Fresh From the Farm Round Up

I've certainly gotten behind on the gardening updates again, but this year I did have some pretty fun first time successes in the garden.  One was "the watermelon" (yes, I use "the" since only one survived due to the sporadic watering during an usually dry summer--an ongoing issue that I will attempt to ameliorate next year!) and also the Ronde de Nice French zucchinis that my friend Linda claimed were the best tasting zukes she's eaten.  (We had resurrected a garden plot that hadn't been planted in for over a year so the soil was quite fertile, making for some happy squashes, cucumbers, and deer since it wasn't fenced in.  However, given the abundance of production, we were ok with sharing a little this year.)  Not pictured: the many traditional zucchinis that tried to take over the world, whose appearances were preceded by exclamations of "Oh, shoot!  We missed another one!" and "Quick!  Pick it before it grows any bigger!"

An a-ha! moment came when I realized that the gorgeous poppies growing in the cutting garden were where the poppyseeds that I loved in my muffins and pastries came from.  These beauties did not do well as cut flowers but their pods--either still green or dried--were a favorite for bouquets, and the structure within was just amazing.  I spent some time laboriously harvesting the poppyseed and now I've got a little jar stored to make some muffins or cake with sometime soon.

Also new this year was braiding, garlic that is.  We planted two varieties this year as in years past, a soft neck version as well as a hard neck.  Last year during harvest time, we just threw them willy nilly into some crates, dried them, and I gave away some of the nicest ones, leaving us with some pretty scrawny guys to plant for this year.  Well, live and learn.  This time around, we separated and set aside the biggest ones first for seed for the coming year, and then I practiced braiding all the soft neck garlic into these big fishtails, which was quite fun.

Some new flowers came up in the cutting garden this year as well.  First was the echinacea that I had planted from seed the year before.  Out of the half dozen or so that I planted, only two actually matured to full plants and only one made it to this year, putting out some gorgeous pink blooms that make me think I might want to try planting from seed again.  I also planted some Bells of Ireland this year and though they came in sort of short, the colors and shape were still lovely and they should come back stronger and taller next year.  I was also happy to see that the scabiosa, which came from pods that I foraged in California, were establishing itself.  I'm pretty sure I weeded out a bunch of their starts in the spring when I was trying to get ahead of the weeds, not recognizing them as flowers that I wanted, but they are tough little guys and still several managed to survive.

Last year I had pretty good luck with larkspur and sweet peas but this year, perhaps due to the dry weather, almost none of them came up.  However, the rudbeckia and coreopsis went gangbusters and the zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds were also pretty happy as well as all the usual suspects from the Grandmother's Cutting Garden mix I planted three years ago--bachelor's buttons, love-in-a-mist, cosmos, Sweet William.

As late summer hit, it was finally tomato season.  This year I had started my tomatoes from seed around mid-April, trying some varieties that I'd never planted before: Japanese slicing Mandarin Cross, Red Oxhart, Cherokee Purple, and Black.  Of course neither my father nor I could resist getting at least a few more varieties each at the store.  I also got several volunteers of Sungolds and Sweet Millions from the plants I had planted the year before.  I'd say overall, the tomatoes fared okay but we didn't stake them well and I think the plot where I planted many of them was just tired and in need of a refresh in the soil.  Nonetheless, we managed to harvest quite a few still throughout the summer and come fall, tons of green tomatoes which I eventually made into a pretty decent salsa.

Like anything else, gardening seems to be about adjusting and following principles rather than rules.  On websites that give advice about growing tomatoes, it always seem to be about treating them very particularly but I find that most tomatoes seem pretty hearty.  In fact, the Roma tomato seeds that I put into my worm bin seem to always start germinating as soon as they get sun.  And even though I've finally trained my father to not start plunking tomatoes into the ground before the soil temperature starts getting above 50 degrees, most do survive without too much damage just as tomatoes planted somewhat later than usual also seem to do just fine in the end.  We try things out, see what works or doesn't, adjust and hope that the weather cooperates, and enjoy the fruit of our labor.

In closing then, a poem about learning, from books, from experience, and the realization that so much remains a mystery that defies categorization.

Learning the Trees by Howard Nemerov

Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn   

The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,   

Out of a book, which now you think of it   

Is one of the transformations of a tree.

The words themselves are a delight to learn,   

You might be in a foreign land of terms

Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,   

Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.

But best of all are the words that shape the leaves—

Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform—

And their venation—palmate and parallel—

And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate.

