Thank you, Mr. Wm. Carlos Wms.

As I write this, my family is watching a Voyager episode where Tuvak is trying to tell a hysterical woman who's in love with him that getting emotional will just make things worse.  He can't love her, cuz, well, he's a Vulcan and can't feel that kind of thing, and is bewildered by her "unfettered emotion."

Do they have poetry on Vulcan?  Here come the trekkies to fill me in...good thing that today I set my comments setting on "view comments prior to posting."  I wouldn't want accusations of my idiocy made public.  Yea, I've got the power.  And yea, I know he's visiting from the next generation, so I do have a bit of the Star Trek vibe going.

But without emotion, what happens to poetry?  Isn't that the point?  The best poems for me are the ones that visit me as I live my life.  One tapped me on the shoulder today as I guiltily nibbled on a few strawberries.  Based heavily on William Carlos William's "This is just to say," I came here:

This is just to say…

I have eaten

the strawberries

that were ripe on the vine

and which

you were probably

hoping

to snack on

Forgive me

they were exquisite

so warm

and so juicy
........................................................

Jeepers/Creepers

These little guys would make anyone smile. The sound of the peepers coming back means moisture and warmth, plenty of good atmosphere for growing.  Our neck of the woods has had abundant rain and sunshine of late, a lovely combination to get the nightly chorus going.  We're at a point where windows open at night are all that's needed to cool off the houses, and the sleep song from outside is a beautifully soothing soporific.  I think the most perfect place in the world would have to be where heating and air conditioning aren't necessary.  The less artificial, the better.  When it's time for lettuce to bolt, I know we've passed the threshold.  For now, I'm going to enjoy every moment of this peeper perfect bliss.

Farmers' Market

As a homeschooler, I tried to get my kids involved with real-life active learning as much as possible. Aside from physics lessons on tension and force experienced corporeally, most activities involved more thinking and less shrieking.



Aslan, aka Poochy, aka Azzy-Doo, aka "You Rug."
Photo by Elisha Courts

 

One such activity connected us to science, economics, math, writing, community, and waking up at an ungodly hour; this was our foray into the farmers market.  The kids were 8 and 11, and decided they wanted to make and sell dog biscuits.  Who was I to say no?  We got a couple books from the library, checked on the internet, and found some recipes we thought would be good sellers.  The boys decided each treat should be connected to one of our three dogs, offering specific characteristics that would appeal to the variety of dog owners out there.  Plus, dogs were allowed at the market, so in choosing between three, we knew we couldn’t go wrong with our most important customers.



Lightning
Photo by Miner



Our border collie, Lightning, was the namesake for the powerhouse “Lightning Strength” lamb and barley biscuit.  Diddiwee Treats, which ended up being our top seller, featured peanut butter and oatmeal.  Poochy Puffs, named for Aslan (his nickname is Poochy) served the more, how shall I put this…density proportion challenged of the canines.  Yes, that was our low-cal option.  If given the chance, Poochy would down 75 at one sitting just to make sure they worked.  My oldest did the artwork for the treat bags, each kind represented by its respective dog, and wrote out the philosophy behind each type of treat from the dog’s perspective.  I have to say, it was a-freakin’-dorable.



Diddle, aka Diddiwee, aka Weenie-D
Love my girl, can't ya tell!
Photo by his royal cuteness, now 11



All the academic areas I wanted to hit were covered, but the social lesson caught us by surprise.  First of all, farmers’ market attendees around here don’t want to be roped into anything.  Forget eye contact.  They want it to be very clear that you do not have them.  The 11 year old learned that being adult sized, yet still a kid, means the perception is you can’t be trusted, unless of course, the buyer is a friend of your mom’s and then you’re golden.  The 8 year old learned all you have to do is say good morning and everyone wants to adopt you.  I learned not selling anything is a drag so quite often I’d nudge the little guy and hiss under my breath, “SPEAK! And make it SWEET!”  Ah, the farmers’ market version of the stage mom was born.

We decided after a few times that the oldest would stay home and stick to the artwork, which he did, and the baking, which he accomplished by asking me to do it.  The younger boy had no option but to show up every Saturday and sweetly utter “good morning” to everyone as they passed, or we'd be sadly in the hole.  We learned the downside to this was the grandfatherly type who wanted to tell the little guy about when he was his age, standing on the back of his cow picking apples off a tree after walking two miles uphill home from school.  The stories were great, don’t get me wrong.  It was the parking in front of our stand blocking money-paying traffic that would fawn at the 8 year old cuteness we had to manage in oh so subtle ways.

