Friday, July 25, 2014

July 25

Maybe some other time this blog can be a place for poetry.  Right now, I want to go to bed.


No one's asking anything of this space except me, and I'm just asking for a record.


Does the garden continue to grow when no one blogs about it?  Even if the only photos are over-edited iPhone snaps?


Yes.  It grows and needs and gives.  It feeds me food and questions and - still, always - some of the best moments of my days.  Unrecorded.


But I do find myself looking back.  I need this record.  It helps me.  It doesn't come naturally.  I'm not one of these - seemingly endless - lady-types who write it all down anyway, who love the systematic recapitulation of their already lives.  But I also can't remember it all.


Today I cleaned the garlic.  Braided 11 heads of softneck into my first braid.  Hung it next to the ancient red peppers on their knotted string.  Didn't count the hard neck heads.  Two types, red skin and white, many of the red heads so lacking in outer wrapper that they are already falling to cloves.  They all were strongly affected by rust, and some are smaller than I have grown before but many are fine, big even.  All three varieties I bought from that hippie seed company that Erica gave me the name of Adaptive Seeds - one called Purple Glazer (ha! google-able inbox FTW) that I recall now I bought for the blurb that said it was so easy to peel... no wonder the heads are falling apart... and a mix called organic surprise sampler.  Classic Devon move.  Each head had a little sticker on it that said the variety.  Which I obviously noted very carefully in my notebook.  (Really.  I bet somewhere I made a map.  Very classic.)


Yesterday I cleared the center row (#2) of the rest of the peas, their supports, and some stray sunflowers, and chopped it with my rad new hoe from Concentrates.  Clara helped me plant carrots down the whole bed.  Having learned my lesson with the whole purple podded pea fiasco (not making an order from those hippies this year), I ordered the very same hybrid carrot varieties from Territorial that I had such success with last year, and planted more.  Merida (240 days) on the left (closer to #1); Nelson (58 days) on the right.  Er, with an end cap of Napa hybrid because those were just in my seed box?  And then I lost the mostly full envelope?  Full disclosure.


Harvesting beans.  I actually know where the map is that shows which varieties of pole beans I planted.  So far, the Helda Romanos are the best: prolific, tender.  We are going to get about ten ears of corn out of that bed if we are lucky, but it sure looks nice.


The whole yard looks nice.  If I am not careful, I see only what needs to be done.  The holes, the overgrowth, the weeds.  I see the future, in all its glory.  But!  It is good now, too.  It is a place that facilitates togetherness with my family, my friends and neighbors.  The pollinators are swarming.  My participation in its changing lets me feel all sorts of alive.


Maybe this note-keeping will always be a chore.  Often, the garden itself is a chore.  But I certainly prefer the real thing to the representation of it on this screen.