Category Archives: Garden

Garden, Weather +Climate

Goldilocks and the Family Garden

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Lughnasa                                                         Lughnasa Moon

There’s a Goldilocks’ quality to gardening. Not too much, not too little, but just right. The Goldilocks’ formula applies to water, soil additions, number of plants and temperature. The gardener can control soil additions and the number of plants with relative ease, confident in her adviser’s soil tests and their recommendations for additives. Likewise, though the temptation may be too either over plant or under plant, get more vegetables per square foot or give the plants room to grow, a wise gardener develops a feel for how the beets perform in her garden, carrots, tomatoes and spaces accordingly.

The temperature, especially in northern or high altitude climes, might need some control though here at Artemis Hives and Gardens we’ve not added hooped plastic over our beds to extend the growing season, either early or late. Plants can be started inside to counter the prevailing outside temperatures of late winter and early spring. But, for the most part, we’ve accepted the temperature that the sun and the clouds and the zigzagging jet stream have given us.

We can, and do, add water during periods lacking rain, but we cannot adjust the water that comes from rain. This year we’ve had too much. A sticky fungus has attacked the peppers and the raspberries, a not uncommon result of too much water. Each year brings some challenge, this year it’s too much rain and that’s the one element we can do little about. We need not too much water, not too little water, but just the right amount.

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Our Land and Home, The Move

Shorter, More Intense

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Lughnasa                                                          Lughnasa Moon

Did some climatological research yesterday about the Idaho Springs area. This is life a 7,500 feet +. It’s cooler when Minnesota is hotter and warmer when Minnesota is colder. So far, perfect. Still winter, but not so brutal. The gardening zone, based on winter low temps is 5a. That’s roughly what Andover is said to be these days though I find it more like 4b. Still, let’s call it equivalent.

The big differences are in rainfall, about half of Andover’s in Idaho Springs, and growing season. The first frost in Idaho Springs is between September 1st and September 10 over against October 5-10 for Andover. The last frost was the big surprise to me-between June 21 and June 31. An early last frost would come on the Summer Solstice!

So. This will be a far different gardening environment from Andover, one requiring either starting of plants  or protecting plants planted outside or both. One factor I haven’t researched because I’m not sure how to is the strength of the sun. Elevation both thins the air and puts the garden closer physically to the sun. This results in a higher UV index overall and I imagine (and stepson Jon says it’s so) this will result in accelerated plant growth. If I can prevent the sun from burning the plants.

This will all require a lot of new learning, but it will be that learning that will eventually marry me to a new spot on the planet. I’m looking forward to it.

Art and Culture, Asia, Cinema and Television, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Humanities, Latin, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Purging We Will Go

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Lughnasa                                                     Lughnasa Moon

Over the weekend and as deep into this week as I need to go, I’m packing up my former study. I’ve purged one file cabinet and consolidated its content into boxes for moving. A horizontal cabinet awaits attention. A large plastic tub full of art supplies went into the move with care pile. One small bookcase has been emptied and moved. The shop work bench I’ve used for storage is empty, too. That old printer, the one I bought in 1994, is in the truck and ready to go to a recycler.  An HP laserjet, it still functions.  That leaves three larger bookcases and some miscellaneous things on various surfaces, plus the art on the walls.

(what I hope to create in Colorado, my own version of this.)

When this room has been tidied up, the next and last big push begins. My study. This room has walls of books. Many will go in boxes with red tape, but most will not. The other areas have gone well, but this one will present some difficulty. So many projects. Some of the past, some of the future, some of today. Which ones do I imagine I’ll continue in Colorado? Which ones have enough spark to be valuable in the final third of my life? These are hard decisions for me and packing this room will be both valuable and difficult.

This is a chance to prune my work over the last third of my life, clear out the branches that have grown across each other. Take out that large branch that flourished then died. Increase the circulation amongst the remaining branches so they have air, can breathe. Pruning gives renewed vigor to plants and I hope to achieve the same thing when I pack up these materials, those closest to my heart, leaving behind what I no longer need.

Garden, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home

Among the Gooseberries

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Lughnasa                                                                     Lughnasa Moon

1000P1030763Gooseberries favor the small animal, especially birds, who can either land on the stem among their thorns or reach up with small paws to retrieve the prize. The larger animal like the one seen here must carefully grasp the branches where the thorns are not, wear protective clothing for vulnerable skin and have on gloves to guard the even more sensitive fingers and palms, the hand as a whole. Having done that, though, the gooseberry rewards all of them with a tart sweet berry that might make the body of a clever purple or green goblin, especially if he were fitted with an acorn head carrying its jaunty cap.

Oh, and the smart gardener (not me) would plant them with sufficient room around each bush to easily access the branches. This cramped planting requires perilous maneuvers.

On the other hand this gardener (smarter in this instance) did move all these gooseberry bushes. They languished in the shade during the day and he dug them up and replanted them in this sunny spot where they thrive. This is about learning the language of plants. They speak with leaf color, insect infestations, poor fruit production, spindly branches. The gardener must listen intently as the plant communicates its needs, then do what is necessary to meet them. If a plant can be placed in a location right for its health and provided with adequate nutrition and water, then it will produce and produce and produce without much care.