Not all were friendly.  One curmudgeon saw our sign for organic dog biscuits and barked, “Organic?  No dog would ever know or care!”  I agreed, and then offered, “But you would as a kind, loving, responsible dog owner.”  He walked off, not even dropping a quarter in our nicely decorated oatmeal container reading “Won’t you please make a donation to provide ORGANIC dog biscuits for shelter animals?”

Our venture ended when the state changed its laws about selling any kind of food.  We had to go get our biscuits analyzed in a lab for nutritional content, and pay for the official stamp and label.  This would run us about $75 per type of biscuit.  At a profit of just around $20/week, shelling out $225 didn’t seem feasible.  An artist friend suggested we charge our normal amount, $2, for the bag and advertise a pack of dog biscuits thrown in for free to get around the new requirements.  I thought it was a brilliant idea, and my son’s artwork had received a lot of compliments, but the boys felt like that was cheating the government which wouldn’t be the right thing to do.  To this day, I still don’t know where I went wrong.

So we stopped selling, and it was kind of nice to sleep in again on Saturday mornings.  The boys split the money they made and bought some things they’d been saving up for after dropping off the biscuits purchased through shelter donations at the SPCA.  Through the whole experience they purchased ingredients, baked, kept a ledger, stuck to their jobs, and learned a few things about sales from both behind the scenes and on the spot.  They still have the first dollar they earned framed and on the piano, and I’d say the whole experience in and of itself was a treat. Who knows?  Maybe they'll find themselves telling some kid about it way in the future when they're old and gray, remembering happy dog days gone by.

How Much Land does a (Wo)Man Need?

I live in a place that hasn’t quite made it onto your GPS.  If you try to get to me with the help of a satellite tracking device, you’ll end up needing to cross a river.  At one time a ferry would have been of some help, but Camille whisked it away while I celebrated turning three with a train of party guests going through London Bridge.  Had place-based education been at the fore, we would have been singing about the ferry washing us out instead.  (Much livelier than taking the key and locking us up would be my guess.)

I’ve learned to tell delivery and repair people that they really do need to pay attention and listen to me when I give directions.  Every once in a while, somebody “yea, yea, yea”s me and they end up having to head back into town to get a cell phone signal so they can call and say, “How do I get there?  The road just STOPS at the river!”

Um, yea, I know.

So they head back through town, cross the bridge into my county, and get there in ten minutes.  This is why I’m so amazed that my address doesn’t register on Mapquest, Google maps, or the FBI’s database (just kidding).  It’s not like I’m off the grid or something.  Today I looked it up with Google’s aerial view feature, and guess what I found?  The river.

So I looked for a business nearby and lo and behold, a sign of life.  By moving the hand thing-a-ma-jiggy around I tracked my way to my road and my farm (saw the garden too!).  I guess I’m not from the fifth dimension after all.  My kids used to get me to tell this story about our farm being on a different planet, and I was beginning to wonder if convergences and time warps had stuck around and seeped in when we weren’t looking.

And you’re wondering about the title to this post?  Just a play on the title of one of Tolstoy’s best short stories, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”  I got to thinking about this story when I saw the aerial view.   I’ve learned a thing or two about sustainability while doing this agrarian thing, and size and scale are key features.  Guess what happens on a farm if you get greedy?  Things suffer.  Good land to animal ratios mean that your pasture has time to recover so that animals have the food they need when they need it.  In the garden, taxing the soil by overplanting creates nutrient issues in the future.  Balance is key, and the first step in balance is to know what you have.  You can’t generate more raw material from thin air, but how many people believe that you can?  I’d say the number of people suffering from credit card debt could be one possible indicator.

I’d recommend reading Tolstoy’s story.  The answer to his question is definitely something to ponder. Forget searching as far as the eye can see, and look around you.  What’s keeping you grounded?  That’s probably all you need.

Companion Gardener

My current garden is the one I’ve tended the longest.  The original space was tractor tilled in the spring of 2006 in a spot we had originally considered turning into a pond.  The grass there grew so thick and lush; my husband was convinced the spot was spring fed.   A pond seemed a happier alternative to the mower stopping every two passes due to clipping-clogged blades. 

