Sparks in the Soil

Uh-Oh: Adorable Bunny Alert!

This morning, sitting quietly and calmly in my backyard, was a pair of pleasantly plump bun-buns.  So....time to put up that chicken wire fence around the veg garden beds!  One of them bolted when I opened the door, but the other seemed to be all, "Whatever...I'm too full to move."

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The Miracle of Seeds

Just a quick update to report that the following seeds are officially above ground in our first garden bed, a mere 3 weeks after sowing:

Onions

Peas

Spinach

Mixed Lettuces

Radishes

Beets

Rainbow Chard

These are still lagging, but I'm not giving up until the weather gets a little warmer:

Parsnips (one or two are starting to poke through....maybe)

Parsley

Nasturtiums (I fear the birds might have gotten these)

Growing from seed really is a miracle.  You peer hopefully into the future, when you see a full, teeming garden properly spaced and tended.  You sow the seeds, burying them beyond your gaze.  Then you wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Then you give up hope that any of them will germinate.  And almost at that exact moment, you're rewarded with that amazing first glimpse of your hearty friends, reaching toward the sun from their warm soil beds.  I say again:  a miracle.

One Tall Mystery Bulb!

The mystery bulb is starting to open, to reveal itself to be the suspected Allium Globemaster, in all its purple glory.  The other day, I snapped a shot of it just pre-opening.  This is the tallest bulb flower I've ever seen!  And behold, a half dozen or so of the lilies I planted with it are also coming up (the squirrels got a few, phooey on them).

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Paging Mr. Maplethorpe!

Behold, the sensual beauty of a young zucchini seedling...and a quote from Robert Maplethorpe, the famous photographer of "naughty" orchids: "When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God."

 

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Fruit Trees' Almost-Leaves

While we could have bought 4-5 year-old, already-fruiting fruit trees for our side-yard dwarf apple/peach/cherry orchard, there are many reasons we're glad we didn't.  Reasons like, we get to shape the trees from the their first year.  We get to treat them organically and not have to detox them from four years of synthetic sprays.  And--best of all--we get to witness the moment when these slender trees make their very first moves toward putting out leaves, branches, buds, and blossoms. 

There will be a time when these trees, God willing, will be heavy with sturdy branches, thick-trunked, and laden with luscious fruit.  But today, they're just starting--and I get to watch.

Folks, this, to me, looks an awfully lot like a miracle.

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Stunning Garden Poem: 'This Compost'

It's still National Poetry Month, and after Kathy over at Skippy's Vegetable Garden published a stanza from this stunning Walt Whitman poem, "This Compost," and I was inspired to read--and now post--the whole thing.  Read it aloud, you won't be sorry.  "What chemistry!"

"This Compost"

By Walt Whitman

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last.

National Gardening Month: Let's Go!

April is National Gardening Month, and around here we're celebrating big time.  Here's what's happening this month, which we're now calling "National Go-Time Month!"

1. Bumble bees, in all their non-stinging, buzzy glory, are dancing and playing among our rhododendrons.  Pollinate, oh pollinators!

2. The grass within our raised beds is turned upside down, chopped up, and set a-compostin' under our fresh new dirt.

3. The dandelions are up, which is our cue to get our potatoes into the ground.

4. Experiments were started, including 12 strawberry plants (right), which share a raised bed with the potatoes and some onions, and asparagus (left), which I planted in the "summer veg" bed where our tomatoes, cukes, and squash will soon live.

 

5. Seeds!  Seeds!  Raised bed #1 was seeded with sugar snap peas, parsnips, Swiss chard, parsley, beets, spinach, arugula, leaf lettuce, radishes, onions, and nasturtiums.  Like my stick row/square markers? If half of this comes up, we'll be eating like royalty!

6. The great catalog experiment of 2010 went into the ground--our vanilla-strawberry hydrangea.  Um...are you ok?  Come on, green up for me!

7. The egg carton seed starter has sprouted and graduated from its plastic cover (hmm, should I be worried about those long stems?). The squash and cucumbers are ready to move into bigger pots, and I'll sing to them to coax "true" leaves out of them.

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Mystery Bulb Update!

Like any self-respecting Taurus, I hate to be wrong about things.  Except in the garden, which I regard as one big experiment and a source of eternal learning. 

Which is why I am intrigued and excited to have been wrong about my mystery bulb, which I had identified last week as a tulip.  I now believe that it is in fact an Allium Globemaster bulb.  I say this because I planted two of these bulbs in my front garden, and they are now showing foliage and bud that are remarkably similar to my backyard mystery bulb.

Only time will really solve the puzzle--this bud will open soon enough, and either it will be a tulip or, I suspect, a lovely purple globe!  Sigh, the waiting is the hardest part.....

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The Rocks Upon Which I Will Build My Garden

This weekend was a blissfully busy one in our garden.  One of the most fun activities was cutting in a new bed by our porch.  In the bed, we transplanted two bleeding heart plants that were languishing in the front of the house, a haphazard row of annual flower mix seeds, and....ta da!  Our 4 cloned New Dawn roses that, it seems, have survived the winter and are starting to put forth leaves and generally show signs of life.

The New Dawn triumph aside, my favorite part of this bed is its border--beautiful stones that we collected from the seashore on Cape Cod a number of years ago.  Those rocks used to border our front garden at our condo, and when we put the place on the market last spring, our real estate agent was almost successful in suppressing an eye-roll when I told him that we needed to list the rocks as an exclusion.  In other words, those rocks, they were coming with us.

Now, they line that bed plus two others in our backyard, and they make me happy every time I see them.  The colors that change and come to life when the rocks get wet.  The different shapes that somehow just fit together into a perfect lawn/garden boundary.  And the fact that they came from the sea to us, from us to our home, and from our old home to our new home.  They sit securely against the earth, and they're not going anywhere--unless we decide to move them again, because they are part of what makes our house a home--our home.

This photo was taken before a fresh layer of good dirt was added on top of the bed.  But a thing of beauty is a joy forever, no?

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Beginnings: Introducing Our Orchard

The most exciting thing about starting a new garden in a new home is that you really get a sense of beginnings--an empty space today is filled with a growing thing tomorrow.  It's exciting, a little scary (I always get this "this is my last chance to realize if this is a big mistake" feeling), and kind of magical.

Ever since we took this seminar at UMass about fruit tree growing and pruning, we've eagerly awaited the arrival of the 4 trees we purchased from Adams County Nursery in Pennsylvania (the pomologist who taught the class said that fruit trees are one category he does not recommend you get at your local garden center).  And yesterday, they finally arrived!

What was empty, only marked by the stakes we shyly laid out in anticipation...

...is now planted with the 4 characters who will populate our dwarf orchard.  May I introduce them to you?  This is our Montmorency sour cherry, who I'm calling Slim because she's tall and slender:

 

This is Sunny, my name for our Raritan Rose white peach.  Doesn't she look like she's reaching toward the sky?

This Crimson Crisp apple, I'm calling Pokey, because new green growth is already starting to poke out of the ends of her "central leader" top and side branches.

And finally, Grumpy, our Liberty apple.  In all her branchless glory, doesn't she look like the tree equivalent of someone glaring at you with arms crossed, sighing "Humph?"

Fruit trees, we learned, are an exercise in mindfulness and patience.  So don't panic if you're reading this thinking we bought sticks instead of trees!  They're in the ground, and just you watch what they can do....if we jigger this experiment just right, that is.  Onward!

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