Colorado, Garden, The Move

Moving/Gardening Fatigue

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Lughnasa                                                                 Lughnasa Moon

Both of us have experienced moving/gardening fatigue this week. Living in the move helps, but it doesn’t eliminate the stress of so many decisions large and small and the feeling of hanging over a precipice neither able to fall or retreat. The garden, we both realize, has grown beyond our energy levels, not our capacities, though there is not a functional difference.

It’s a relief to share these feelings, to know that your partner has the slows as well as you. Of course, that’s the definition of a good relationship, sharing the journey, the ancientrail of marriage.

Even with these feelings I harvested what became eleven pints of canned collard greens, enough chard to last us for several meals, carrots and beets we’ve already eaten. Also, I have gotten a fair way toward packing up my garden study, tossing no longer needed files, boxing no longer needed books. The Dremel and some books on Chinese went in one box to move. Two garbage bags weighted down with paper are in the larger recycling bin delivered last week. A file box containing material from a file cabinet I plan to sell is full.

Plus this week we met with our final realtor and looked over material she sent us this morning in our business meeting. Not like nothing’s happening. Just weary of it this week. This will pass.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Lughnasa 2014

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Lughnasa                                                                      Lughnasa Moon

In times before the pagan revival this holiday had the name Lammas, even among witches. Lammas, a modern English transliteration of an Anglo-Saxon word for loaf-mass, was celebrated on August 1st. The Roman Catholic imperial strategy of subjugating, then eliminating rival religions moved forward in part by absorbing and renaming other faith’s holidays.

It is not so easy, though, to stamp out folk religions. The old ways were held tight in rural areas and those doing so were called heathens (on the heath) or pagans, from the Late Latin paganus, or country-dweller.

Here’s an example. On Lammas parishioners would grind the first of the wheat harvest, then bake loaves of bread and take them to the church for blessing. According to this wikipedia site, many would then take the bread home, break it into four pieces and put them at the four corners of the grain storage building for protection against spoilage and rodents. So Lammas remained a first-fruits harvest festival, even under the Roman Catholics, but they replaced celebration of the grain itself with incorporation of the grain into the Catholic eucharistic symbology.

(a welsh corn dolly)

As the wheel turns, so does the nature of belief and faith. In this more pagan friendly world most neo-pagans, though not all, have returned to the original Celtic, Lughnasa. While I don’t align myself with any of the contemporary pagan splinters like Wicca, neo-paganism or Asatru, I do align myself with the impetus for the Great Wheel, the changing seasons themselves, and with the value of holidays to celebrate those changes. The Celtic holidays come from within my genetic heritage, so they make sense for me.

Sitting on the counter upstairs is a large laundry basket, the plastic kind that can be IMAG0382carried on the hip, filled with collard greens and chard. In the shed, drying, are yellow onions and garlic of different varieties. Downstairs, in the pantry, Kate has already stored bright orange jars of carrots, blood red jars of beets and jars the solid green of green beans. We have, too, eaten onions, chard, carrots, beets, green beans and collard greens already, so this is a good time to thank the land and the weather and the plants for the food they’ve already produced.

(onions and garlic, 2014)

In Celtic lands Lughnasa would have seen a corn maiden brought in from the fields in the first grain cart holding harvested wheat. (corn, in the British use, being wheat) And corn dollies would represent this symbol of the land’s fertility throughout the long, fallow months.

These holidays were not a single day (as we tend to celebrate them now, if we celebrate them at all), but were market weeks, when produce and crafts would come into a town and villagers and farmers would shop. Games were played, dances held, and marriages, of a 3-month or a year-and-a-day length could be entered. Both were considered trial marriages, the 3-month trial up at Samhain or Summer’s End.

Since these markets enjoyed the first fruits of many harvests, they were occasions tied to the rural life. In the United States Celtic peoples continued the Lughnasa heritage with county fairs and state fairs. Though the Minnesota State Fair is a much more expansive event than the typical Lughnasa festival, the Anoka County fair held recently or the 4-H fair held annually in my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana were probably similar.

In my world Lughnasa is much as it always was in terms of intention, a moment to stop and consider the strong bond between our land and our stomachs, our land and our survival. If nothing else these holidays make us pause and reflect on what’s happening in a world, the plant and animal world, that we might otherwise ignore. It’s for this reason chiefly that I think broad awareness of the Great Wheel and celebrations of its holidays could be a balm for an overheated world.

 

 

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Wheel

Green Day

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Lughnasa                                                                Lughnasa Moon

Out this morning to harvest collard greens and chard. Kate’s going to use the pressure 500P1030729cooker to can them so we can move them with us next year.  A few more garlic should be ready and perhaps more onions.

We’ll have a year without a garden, most likely, next year. If we can get out of here by April, not impossible, we might land in Colorado soon enough to get raised beds made, new soil in place, and a 2015 garden in. Remains to be seen.