A pond also would cost about $4,000 to have dug.  For a smaller fee, we could rent a backhoe ourselves, but, let’s just say, the thought of a certain loved one angled down a slope while perched on top of a piece of heavy machinery just didn’t generate many (read “any”) feelings of confidence.  If I was going to spend money, I wanted it to be for a pond, not a hospital bill.

So we ix-nayed the ond-pay, and figured such a moisture rich spot might serve well for the garden.  We got it dug, and I passed out seed catalogues.  Everyone chose five or six things they wanted to see put in.  The kids chose pumpkins (the hugest variety offered), beans, carrots, potatoes, sunflowers, etc.  My husband limited his choices to two:  tomatoes and asparagus.

He came from the land of black loam, aka Wisconsin.  His father and step-mom, Kathy, were work-horses in the garden, and the fruits of their labor showed abundantly.  Living on a trout ranch, they had an ample supply of fish emulsion, and used it in every way, shape, and form.  When we visited in the summer, we’d head out to the garden with them and feast.  The first call to my husband came from the miniature forest called the asparagus patch.  This thing was HUGE!  I’m not sure how long they’d had it, but if you classified gardeners by their ability to grow asparagus, these two were the masters of all masters.

And on our farm, we’d fall more into the category of abysmal failures.  We bought 25 3 year-old crowns for a pretty penny, and on our new garden plot our family of four went by the book and planted them for optimal growth. 

And nothing came of it after year one.

Year two was no better.

What year are we in now?  By this time, the patch has been re-dug, replaced with sweet potatoes (which proved the soil’s just fine), garlic, and blueberries.  I don’t know anyone around here who has an ample patch, much less a few stalks of asparagus, so I blamed geographic location.  The one farm I know that can work this magic sells at the farmers market, so they get my support and I get my asparagus.

But, as life shows us sometimes, what we think is gone, where we think we failed, might just be illusory, moving differently through space and time.  As I was checking on my blueberry bushes this afternoon, something caught my eye.  Before I could finish the thought, what’s that?  I jumped for joy!  Asparagus!  The beautiful irony in all of this is that Kathy, the second of the two masters to pass away, left us just days ago.  When I saw the asparagus, she sprang immediately into my mind.  I know I planted it, albeit years ago, but I felt like she was there, with a final, “THIS is how you’re supposed to do it!” complete with her devilish grin.  Chalk it up to irony, coincidence, synchronicity, whatever.  All I can say is that the timing was really nice.

When the rest of the family got home, I whisked them all back into the garden.  They know this drill, and called out questions on the way down.  “It’s strawberries, I know it is!”  “Is it the blueberries?”  “Did you find an animal?” “Peas aren’t ready, are they?”  I got them situated and asked my husband to recall his favorite thing from his family’s garden.  “Aspa….!”  He stopped when he saw it, confused, yet delighted.  I snapped a few stalks, offered them all around, and declared, “To Kathy!”  

Loco for Local

I lovermont.  It is an amazingly beautiful state that has laws against businesses compromising its beauty with billboards and other commercial signage.  “I can’t find anything,” is how my father would describe it.  He was used to living in a place where signs compete like they’re after the hottest item at an auction.  I remember visiting once where I discovered grocery shopping meant going to three different stores within a 5 mile radius to get the best in quality AND value.  I’m betting what he saved on the food bill was more than halved by the extra he spent on gas.

But my dad did know good food, which brings us back to Vermont.  One summer my family spent some time there, renting a little cottage surrounded by raspberry bushes.  My parents came to visit at the peak of the season, and the owner of the place told us to eat our fill.  I found some recipes for raspberry jam, and gave it a go.  My father was astounded by the flavor, amazed at its freshness.  It was fun to watch him sitting with his grandson, enjoying toast with jam.  He’d get that same jolt of surprise with every bite while the little guy slowly repeated mm-mmmm.  We knew the secret had to be the span (or lack thereof) of time between harvest and cooking. 

Eating local wasn’t the buzz at that time, but I can say the quality we discovered in our sweet delicious raspberry jam would even supersede anything we could drive down and buy at the nearby Ben and Jerry’s (and that’s saying a lot).  Three generations sitting around the kitchen table, reaching for the Mason jar, and  savoring the pleasure of peak perfection is about as local as you can get.

Weed Relocation Project

Driving off to work today, I noticed some lovely flowers along the road in front of my house.  Knowing I’d be cutting this strip of grass this weekend, I decided to embark on a weed relocation project, since beautiful weeds need to be loved and cared for.