Sufficiently provided, you may now

Go forth to the forests and the shady streets   

To see how the chaos of experience

Answers to catalogue and category.

Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree

May differ among themselves more than they do   

From other species, so you have to find,

All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.”

Example, the catalpa in the book

Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three   

Around the stem; the one in front of you   

But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;

Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.   

It may be weeks before you see an elm   

Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,   

A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretius says,

Little by little, you do start to learn;

And learn as well, maybe, what language does   

And how it does it, cutting across the world

Not always at the joints, competing with   

Experience while cooperating with   

Experience, and keeping an obstinate   

Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.

Think finally about the secret will   

Pretending obedience to Nature, but   

Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,   

Dividing up the world to conquer it,

And think also how funny knowledge is:   

You may succeed in learning many trees   

And calling off their names as you go by,

But their comprehensive silence stays the same.

Begin It

One of the issues with having so many ways to fritter away one's time is that there is often inconsistency in doing any single thing.  I pick up one hobby, do it for awhile, then get distracted with something else.  In fact, right now I'm contemplating picking up the violin again, something I haven't done for at least twenty years.  Why I feel the urge to play the violin now, I don't know.  But that's what I mean.  Oftentimes I look at the things that other people do and think that I can do it too.  Run a marathon?  Sure, why not?  Get hundreds of followers on Instagram?  How hard can it be?  Write an amazing blog?  No problem.  But when it comes down to it, showing up daily or even regularly is hard work.  And from the date of the last entry on this blog (almost two years ago!!), it's something that I haven't been doing.  And ironically, one of the things I tell my students is that they don't have to be geniuses if they want to do well, but they do have to show up and do the work.

When I think about beginning again, it feels overwhelming.  How do I catch up on two years' worth of memories and ideas?  How many things have slipped through the cracks in the meantime?  Do I hit the highlights starting from 2013 or just jettison all that and begin again in the present?  In some ways, so much has happened in these two years and in other ways, nothing at all has happened.  I'm not sure about how to approach things, but I wanted to take inspiration from Goethe's words, which say that "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.  Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth...that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too....Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."  I'm just talking about writing a blog right now, but this is true for so many things.  Until we commit ourselves fully to something, someone, some place, the hesitancy that exists creates ineffectiveness and stagnation, a feeling of "stuckness" that simply doesn't have to be.  Instead, whatever it is we want to do, begin it.  Now.

I've just finished reading Ann Patchett's book This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which is about marriage, yes, but mostly about writing.  And one of the tips that she gives on how to write is again both so simple and so hard.  She say, "If you want to write and can’t figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day."  In other words, show up and do the work.  Nothing else.  So here I am.  And given that spring is the time for all things to begin anew, the timing couldn't be more perfect.

Beds prepped to go in March

Future peaches

The three sisters, corn, bean, and squash, ready to play

  

Figs doing their thing

Flower Power

I think I've shared in the past about my childhood desire to be a florist when everyone else wanted to be a nurse or a astronaut or a circus clown.  I've been making up little nosegays and bouquets from flowers from my and my dad's yard non-stop recently.  Perhaps I'm simply returning to my roots (pun intended), as I've just previously shared here, in yet another way.

There's something inherently satisfying in being able to put together a bouquet for someone and proudly say, "I grew that!"  I know it's not good to brag, but yes, I do want a gold star because I'm kind of a big deal! (I've been reading over some old blog posts and was reminded of my goal to embrace youthful hubris when I read this. :))

I don't naturally migrate to the soft pinks, whites, purples, and blues if I were to pick a ready made bouquet but since I used a seed packet called "Grandmother's Cutting Garden" by Botanical Interest, this is the sweet mixture that comes out of the ground year after year.  Bachelor's Buttons, Sweet Williams, Love-in-the-mist, and campanulas dominated the garden this year.  I also tucked in some sage flowers for contrast and their heavenly smell and added some borage for texture.  I also have been putting together big bouquets of borage because the blossoms are so abundant that some of the stems are ripping off the stalk due to the weight.  The bees couldn't bee (pun intended) happier!

This last bouquet is made up of roses from Dad's garden.  I'm not necessarily a fan of roses given how fussy they are but I may be a convert.  This sweet little bouquet perfumed the whole house for days and I loved how the the gorgeous shades of pink, red, orange, and mauve complimented each other.  I stuck a few branches of barberry bush in there for height and contrast.  This is one scary plant with a sharp thorn hidden behind each rosy leaf.

In the end, I can't really say that I "arranged" these flowers.  When the flowers you have are all so beautiful and fresh, it takes very little skill to put them together in a pleasing way.  But I'll still take that gold star.

