Returning this week is the semi-regular installment of "Fresh From the Farm This Week," starring the various flora and fauna (mostly of the worm variety) growing on my little allotment at a family friend's organic farm in Redmond.
As always, the sheer amount of manual labor needed to clear again the plots that I'd cleared the previous years from weeds and old plantings that had overwintered threatened to overwhelm me. I absolutely get why farming families of old (and surely still) had huge families: they were free day laborers! It's not quite compelling enough for me to consider (and far too late, I may add) but certainly the tenacity of things to live and grow and to overtake any open and available space serves as an object lesson that trying to rid our lives of unwanted things (be it weeds or much harder things like a quick temper) takes much vigilance and perseverance.
It's always fun to see perennials returning; they really are like old friends. The packet of "Grandmother's Cutting Garden" by Renee's Garden that I planted 3 years ago is blooming again (as well as slowly trying to expand its territory. See above paragraph). Right now the Sweet Williams and Bachelor's Buttons are gearing up to unfurl into their full pink, white, and purple glory and this year, there's a new surprise. I didn't know that certain seeds needed multiple years to establish themselves but I was told that Sweet Williams take two years, which was true in my case, and so this other flower might be something that just needed another year. In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing what blossoms it yields as I don't even know how to describe this new plant other than tall with blossoms clustered upward on the stalk (a bit like Bells of Ireland, which who knows, maybe it is?!). The fig tree also bravely put out two figs this year, which is one more than last, so we're carefully watching it in hopes that this year, we may actually be able to harvest Adam and Eve (having just spontaneously decided to name them that).
This year I was able to get out a little bit earlier than last to plant my "cool" crops of Tuscan kale, Chinese lettuce, fennel, snow and snap peas, and fava beans. Though the lettuce all bolted with the warm sunshine from a few weeks ago, everyone else is doing quite well. The favas are about 3 feet high now with pods starting to form, the peas are aclimbing, and I've already harvested some of the baby kale leaves along with the lettuce for stir fry.
As still a relatively new gardener/gentlewoman farmer, it's surprising how a garden can take over so much of your time and thoughts. With the quarter drawing to a close and what seems like an endless amount of grading, I don't have a lot of spare time to go and play in the dirt, but I find myself trying to find ways to squeeze it in. It somewhat surprises me that I miss my garden when I don't get to visit it at least weekly, but I suppose that it's a relationship of sorts, a give and take where effort and time has a visible effect, something that doesn't always seem true when working with people.
An added bonus when I visit the farm is that in the field across the street are a bunch of miniature horses grazing almost every time I'm out there. It began with 2 or 3 of them but now there seems to be a field of them, including some even more tiny miniature horses usually frolicking about. (And you thought that there would only be fauna of the limbless invertebrate kind!)
Talking Back to the Mad World
I will not tend. Or water,
pull, or yank,
I will not till, uproot,
fill up or spray.
The rain comes.
Or not. Plants: sun-fed,
moon-hopped, dirt-stuck.
Watch as flocks
of wild phlox
appear, disappear. My lazy,
garbagey magic
makes this nothing
happen.
I love
the tattered
camisole of
nothing. The world
runs its underbrush
course fed by
the nothing I give it.
Wars are fought.
Blood turns.
Dirt is a wide unruly room.
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