Wow. Finally some time to post.
I need to tell y’all more about the garden. At B.’s house there’s a BIG back yard. In fact, when they were kids, B. and his brother had a pony. There’s still a small, red barn, now used as a storage shed, that bears witness to this fact. Anyway, back in the day, B.’s dad had quite a vegetable garden, way in the back there. As he’s gotten older, he’s been less able to take care of a big garden, and has settled for a few tomatoes and pepper plants. The last couple of year, B., who has never been all that interested in yard work, decided to help his dad out with the plants, and sort of got into it.
In the meantime, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and was infected with the need to make changes to my food supply. This dovetailed nicely with my switching to the Weight Watcher’s CORE plan, which is more about whole foods, and interestingly enough, this book was the thing finally acted as a tipping point for this fat, old environmentalist to start buying more organic and local foods. At some point in there, I said something like, “Hey, B. – I’ll help you with the garden this year.” Little did I know…
Since, OF COURSE I’d want to do an organic garden, and OF COURSE, since I knew very little about vegetable gardening, I started reading up on it. I literally got Vegetable Gardening For Dummies and Organic Gardening For Dummies and set to reading them. I work with accomplished gardeners, so I started picking their brains. B. was also reading up a little bit. We decided to keep it simple and start out easy.
When it got warm enough to work the soil, B. went out and roto-tilled and also expanded the existing garden to 20×24 feet! When we each compiled our list of things we wanted to grow, it was pretty long, and we also realized that my fondness for salad would require a rabbit-proof fence to protect the lettuce and cabbage. Aaargh.
Well, I’ll cut to the chase. It’s been more work at every step of the way than I expected – and it’s only July! I did most of the planting and the early weeding, while B. worked on the fence (it’s really nice now). We’ve had some no-shows, most notably our spinach and, oddly enough, our purple coneflowers. Who can’t grow coneflowers?! I’ve got less time for sewing, reading, watching romantic comedies and hanging out at the pool. Cultivating kills my back and weeding kills my knees, even with my little pink kneeling pad. I get sunburned, hot, sweaty and mosquito-bit. B. and I disagree about lots of garden things – thinning (he really hates to thin the seedlings for some reason; I think it seems wasteful to him), where to plant stuff, how to build the fence, how to make the compost, etc., etc. Plus, we don’t have a lot to show for our efforts yet, beyond some lettuce, a few marigolds and some really lovely basil.
And yet. Even though I don’t love it the way avid gardeners do, it’s oddly compelling and quite satisfying in its way. Every time I’m out there, I think of ways to do it better next year. I’m already piling up books to read in the fall and winter about no-till gardening, square foot gardening, “lazy” gardening. I’m talking to my gardening friends about planting raspberries. I’m really looking forward to our first tomatoes. It’s something B. and I are building together, and a continuation of his dad’s tradition. We have a log to sit on in the corner, and B. wants to build a bench to go there. It’s nice to sit there together, knees all pocked from the soil, drinking ice water and looking over our straggly little patch.
I’ll let you know how the tomatoes taste…
