Sustenance

I’m photoless on this one, so my apologies.

But, to tell the truth, it makes sense to not show you what I’m talking about because what I want to discuss is something we don’t really ever see directly.

In a word, I want to talk about soil. In a generality, I want to talk about nourishment.

Good soil is the foundation of a thriving garden, but building soil (I actually like to refer to this as ‘growing’ soil) takes time.  My current garden started out as overturned sod. A lightish orange color told me that I’d best haul in plenty of organic material.  Tenacious grass roots made gardening feel shallow both figuratively and literally.

That year, the plants themselves served a sacrificial rite as they sent out their roots.  This subterranean network, fragile at first, set in motion the framework needed for plots to come.  Building up, while digging down, aeration and transformation happens through channels never seen.  Over time, this continued interaction between plants, organisms, and the good earth creates a richer environment where nutrients are absorbed into the food to be eaten.  Magic happens.

Recently I’ve discovered this same magic above ground, but still coming from someplace invisible. A strange turn of events and an alarming diagnosis put my son in the hospital for a couple weeks. Initially, a few friends sent meals and stopped by to visit, as is customary in this sort of situation. Within days though, as the situation became more serious, a network emerged. A woman who came with her daughter to see us handed me a lasagna, hugged me, and then introduced herself. I liked that sequence: food, love, and then the formalities.  People around us set up systems where food and visitors came on a regular basis.  I don’t know who masterminded it all, but sitting down each night to fresh healthy food told me the god or goddess of community was watching over us. 

And the timing fit beautifully. My garden has been neglected in all of this, but the abundance of strawberries I missed found their way to us when word got out that my boy loves them. Garden greens appeared nightly when others learned my oldest starts each dinner with a big salad. Fresh from the garden, just not my garden, showed me how far this network reaches.  Time, interaction, kindness, and support creates nourishment for body and soul.  On the next go around I’ll be active in the network, perpetuating this invisible web not as a recipient, but as one who joins in to sustain the unseen foundation we thrive upon.

Eeeek! A Photo Journal

Hanging my head in shame, or scoping out some wild treats?

 

Are you one of those people who feels inadequate, inept, and all around imposer-like when you come across BEAUtiful garden photos from people who seem to know what they’re doing? Well, don’t despair. You’re human, you’re real, and life is a beautiful thing whether you weed regularly or not.

So, order is the issue at hand, and in life most of us come to realize sometimes we got it, and sometimes we don’t.  When we don’t, it isn’t the time to get all hard on ourselves.  It’s time to regroup, rethink, and get your hands down in the dirt.

Instead of a long bit of prose speckled with pics, I’m going to let my pictures speak for themselves.  They are each worth a thousand words.  I’ll divulge some, and you can fill in the rest with your own imagination.

For starters I’ll begin with this one word – one that has been on my mind for a few weeks now as I’ve let the garden take a back seat to life obligations that couldn’t jump back there with it and enjoy its company.

Entropy:  (I got this from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/entropy)

1. Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.

2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.

3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.

4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

5. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.

1.     OK, that’s exactly what my first thought was. Let’s move on…

2.     Randomness, yes. Closed?  Well I have a fence around the garden, so yes.

3.     Wait…what?  I didn’t catch all that.

4.     HA! Since when does soil, sun/moisture combo worshipping weeds, and viable temps move the garden towards inertia?  I think it’s headed the other way.

5.     Deterioration?  No, just less orderly and to a certain degree, more interesting.

And now, the photo journal….. Enjoy!

I don't even know what the hell is going on here. Arugula gone to seed (Oh, how I wish I had actually eaten some arugula), dandelions, and a strawberry plant who has lived in this spot for 6 years. 

The Enchanted Garlic Forest (plus grass).

A nice bit of soil getting ready to welcome tomatoes.  A nice path of weeds surrounding it.

If purple is offered, how can I refuse. (Note, I did plant the clover - I will take some credit here).

Thank god for planted clover!  It appears the strawberry plant is overrun....

