Funny how some things take forever (waiting on acceptance or rejection responses from literary magazines, my ever-slowly increasing savings account, the arrival of food in a favorite restaurant) and some go so quickly. I am reminded of an NPR story recently where they asked older people and younger people to accurately judge when a minute had passed (or maybe it was 90 seconds. I was driving. And completely paying attention to the road). The older the participants were, the worse they did. Time actually seemed to pass more quickly.
It seems silly to be thinking about the garden when there is 20” of unmelting snow in the backyard, with another 7-10” expected tonight, but, if you think about it, it is almost the middle of February. Which means it is almost March. Which means we should be thinking about digging up some of the hill in the backyard and assembling the raised bed and hauling in soil so that we are ready in time.
Because time passes quickly for two old fogies like A and myself. Before we know it, it will be time to have a basement full of seeds sprouting under shop lights (and for nightly prayers that Lucy does not eat them).
The older I get, I can feel this time difference with seasons. It seems as if it was just summer, and we were making weekend meals with vegetables from A’s garden. And now, winter will be over (soon) and before I can take a breath, we will be knee deep in green beans and tomatoes and zucchini. I will be picking and canning and making fritters.
It is these things I will think about when I am shoveling the latest batch of snow—tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, zucchini pie, and my imperative 2010 garden selection: the Sugar Ann snap pea. It is a miniature snap pea, and, well, anything tiny is cute, and cute equals good, right?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Seed Selection and Planning
Does a completed garden plan illustrate the ability to compromise? If two people can decide on exactly what to grow in a 12’ by 4’ space and not kill each other, or at least not fight until the very end, is it a sign of a healthy relationship?
We managed. It was made easier by the fact that we like some of the same things, and both have an abnormally strong love of beans and tomatoes. But, where A sees the garden as a larger, better extension of the one he had last year, I see it as overwhelming and possibly intimidating and, until the garden is here and happening, a little bit of anxiety comes over me if we talk about it too long. Yes, I can be convinced to add a pot of borage on one corner to attract bees, no, I do not want to grow my own chamomile for tea, even if I drink chamomile so often that I have three containers of it in the kitchen cupboard.
My first-ever, on-my-own vegetable garden was a little sad. The cucumbers got mold, the squash never grew, and the tomatoes were just acceptable, not great, in my opinion. I realized that the area I chose was too shady in the afternoon. I learned to not necessarily take advice from my neighbors, because, even though a former resident might have had their tomatoes in that area of the backyard, it was most likely so long ago that the treeline had changed, and trees, once not an issue, would now cast long shadows over the tiny plot of dirt.
So, like many other areas of my life, the anticipation of the garden—the garden in my mind—was causing me to worry, and it would until we actually assembled the raised bed and planted the seeds and had some success. Because that was the crux, I was afraid of failure. I wanted everything to be good this time around; I wanted our garden’s bounty to look like the images in the Burpee catalog.
And that is where A and I differ: he sees it as one big extreme possibility, and I am afraid. I am hoping that he can teach me some of this positive-possibility trait in addition to the wisdom of patience (I am sure the garden will help out with the patience thing, too). So, no chamomile…yet. But there's a chance that if I make a birthday cake this summer, it will come with crystallized borage flowers atop the icing, because, supposedly, that's what you can do with borage besides attract bees.
We decided on the following:
Sweet Salad Mix
Gourmet Blend Lettuce
Burpee's Hybrid Zucchini
Bananarama Banana Peppers
Burpless Beauty Cucumbers
Touchon Carrots
Carmello Tomatoes
Amish Paste Tomatoes
San Marzano Tomatoes
Black Krim Tomatoes
Bull's Blood Beets
Easter Egg Radishes
Scarlet Runner Pole Beans
Fortex Pole Beans
Provider Bush Beans
Nickel French Filet Beans
Sugar Ann Snap Peas
White Lisbon Onions
Greek Miniature Basil
San Remo Basil
Italian Parsley
Thyme
Greek Oregano
Cilantro
Bouquet Dill
And of course, Borage.
We managed. It was made easier by the fact that we like some of the same things, and both have an abnormally strong love of beans and tomatoes. But, where A sees the garden as a larger, better extension of the one he had last year, I see it as overwhelming and possibly intimidating and, until the garden is here and happening, a little bit of anxiety comes over me if we talk about it too long. Yes, I can be convinced to add a pot of borage on one corner to attract bees, no, I do not want to grow my own chamomile for tea, even if I drink chamomile so often that I have three containers of it in the kitchen cupboard.
My first-ever, on-my-own vegetable garden was a little sad. The cucumbers got mold, the squash never grew, and the tomatoes were just acceptable, not great, in my opinion. I realized that the area I chose was too shady in the afternoon. I learned to not necessarily take advice from my neighbors, because, even though a former resident might have had their tomatoes in that area of the backyard, it was most likely so long ago that the treeline had changed, and trees, once not an issue, would now cast long shadows over the tiny plot of dirt.
So, like many other areas of my life, the anticipation of the garden—the garden in my mind—was causing me to worry, and it would until we actually assembled the raised bed and planted the seeds and had some success. Because that was the crux, I was afraid of failure. I wanted everything to be good this time around; I wanted our garden’s bounty to look like the images in the Burpee catalog.
And that is where A and I differ: he sees it as one big extreme possibility, and I am afraid. I am hoping that he can teach me some of this positive-possibility trait in addition to the wisdom of patience (I am sure the garden will help out with the patience thing, too). So, no chamomile…yet. But there's a chance that if I make a birthday cake this summer, it will come with crystallized borage flowers atop the icing, because, supposedly, that's what you can do with borage besides attract bees.
We decided on the following:
Sweet Salad Mix
Gourmet Blend Lettuce
Burpee's Hybrid Zucchini
Bananarama Banana Peppers
Burpless Beauty Cucumbers
Touchon Carrots
Carmello Tomatoes
Amish Paste Tomatoes
San Marzano Tomatoes
Black Krim Tomatoes
Bull's Blood Beets
Easter Egg Radishes
Scarlet Runner Pole Beans
Fortex Pole Beans
Provider Bush Beans
Nickel French Filet Beans
Sugar Ann Snap Peas
White Lisbon Onions
Greek Miniature Basil
San Remo Basil
Italian Parsley
Thyme
Greek Oregano
Cilantro
Bouquet Dill
And of course, Borage.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)