What they are, I cannot tell right now.  The internet does not want to cooperate with me, and my Peterson’s guide hasn’t made it to Virginia, apparently, to meet these three. When I find out, I’ll add them to the labels for this post.

So why relocate these?  Because they’re beautiful, natural, and should be allowed to thrive.  How many times have you discovered something or someone you weren’t planning to encounter, but in doing so, the world seemed to realign with such significance.  If you’re a gardener, you’ve heard the quote:  “A weed is a plant whose purpose has yet to be discovered.”  I’d say if it catches my attention in its beauty, then I need no other purpose.  And since a garden is a metaphor for life, you bet I will give these gifts an opportunity to grow with love and care.

To help the plant thrive in a new home, here are the steps:

1:  Grasp enough to allow its roots to come along for the ride. 

2:  Find a suitable home with room to spread out and friends to mingle with.

3:  Nourish

Such interesting features when you turn it over!

4:  Revel in and enjoy its beauty

Real Education

I was delighted to come home to find these books awaiting me. Most of what I learn about wild edibles comes from friends in the know, but every now and again I learn about good written resources and seek them out.


Two new (and awesome) books nestled in among friends: strawberries, curly dock, wild onions, and chickweed.
Titles:  Edible Wild Plants by John Kallas, Ph.D; and Nature's Garden by Samuel Thayer



I became interested in wild edibles after a near panic attack.  One of my fifth graders, who was a big fan of Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, was presenting his research report on survival skills. When he got to the part about food, he reached into a brown paper bag and stuffed his mouth with dandelions.  My immediate thought was "CALL THE NURSE!" but as I had learned with kids, it's best if the adult keeps her cool.  He took a big swallow after chewing for what seemed an eternity, his classmates watching open mouthed with eyes like saucers.  "See!"  he said, "You can eat 'em!"

"So you're sure about that, right?" I asked.  "And your mother knows you were going to do that, right?"  I could just hear the phone call that night if he said no. "Yea, she knows," he replied.  "But it was my dad who thought I should do a demo." I made a mental note to remember this lack of communication come parent teacher conference time.

I'm sure I had heard long ago that dandelions were edible, but why would someone want to eat them?  As my kids'll tell you, they taste good, that's why.

drying, ready to be dipped in batter.

Here's a recipe if you're interested:  http://www.culinarycafe.com/Vegetables/Dandelion_Blossoms.html

  Just be careful when you go picking!

 

Reminders

When I see things like this I think:  Damn!  I wish my brother were still alive.  I’d show him this with a simple “Check it out, bro.”  And he’d most certainly reply, “Doggin!”

He was a free spirited kind of guy who died while “Goin’ Mobile,” as he liked to do, much in the spirit suggested in this song by The Who, from which the term in the picture came.  It was one of his favorite songs, and its energetic and adventurous message marked J how he lived.  But don’t get me wrong, he was extremely responsible.  He’d work drastic hours to build up time to enjoy weeks or months off so he could travel the world.  He died in a hiking accident in Brazil, where he was getting ready to teach English for a couple months.  He planned to return to his computer programming job in California when that gig was over.

So the sign struck me, and I found it ironic that just the day before when we had arrived in New Orleans for a conference, a friend had asked me if I found the local graves to be creepy.  When travelling by plane, they’re one of the first things you see, and after the initial, “Wait…what is that?!” it becomes clear that the “cities of the dead,” as they call them, take up residence in a variety of places in the city.  As you can see, they’re quite ornamental and very European looking.  Definitely not for me.

So the flowers on the Hippie Gypsy sign sent remorse followed quickly by a shot of warmth as I recalled many happy memories with him.  You see a few flowers memorializing the sarcophagi above, but I hope that when I’ve reached my end (which is so much easier to think about after the loss of one so close both in age and affection), I want to be put into a form that can nourish my favorite perennials rather than a space that needs embellishment.  I know that’s weird maybe to discuss, but after my friend and I talked about the what’s-up-with-the-tombs question, we moved on to what we’d want for ourselves.  After I’m gone I don’t want to take up any static space on the earth, I want to continue taking part in making it more fluid and beautiful.

L’Histoire du Jardin

I’m in New Orleans at the moment, so that explains my visit to the French language…

My blog is about gardening, but only loosely.  It’s more about what I enjoy about it, which is highly correlated to what I learn from it.  Something I learned came from my childhood gardening experience (or lack thereof).

