go

Did I say, "the sun came out and we headed for the garden"? Some modernday mother wagoning off into the sunset with cute kids? Did I give you the impression that the garden is a peaceful place where tension melts with the spring rains?

Well, maybe for a pansy.

The anxiety is wound only in me, and the earth is one of the few places that pulls that tiger by the tail in a way that sends me spinning. Yesterday afternoon, I dug into my bed of greens with thoughts of transforming it into carrots.

The topside mess of cleavers, mache, sprouting broccolli, kale, and other green unidentifiables went to the bunnies. I discovered a couple of heads of lettuce buried in there, too, which I took out for us. Then I started digging.

What roots! Where was the dirt? Spade after spade turned up a tightly laced matrix of fine hairy root mass (oh, tightly wound, like me!) and the turning created... lumps. I cast a glance at the carrot starts my friend, Nick, had passed to me and remembered my solemn vow to have them in this week. Planted into... lumps?

Now, this is a little embarrassing. I've been gardening for years, and still I'm stymied by these little adjustments to my vision. I could have straightened my glasses. But no. Instead I looked around my yard. Twenty trees and bushes in a holding spot in the earth waiting to have their beds dug. A patch of grass slated to be obliterated while daily it steals into every other bed around it. A tree to come down. And then, again, the grasssssses, insssidiousss grassses creeeping into everythingandall.

Sigh.

Some days you just want to throw down your shovel. What would a Good Gardener do? He** if I know. But I'll tell you what I did.

I kept digging. It got a little less lumpy.

And I'm thinking: maybe I can get my orange food from something other than a root crop. I eat too dang many carrots, anyway.