Welcome to springtime in my brain! This post will be some kind of hybrid between a concise and unlyrical “Farm Journal Entry” and a long form, better orchestrated blog post.
Spring has sprung. The weather has shifted, the landscape has well and truly emerged from her winter slumber, and the animals are in agreement, as evidenced by shedding horses, hens laying eggs consistently, and cows giving and receiving piggy back rides. Ahem. Even the pollinators are out of hibernation and doing their buzzy, fluttery rounds. I see snakes and lizards almost daily, despite the cool nights.
Did you know we have been building a greenhouse? It’s been on our wishlist for many years, but since refitting the little brick cottage for seed starting a few years ago, I had all but forgotten about the idea. One day about a month ago Handsome announced that he had found a guy (there’s always a guy and my guy’s always finding him) with cheap greenhouse panels. So cheap we would be crazy not to scoop ’em up. So scoop we did, and the rest is history. Chalk this up to another project we have had tons of fun doing together, not to mention one of the grandest gestures of love and romance from him to me. The spot we chose for the new little Taj Majal includes a brand new full sun garden space, my first ever believe it or not! All of this deserves a detailed post, which I will write soon. Just know that it is very exciting, and it has occupied a lot of mental and energetic real estate around here all month.
The photo above is the new “Summer Garden” adjacent to the new greenhouse. This is the view from upstairs. Can you see the color difference in a few spots? I have been adding rich, black compost and shredded oak leaves anytime I can scrape out half an hour. In fact, this job might be finished by the time I post this. The space overall has been tilled, because it has never been used for growing before, and we did add topsoil. But that topsoil turned out to be mostly sand and clay, so the amendments are both necessary and fun. I love using what we have, right here at the farm, whenever possible. The pine trees are north, the greenhouse is east, and the food rows will run parallel to those fence lines you see on the left. If you look closely, you can see my favorite vintage glider couch, a gift from my Dad, fortified by Handsome, facing the west. We see the most glorious sunsets here, and I can’t wait to invite frinends to watch them, surrounded by corn and okra and wildflowers. We’ll pick a watermelon and eat it together, right there.
One of our friends recommended the Apple TV series SIlo, but I can’t remember who. We devoured season one, and now I am recommending it to you. Normally to this type of show I say enough already with the apocalyptic stuff. We have all saturated our brains with it, you know? But this is different. There’s a fascinating element of truth supression that to me is worth the insufferable grime and short food supply, etc. Have you watched it? Thank you to whoever suggested we give it a try!
In very different emntertainment news, the current season of Shrinking is chef’s kiss, as the kids say. It has a Ted Lasso quality that makes me feel so good and strong.
On a blustery weather day recently I dove deeply into spring cleaning. Between dusting and scrubbing various negelcted spaces, I took down some heavy drapes in the living room then removed a complicated window treatment in the kitchen (imagine a pleated sheer with six wicker baskets hanging from the curtain rod, all filled with about twenty dry hydrangeas, plus disco balls hanging among them. It was an autumn choice which I do not regret but of which I had grown quite weary). The gluttonous flood of sunlight in both rooms stunned me. I had forgotten how bright the downstairs of our house could be! Now I want to paint some portion of the kitchen yellow and hang crisp white cafe curtains everywhere. Until that decision is made, I am enjoying the light, and Johnny RIngo is enjoying the cooking shows.
Speaking of Johnny Ringo, he remains Klaus’ best friend. They spend the majority of every day together, and it’s the sweetest thing ever. Twice in a week we went outside before daybreak and didn’t find him. Klaus was worried. But when we did our breakfast chores and made it around to the chicken coop, both times we found him there. Somehow Johnny had got shut in with the flock and slept there all night, ha! Also both times, the entire flock was huddled around him in the adjacent duck room, looking like a very creepy seance.
I had a refreshing thought recently about springtime gardening, and I’ll share it with you in case you also berate yourself for having not yet orchestrated a lush, complex, multi-week spring display of color and texture. You know the kinds of gardens we see, right. and crave? But for the most part those gardens are installed the previous autumn, which is a busy time in a thousand other ways. I have talked to lots of gardening friends who also bemoan the lack of wherewithall in October to plant a garden we won’t see until March or April. Anyway, here is my refreshing thought: Our eyes and our spirits needs far less than we think they do. Nature herself provides so much, without our help. Just sprinkle in a few things here and there, add a little more each year, and call it mission accomplished.
Elsewhere on the farm I do have tulips splashing jellybean color on the sepia landscape and a few fruit trees and hellebores, budding hydrangeas, lilacs, and the first bright green on boxwoods and other shrubs. But this plain little scene, oak leaves and all, gets the point across, to me at least: You need less than you think you do to feel the relief of springtime. A bit of redbud, a forsythia, some daffodils here and there. Not a thousand. Not a perfect grid, either, unless that’s your thing, But for me, in Oklahoma, springtime is all about the vegetable garden. So I am very content feasting my eyes on the easy beauty of everything just waking up. At least for now. : )
I trust nature to wake up, but every time she does I am just floored. Every perennial that appears where I had become accustomed to brown, dry earth, amazes me. When the grapevines pushed fresh buds, which then unfurled into fancy green leaves, I just about wept. The blackberries are a miracle, And I have no business collecting such well aged compost after so many months of neglect. I guess I always thought the compost heap needed a lot more complicated attention than it does. But man. We have six out of nine enormous boxes overflowing with the good stuff right now! The pines are candling, the oak trees are dressed in thousands of those chartreuse tassels, and I have a feeling my rose garden will be in bloom for Easter Sunday.
Every day I wake up with so many ideas I have to spend a few minutes consciously focusing my energy. Too much available time can be a problem, but it’s a gift once my energy is focused. I am trying to really cement a few new habits:
- Be very choosy about what deserves my attention. This means saying no to lots of options.
- Do something every day that cannot be easily undone, so that I am not living perpetually in maintenance mode.
- Allow myself to be led by Joy, not fear or stress or guilt or anything else. It matters.
There’s more, friends much more. In the time it took me to upload these photos and write these haphazrd sentences, thirty other beautiful things have happened. And I haven’t even told you what’s going on at the Commish or in our family. Just like in the springtime landscape, energy is building and changes are everywhere. I can’t keep up. And I have no desire to. I am just so happy to be along for the ride.
“The war had invested me with an understanding that life is both
dangerous and fleeting and thus there is no point in denying yourself
adventure while you are still here.”
~Elizabeth Gilbert in Magic City
XOXOXO
Love this!!!