Tonight for dinner I enjoyed the season’s first bowl of hot pasta topped with olive oil, garlic, and…
FRESH HOMEGROWN BASIL |
And this is how I felt about it:
The end.
Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo
It happens to me almost every time I dig and plant a new garden. Surely I’m not the only one, right? The temporary anticlimax.
You get inspired for a very particular new garden. You find its location, define its purpose, and prepare the soil. Perhaps, as has been the case with this new herb bed here at the farm, you do most of that in the off season; so for months you also stare longingly at the blank site, daydreaming of its eventual fullness and productivity. Piling on dried manures and whispering words of affirmation to the infant garden, you begin to see it in its most mature state, its maximum and most perfect condition. All far in advance, every time you pass by. Where there is only dirt in reality, your hopeful eyes perceive bushels of glossy basil, armfuls of zinnias, several mountains of rosemary, and sprays of every colorful herb you’ll ever need to make your own sleepy time tea. Your nose inhales, also in advance, every sweet and savory fragrance known to man since before time.
You plan to sell your wares at the area farmer’s market because, obviously, you will be growing far more than you need. Because it’s already the most lovely and magical garden ever in all the world.
You may scribble down blueprints and sketch curvy borders and make lists on your i-Phone of what to buy the very minute it’s safe to plant. You find yourself helpless with seed catalogs, whether they belong to you or not, highlighting, circling, and boldly asterisk-ing key items every chance you get. As if the writing of a wish is also its coming to fruition. Because you did read The Secret, after all.
On the weekend you can finally plant, you eagerly run through one last soil clearing, savoring the crunch of your spade as it slices through stubborn volunteer crabgrass. You shake weedy roots free of dirt and celebrate every fat earthworm that wriggles through the black gold left there.
So much potential. You just can’t stop singing the praises of slow food, organic methods, and the glory of working outdoors. Your legs are so strong and motivated you think you can dig a hundred gardens.
Then the day arrives.
The soil is cleaned and warm. The plants have been purchased. The weather is ideal. Your new garden plan is about to come together. Like you’re the horticulture A-Team or something. (And who am I to say you’re not?)
You dig, scrape, level, arrange, plant, rearrange, water, scrape again, and survey your little outdoor art project over and over.
Your geese come to inspect your progress and play in the sprinkler. Your cat rolls in the fresh dirt. You lower back gets a skinny, crescent shaped sunburn from that weird leaned-over gardener’s stance you’ve held for two days straight. And when you finally stand up to stretch and see it for the first time with new eyes… To dust off and drink in the beauty of what your imagination, knowledge, and physical labor have joined forces to create…
Everything looks tiny.
Almost so tiny it kind of irritates you.
The chamomile plant has withered a bit too much.
Some unnamed farm citizen, but clearly someone who has feathers and a beak and only two legs, has nibbled all but a third of the chocolate-mint leaves. Did you plant those rosemary starts too close together? Wait, where is the basil? I forgot basil? Should I have staggered those annuals, or is color blocking indeed the way to go? Can I even see all of this from the kitchen sink?
Is it just the glaring angle of the late afternoon sun? Because something about this looks out of scale. You are pretty sure those plants were all at least three times as big in the dining room yesterday. This is definitely not right.
You begin to question yourself in every possible way. Why do you even bother gardening? Just buy your food like a normal person and go watch t.v.
You hope your Momma or Grandpa don’t drop in for a farm visit, because this would be embarrassing. You certainly don’t put any of this on Instagram. Nope, that would not inspire a single person to try her own gardening adventure. It would be like trying to lure people to Christianity with meanness and judgement. Not cool.
Then Tiny T walks over and has a talk with you.
He wraps his tiny, muscled arm around your slumped shoulders and says exactly what you need to hear.
“Yo. This is just day one, man. Your garden plans are good, this soil is golden like my chains, and our summer is going to be amazing. Just give it some time and chill, baby. I pity the fool who thinks gardening is a sprint and not a marathon.”
“Thanks, Tiny T. Seriously, you always know just what to say.”
Then all is right with the world and you go off to make more coffee and design the next new garden.
The end.
Spring is really, truly here you guys. It is here to stay, at least for a while. We may only have a couple of weeks before Oklahoma Summer 2013 descends on us in all of her hot and humid glory, so I have a lot of green and dirty living to do. Lots to prepare and enjoy before facing that particular seasonal brutality.
The gardens are filling in their own blanks quite nicely. They require thinning and grooming every day, especially in the radish and carrot beds, but no watering! Our rainfall in Oklahoma has been mercifully consistent.
The potatoes are finally multiplying. The spinach, rainbow chard, and myriad lettuces are drop dead gorgeous. And even more delicious than the are pretty. The sweet pea and English pea vines are as tall and fluffy as anything you’ve ever seen in your life. Honestly? This year the actual leaves on the pea vine are ginormous! Like, Jurassic big. Way too big really. I am afraid of how big the peas will be. Bowling ball size? Probably.
Back Seeded Simpson and Romaine lettuce sprouts, photo taken a couple of weeks ago. Imagine they are a million times fuller now. Because they are. |
Last night I discovered my first butter colored cauliflower you guys! She is pale yellow, dense, and perfect. Tucked primly inside the massive green plant she calls home, dreaming calmly of low-carb recipes. Her neighbor, the brussel sprout, is putting on evidence of edibility too. Broccoli, two kinds of cabbage, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, you name it. So far, except for corn and basil, we have a little bit of everything growing somewhere around here. Even chocolate mint which smells like angels in heaven are making York peppermint patties for breakfast while watching Casablanca.
This broccoli bolted on a hot day. But if you pinch off the center blooms and keep yellow leaves cleaned off, the plant will set food peripherally and the results are DELISH. |
Colorful green and red (purple) cabbages are tightening up finally, and the spinach fills in beautifully. |
Another sign of spring, Chink-hi the buffalo has begun his annual shed extravaganza So cute. I need to snap some photos for you, because the way his body releases its winter coat, the patterns in which he gradually achieves his warm weather version of nudity, is so hilarious. Right now his skinny little rump and the wide spaces around his giant liquid eyes are the only bare spots. And they reveal how crazy thick his coat has been all these months! Like an inch of matted, woolly fur all over his strong body. No joke.
I have had our house windows open for days. Very little wind here except during the nighttime thunderstorms, just cool crisp breezes. And temperatures are looking better and better every day. This is a rare kind of meteorological bliss for us here in Indian Territory.
I am done substitute teaching for the school year.
The laundry is caught up.
The kitchen is stocked.
And I have that “the world is my oyster” kinda feeling. Can you guess that today and for as many days after as I can manage it, Handsome will find me half-buried in the gardens? Dirt manicures, rolled up jeans, and careless ponytails. These are the days. These are the weeks.
Thornless blackberry vines crawling up our forest-pole arbor. They have set dozens, maybe hundreds of buds already. |
This is the life.
What’s growing in your garden? Please connect with this blog on Facebook and share photos! So fun to see what people love in different parts of this beautiful world. Happy Spring-slash-Summer you guys.
“Won’t you come into my garden?
I want my roses to see you.”
~Richard Sheridan
18th century Irish playwright & poet
xoxoxoxo
Ah, early March…Right now I am resting in a pleasant reading lull following the big book club project Bonhoeffer. This is good timing, too, because the seasons are changing and I have more and more gardening tasks to consume my negotiable hours. Hallelujah!!!
For a couple of weeks I’ll be indulging my paper-thirsty soul in three books. First is Typee, a tantalizing Herman Melville novel set in the South Pacific, which transports me to heat, sand, eroticism, and cannibalism. Next is Barbara Kingsolver’s fantastic one-year memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I’m actually exploring this for the second time. Don Quixote is the next book club selection, and while I won’t dive into the text until later this month, it has lots of pre-reading worth doing. Sometimes this just helps revv up your engine, which is often helpful we reading an old, old, old book like this. The pre-reading for a classic is like a well planned appetizer; it primes your mind and your soul for the literary feast that is coming. This translation in particular has tons of yummy things to offer, and I’m grooving it.
Don’t even get me started on Romulus.
Something tells me this llama expects me
to read him Don Quixote en Espanol.
No va a suceder, hombre.
Anyway, were you here at the digital Lazy W last spring? Do you remember the rantings and ravings I issued forth about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? I basically could not shut up about it:
Well, this time around I am pretty much just reading what I marked from last February (which is only every other sentence), because the Kingsolver family’s locavorism story has already been imprinted on my heart. Now I can afford to just reread the tenets, the quotes, and the light bulb paragraphs. What last year suddenly became my gardening manifesto is this spring proving its staying power. I feel a February reading tradition growing here, you guys.
My early mornings lately have been perfumed with sentences like this…
“Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best.” ~Barbara Kingsolver
and…
“That’s the sublime paradox of a food culture: restraint equals indulgence.” ~Barbara Kingsolver
These only inspire me further towards a more loving, deliberate approach to our food growing efforts here at the W. Then a few days ago I saw this quote floating around cyberspace as the rain was falling hard and cold on our thirsty fields…
“I said to the almond tree ‘Speak to me of God’ and the almond tree bloomed.” ~Niko Kazantzakis*
Isn’t that true and beautiful?? I cannot think of any sphere of life where God proves His creative, redemptive power more consistently or with more poetry than in nature.
In Oklahoma we are starting oregano seeds indoors and scattering poppy and cilantro seeds outdoors, where the chickens can’t see. Obviously. We are scooping up natural fertilizers and digging new beds. We are counting the weeks, the days, and the hours till the first fresh little verdant harvest bowl. Springtime is arriving with lots of much needed moisture, proving the almanac right once more. Ladybugs are swarming, honey bees are foraging, and the wide blue skies are thawing. One prayer after another is being answered gently, too. We are excited.
I feel so thankful to have a comfortable place in my life for reading. I am really enjoying these books so far, and I also really really love this rich inspiration for the new gardening season. Last year was good, but this year is going to be amazing…. Can’t you feel it??
What are you reading right now? Have you started anything in your garden yet? Have you noticed any prayers being answered?
“They must often change,
who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”
~Confucius
xoxoxoxo
*Twentieth century Greek philosopher and writer
Well, friends, it’s official! It’s almost spring. The wizened groundhog did NOT see his truth telling shadow this morning,
So we do NOT have to brace ourselves for six more weeks of winter! We may have as few as two weeks before the cold, dry months are behind us, and this girl could NOT be happier about it!!!
On that note, by the way, the Farmer’s Almanac predicts a drought recovery for our little slice of paradise, so DOUBLE wahoo!!
As if to cement the prediction, here is our central Oklahoma forecast for this coming week:
Gorgeous, right?? Those nighttime temps are barely chilly enough to justify the house heater, so I am looking forward to opening every window, airing out these flu-ish germ clouds, and sanitizing our cave with sunshine. I want to force fruit tree branches indoors, too, being a firm believer that fresh foliage purifies the air and lifts the spirits! Nothing to aid the flu there.
And the daytime temps?? My goodness… Swoon worthy… I have five dirt manicures scheduled this week, one for every weekday. I’m super excited to finish off the raised vegetable beds with layers of organic matter, excited to scrape up some manure from the middle fields and wait for the rains (this is he recipe for GREEN fields), excited to start seeds in the dining room in anticipation of planting week.
Honestly, this is so flipping exciting, it’s like someone called and said, “Hey guess what? Christmas is six weeks early this year, so get ready!!”
Nope, it’s way better than that. It’s like someone said, “Hey guess what you get two birthdays this year!! AND vacation is extra long AND Christmas comes early and lasts late!”
It feels like I won the bowling championship of the UNIVERSE. My cousin Jen knows how this feels.
Spring is beautiful to me in every sense, from the physical and sensual to the philosophical and spiritual.
New life, renewal, vibrancy, color, energy, texture, redemption… All this dormancy and waiting is on the verge of paying off. We’re all about to redeem our wintry patience for vernal abundance!! Tears sown in grief will soon be blooming.
Happy early Spring, you fine people!! Please tell me what yo’re planning and planting. This is EASILY the most hardworking and thrilling time of year for me, so I can’t wait to shake off this annoying fly and dive in! I even have new rubber boots and canvas gloves. Wahoo!!
“Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear
that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments,
not the composer.”
~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth
xoxoxoxo