....but look again!  Maybe the ONE smart option I had in motion.  Clover is the garden's (and the bees') friend.

This oregano is not intimidated by this infusion of chocolate mint.  I know!  I'll just plant mint and my garden will thrive eternally!

Lettuce, arugula, and a weeding boy. Happy Mother's Day!

Earthworms don't complain.

Edible weeds are happy finds.  Lamb's Quarters poking out of the spinach and some nice Wood Sorrel on the lower right add to the salad.

Plus, weeds make nice home for ladybugs in waiting.

Pulled weeds = happy pigs

The martins don't seem to mind :)

Soup's On!

Forgive me, dear readers, for my absence.  The blog has suffered from “way the heck too much other stuff going on” syndrome. Also, less time in the garden after final harvests has given me room to move in other directions. But now, I’ve been called back by the influx of cold air which has jump-started another seasonal love of mine: fall cooking.

I live in a house that could be sufficiently heated by the oven.  Because of this, the modern day hearth doesn’t get much use in the summer.  Once cold weather hits, I’m reminded of this seasonal toy and look forward to one of my favorite past-times – baking bread.  But your title is about soup, you say.  Yea, I know…I’ll get to that.

I grew up in a home where things that can be lovingly made by hand were purchased instead.  My mother was at an impressionable age during World War II when her country, Ireland, tightened their belts, rationed their goods, and got out their knitting needles to help their English neighbors whom they were rooting for in the war.  In school, they made socks, hats, gloves, and sweaters for the English soldiers.  To hear my mom tell about it, you’d think she’d been forced to make all those things every day for the duration of her childhood and beyond.  She’d moan with exhaustion at the mere mention of my wanting her to teach me how to make a sweater.  “Just go buy one!” she’d say.  Ah,… industry.

And yea, I know.  I’m getting to the soup…

For me, the thought of making something from two sticks and a ball of yarn seemed like magic.  But the first time I got to bake bread in Brownie Scouts (where I learned to knit), something even bigger lit up inside me.  Most likely it was the aroma that put bread ahead of knitting in my awed esteem.  I ran in the house after the bread baking meeting yelling, “Mommy, mommy!  Let’s bake BREAD!”

She groaned. 

“It’s hard, hard work,” was all she could manage to say.

I had just done it, like an hour before, and I guess since Brownie leaders were probably the first to discover “kid friendly” projects, it hadn’t felt like work at all.  Somehow I convinced her, and we set out to bake a loaf the following Saturday, starting in the morning, because, you know, this would take ALL day.



I started my kids at it much younger.  I needed something for them to do as an alternative to their ususal daily activity of bruising their faces which, believe me, was getting OLD....



I won’t bore you with the slightly comedic details.  Suffice it to say that at age 7 I had experienced the first and last bread baking extravaganza in my home of origin.  In addition, the lingering memory of the effort involved was spoken of well into my adult years, without any mention of the delicious bread we made.  A Buddhist would suggest my mother actually slaved over the dough thousands of times with all her mournful recollections.  I, on the other hand, just remembered the good part.

So, when I was on my own, I started experimenting with different kinds of bread.  Believe me, coming home from college with a loaf of something unique and tasty impressed my mother to the point that she forgot about yelling at me about my grades.  Clearly, I was achieving great things, and she didn’t have to suffer through watching the painful process.

And bread led to soup, because besides butter, what else goes so well with fresh baked bread than real soup?  Oh, and canned doesn’t count.  The acidic aftertaste is the great equalizer of any store-bought variety, and really, I’d just rather not.  It’s not because I’m a foodie snob.  It’s because fresh homemade soup is on the same wavelength as fresh homemade bread and to break the spell on one just screws up the other.



Split-Pea!  Yum!

Plus, soup is easy.   Just give Stone Soup another read and you’ll know what I mean.  For me, to grab a few things from the garden, including wild greens, a carrot I missed earlier, or the potatoes that dodged the fork just adds to it; a blending of flavors where repetition is a rarity.  Mmmm…., time to savor the best the good earth has to offer.