(collard greens and chard + onions in May)

Today is Lughnasa and that post will come, appropriately, after I bring in the greens. August means the downside of the summer has well begun as my round calendar tells me graphically at a quick glance.

There will be today, too, a post on what the web calls content curation. I was not the first sun calendarto think of that term relative to the information firehose analogy. There are several strategies for curating content, but the first and most basic one is to know what kind of information you want. I’ve made baby steps in this direction with Feedly, the links listed on the right here, bookmarks and an uneven deployment of hashtags.

(note: we are at about :20 to the hour if this were a wall clock)

But more on Lughnasa and content curation later today.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home

Mid-Season Slump

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Summer                                                             Lughnasa Moon

I’ve slipped into a late summer pensive mode, obvious from the posts lately. It’s not far off from melancholy, a land I can see from this spot in my inner landscape.

It comes, in part anyhow, from being fed up with garden work, tired of the responsibility. At first this year I described this as pulling away from the land, a pulling away occasioned by our pending move. And, yes, there is that element to it, but then I recalled other late July, early August feelings. Similar ones.

Around the time of Lughnasa, the Celtic festival of first fruits, we’ve been at the garden since April. That’s 4 months and my emotional response to it follows a predictable pattern. There is, first, eagerness. This often comes in January with the arrival of the seed catalogs. Paging through these girly magazines of the horticultural world, flashing pictures of mature vegetables and gorgeous flowers draw the eye and stimulate the imagination. A new year’s garden begins to take shape with scribbled plant lists, drawings of the beds, conversations about what went well last year, what might be fun this year. This is around Imbolc, the Celtic festival of lambs-in-the-belly.

Then, the grip of winter loosens and the soil can be worked. This is the time for planting cool weather crops. Now there’s a mild fever, a feeling that the weather is holding things up. Last year’s mulch gets pulled off, the beds for cool weather plants get worked a bit and seeds go in the ground.

Waiting for seeds to germinate is a sweet time, part concern, part withheld joy. Then the shoots begin to pierce the earth. Often here in Minnesota this is around the Celtic festival of Beltane, the beginning of the growing season, May Day.

Another period of impatience occurs. Frost sensitive plants can’t be planted with confidence until after May 15th, some even after Memorial Day, though each year there’s a temptation to test the weather in order to benefit from a longer growing season.

All of May is garden intensive with clean-up, planting, weeding, bed preparation, dead-heading of perennial flowers. May might be the best garden month because it combines the restless anticipation of the frost sensitive plantings with thinning and weeding of the cool weather crops.

With the gradual climb of the sun toward the Summer Solstice the plants accelerate their growth. All the plants. Including weeds. By the Solstice insects have begun to have their way with some of the growing plants and weeds become a constant. Mulch goes back down to hold in moisture and keep the ground cooler. June sees the full garden, the vegetable garden, growing. The cool weather plants are racing to maturity and the frost sensitive plants gain height and leaves, some fruits.

In late June and July beets and carrots of the cool weather plantings, green beans and sugar snaps, chard and collard greens are ready. Harvests begin and second plantings go in. The sun’s height, though now in recession, continues high and solar energy strong.

July is the peak of the garden with most plants high, green and bearing fruit. Harvests croppedIMAG0327already begun continue and often tomatoes are ripe, peppers, too. The first of these. By now the eagerness has waned, replaced by a steady rhythm of spray, weed, thin, pick.

Yes, it’s true that the harvest is the point of it and, yes, it’s true that harvesting is a satisfying work. But sometime around Lughnasa, right now this year, the garden’s grip on my imagination and heart begins to weaken. I begin to resent its hold on my time, on having to be present to it. Also, plants begin to die back, this is the end of maturation, senescence.

This feeling lasts a couple of weeks, until a hint of coolness hits the nights. It might come from my sensitivity to the changing light, a signal that the more thought-focused, inner world seasons have already begun to assert themselves. I am a child of the dark fallow months, a time when the world outside demands nothing, leaving me alone with my books, my Latin, my writing.

In another week or so I’ll get another boost for garden work. Anticipation will grow for the raspberry ripening and the triumphal weeks of tomato, egg plant, pepper, cucumber harvests. By September the garden will demand less time. I’ll put in a new crop of garlic later in the month, possible early October. Clean up and memories will dominate then.

All this is to say that I’m not really pulling away, not quite yet. This is mid-season weariness, a regular event. Part of the gardening year.

Garden, Great Wheel, Science

Nocturne

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Summer                                                                  Lughnasa Moon

The days continue to grow shorter. The yellow orb in the middle of the round calendar has begun to pull away toward the center, indicating less sunlight during a 24 hour period. This change is not far advanced, though we have already lost 50 minutes of sunlight since June 25th. The sun’s recession from our day will continue until December 21. On that day we will have 8 hours and 47 minutes of sunlight compared to June 25th’s 15 hours and 35 minutes.

(Hay Harvest, