Gardening

I have gardened since I was in my early 20s. I quit my real estate job when the going got too tough and discovered that I was not really a marketable person. Food crisis soon happened. I wanted nice tomato sandwiches and did you know that a fresh tomato costs more than ground beef??? So, I started growing my own tomatoes and green beans. Fast forward to moving into this house and I really started to garden. Don helped me lay out a beautiful rectangle and I heaped Black Cow Manure on it. Leaves from the yard and grass clippings from my neighbors. The beautiful dirt grew. Then we got chickens and I started to put the chicken litter on the garden. My next door neighbor Mary Beth commented that I literally could put a stick in the ground and a tree would grow. At one point, I was growing most of our vegetables. I canned. I froze. We ate out of the garden. I was fully organic. No pesticides. No fertilizer. then my mother started to garden at the office. I helped her but she wanted to use chemicals. We fought. We would have an agreement that she would ignore. We would fight again. My dad would call, tell me to help my mother, guilt me into it. It was hot, hot, hot behind that metal building that we work in. And I didn't want to eat chemically laden produce. I finally quit for good. When I started working at farmer's markets, I scaled back my gardening since I could trade my cheese for vegetables. All day, every day. And I was so hot from being outside that I didn't want to be in my yard afterwards. Gradually, I started to pare back my garden. I grassed in my lovely rectangle. I planted shrubs where I had dumped loads of chicken litter. I planted lilies and gladiolus. this year, I've planted green beans, 3 tomato plants, 2 pepper plants. And six basil plants. But just like Mary Beth said, my sticks have grown into trees. Basil has 'volunteered' in my garden and is overwhelming me. I am making pesto out of it. Here is my recipe: Pesto 4 cups dry basil leaves packed 1/2 cup parmesan cheese 1/2 cup olive oil 1/2 cup of nuts (I prefer walnuts) 2 heaping tablespoons of minced garlic salt and pepper to taste. May need a tiny bit of sugar (1/2 tsp) if the leaves are a little bitter. chop all in a food processor, freeze. The other plants I am doing this summer -- green beans, tomato and pepper are not doing well. Well the plants for the beans are great but very few beans. It has been so hot and so dry that I am getting no produce. I am not sure if I am sad or not. I know that I wouldn't enjoy going outside and picking a ton of green beans or canning tomatoes in my kitchen this summer. But I miss the loveliness of slapping a pork chop on the grill, digging a few potatoes up and snapping green beans and boom! dinner! Part of me wishes that I could arrange my life -- maybe move to Highlands or another mountaintop for the summer. Work from there. But then I would be worried about my house and my friends and my church. So if I am 'planted' here, why can't I plant here? Maybe what I need to do is rearrange my life so that the very cool time (and it was 82 degrees when I left here this morning at 8 am) is my time in the yard. Not when I am hot and tired from work and driving home. But doing that is a problem with getting to work before my mother who tends to paw through my desk and disrupt my work flow. And I really don't want to get up and do this any earlier. There is a solution. Maybe just a 15 minute timer outside? Think of the work I could get done if I did 15 minutes a day in the morning! And 15 minutes of not looking at FaceBook. There it is. My 15 minutes. And then I come inside and shower and when I get home in the evenings, no guilt. None. Except that this year, there will be no green beans. Even if I do the 15 minutes a day. But there are so many projects that need to be done outside that I'm really thinking that is ok. And if I establish this habit, maybe next summer, I'll be ok to plant more than just the green beans, 3 tomatoes, 2 peppers and the basil. And maybe we'll get more water from the sky -- I think that might be called rain, but I'm not sure as it seems like we've not seen any in days, weeks, months, possibly this year??? -- and things will be better in general in my yard. As an aside, it is really hard for me to keep my seat and bang these 1000 words out. I cannot tell you how many times I have checked my email, thought about dinner, looked at the yoga website, checked my email, thought I should water the plants on my porch, checked my email. You get the picture. I have a hamster in my mind. And the wheel just keeps on turning. Back to the garden. There is the possibility of the fall garden. And August 1 is the perfect time to plant one. That could be what I am going to use my 15 minutes for. And to get rid of the wood chips. Because that is the true secret of my gardening 'stick turning into a tree' success. I have piled tons and I do mean that literally, tons of woodchips in my flower beds. I use it to suppress weeds, keep water in, just make my yard presentable in general. And they are free. Free. Just have shovel and move them, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. My children used to be drafted to do this and so did Don. Now I am completely on my own as everyone else thinks we have plenty. But the weeds are on the top, need a good smothering. Am I done with the garden? I don't think so. I think I am just changing the plans and moving onto a different stage.