This last photo is just a bonus picture of a flower called "kalmia."  I'd never seen this sort of flower before but found it on campus one day while walking to my office.  The kalmia is a plant related to the rhododendron, and its flowers and leaves can be deadly.  It's sweet clusters spiral upward and remind me of something else that's sweet:

But you've already been warned; the flowers are dangerous so no eating.  (They're also know as "sheepkiller flowers" (!!).

Is there such a thing as flower fever?  Because I think I've got it bad.

Staycation All I Ever Wanted

Last week's staycation at the farm was just what I needed after a hectic quarter (the week before I had no less than 3 students crying in my office!).  Rather than commute back and forth from my condo to there,  I decided to stay overnight for a few days in order to be able to work on the garden in a more leisurely manner.  I also wanted to take a break from the usual routines and to be able to wake up and sleep surrounded by nature.  And I got just what I asked for.

One of the first things I usually do when I get to the farm is to make the rounds and to see what is blooming, pickable, or in dire need of weeding.  This time around, I saw that all the garlic had grown scapes that were  getting ready to bloom so off they came so that the garlic would expend its energy into growing its bulb rather than flowering.  Garlic scapes have a mild garlicky flavor (surprise!) and are great sauteed or stir fried with some other veg.

I also had a few projects in mind besides the usual non-stop weeding.  Linda, the queen of DIY, had given me a few milk jugs when I had told her my theory that the reason why my tomatoes had been doing so dismally year after year was the lack of consistent watering.  She suggested I use the jugs to create self-watering reservoirs for the tomatoes, which I thought was a great idea.  "How hard can it be?" is my inherited motto but sometimes it doesn't quite prove true.  These containers were a bit trickier than anticipated as I was apparently overzealous with my poking on the first two jugs.  When I went to check on them the day after I filled the jugs, they were already completely empty.  So round two had me poking only two tiny holes on the side facing the tomato. This time around, the jugs seemed about a third full when I checked the next day but it was a little hard to judge the depth of the water, so I'm going to leave them be and see how the tomatoes fare this summer.

My other project of which I'm rather proud is this bean trellis that I constructed out of twine and the bamboo poles from my dad's back yard.  When I initially told him my plan, my dad wanted to give me 5' poles, saying that they'd be hard to fit in the car otherwise, but I was pretty sure that bean trellises were usually around 8 feet tall as I had seen them towering over other people's backyard fences.  We compromised at 6' and he trimmed up the poles he had harvested from his bamboo trees.  Once they were in the ground, they were a little under 6' with the horizontal pole just high enough to not be eye-poking height (at least for me).  I wound the twine around the top and bottom, then immediately put my scarlet runner beans, which I had started at home and were ready to climb, in the ground.  I had put some squash in the space between the poles but on second thought, after seeing some photos of how full the vines get, I moved them to more open space.

Dad came to visit me out at the farm and did a whole lot of weedwacking, which spiffed the place up quite a bit.  We picked the first of the favas and shelling peas, though he kept protesting that the favas were still too small but I was glad we could enjoy the young tender beans which didn't have to be shucked twice because the inner membrane was still tender enough to eat.  For my next harvest, I want to try grilled fava beans, which I'd also heard praises about from Ms. Foodie herself, Vicky, when she went to Kyoto in the spring.

Finally, I was able to make several bouquets of flowers for friends and family from flowers that I had grown from seed (which is its own small thrill) and which have been blooming so wildly these last few weeks.  The Sweet William along with cuttings of sage flowers just smelled fantastic and I also learned the name of the bell-shaped mystery flowers, campanula or bellflower, as well as these delicate blue flowers with the fern-like leaves: love-in-the-mist.  Isn't that just an absolutely fantastic name?

I could've stayed there longer but duty called and it also started raining and raining, so with reluctance, I packed up and returned to reality.  But I'll be out there again.  That's the lovely thing about staycations--you don't have to travel anywhere to go on one.  You're already there; you just need to make that mental switch to begin one.

I'll finish with two quotes from Simone Weil about what it means to pay attention.  It seems that often the victim of busyness is our attention and most of the time, we need to get away from it all to open up the space to pay attention again.  However, once we return to "reality," that attention diminishes or disappears again.  Staycations can be little portals to paying attention again, to each other, to the beauty around us, and to the things that matter, and I can't wait until I can go on another one.

"[Attention is] a suspension of one's own self as a center of the world and making oneself available to the reality of another being."--Simone Weil

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."--Simone Weil