My first memory of gardening is whacking my dad in the head with a shovel.

Without the pain that ensued, I’m sure it would have definitely been Three Stooges kind of funny.  The poor guy was trying to be instructive, kneeling on one knee as he was teaching my little sister something about seeds or plants or soil.  I stood up with the shovel over my shoulder, turned, and whammo! 

Oops!

I’m sure I would have gotten it had he been able to stand and steady himself.  In a drained voice he stammered, “Out….OUT!!!”

So my seven year old self followed orders and found something else to do, like shoot baskets or hop on my bike. 

I guess it was then and there that he decided kids don’t belong in a garden.

But I do remember the good food.  Our strawberries were to die for.  My dad was a smart guy, and to keep birds away, he put down some black plastic tubing to suggest the presence of snakes.  He did take me out to see that ingenious plot, and I looked, awestricken at the trick with my toes firmly planted outside the garden border.  I also remember great crops of corn that were heavenly, although I need not mention his green thumb with squash, because I’m trying to maintain a positive attitude here.

My dad didn’t stick to gardening for more than a few years.  The experiment went awry when neighborhood kids and dogs trampled through or pests disturbed his hours of effort.  Plus, he was a busy person with a medical practice, coaching his kids’ sports teams, and his favorite hobby; the stock market.

So gardening became something we didn’t do, and come to think of it, I don’t remember many other families around us having vegetable gardens either.  It wasn’t until I bought my first house that I became interested again in putting future edibles in the ground.  My husband and I spent hours working a plot one San Antonio Sunday afternoon, and that night, visions of greens danced in my head.   

But the dancing came to a screeching halt the next morning.  The rains started, and continued, and flooding ensued.  I remember talking to my parents on the phone, telling them about all the work I had done, only to see it wash completely away.  My dad offered, “Well, you tried.  Maybe conditions aren’t right there for that sort of garden.”  I wasn’t remembering my first garden memory at the time, but there was something in me that metaphorically said no, I’m staying this time.  One bad experience isn’t enough reason call it quits.  The bad luck had to do with the timing, not the ability, and when one way doesn’t work then make a mental note, and try another.

Path Analysis

Currently, in my Stats V class we are looking at paths and understanding (or pretending to) how latent factors influence outcomes.  In other words, if a kid is unhappy, how does that affect school academic performance?  Can we see unhappiness?  No.  We can see manifestations of unhappiness, but not an actual emotion, thus the term latent (hidden).  Path analysis looks something like this:

Please don't go.  I promise not to frighten you any longer.

I've been conducting my own path analysis in the garden over that last few days.  Each year I put down newspaper to mark my paths and cover with pine needles, leaves, or straw.  Working in a light rain is heavenly, as long as there's not too much wind blowing about, which qualifies as hellish.  The purpose, is quite obviously, to delineate where feet do and do not go so that soil enjoys being loose and not compacted to the point where it can't breath.  As overgrown as I sometimes let things go, or more importantly, as chaotic as I let companions get, paths are sometimes only clear to me, the gardener.

Setting a path is making a statement.  In life, they say each journey begins with a single step.  Behind that step, however, is the power of intention, and that's what struck me today.  Sometimes my plants choose where they want to be.  Typically, that's the way it goes with my wild inhabitants and volunteers.  Other times, I may decide on a location for seedlings, but when I get to digging, I realize the soil isn't optimal for that particular plant, and we go looking together for a better home.  Occasionally, I know precisely where I want to lay a crop, and make it happen.  Each bed has a purpose, and when I say the word "garden" I'm sure people typically picture a variety of plants.

But the paths are just as important.  They allow me to get to where I need to go and open my view.  And in the garden, paths offer clearer options.  The mysteries and secrets still thrive in the microcosms of the garden beds, which is where the real joy of gardening resides.  The paths encourage me to meander through to find them, which I intend to do.

Sheep making their own path beyond the garden.

What’s In a Name?

Cuz ya know, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

But would it get the same number of search engine hits?  Now that’s a question for the ages….

So my blog is named “Garden Mine” because a) it’s about my garden, and b) (and more importantly) it’s about what it gives me – not in yields, but in knowledge, understanding, perspective, and lessons.  That’s what I want to share with you, so follow me if you please, and I’ll lead you down the garden path…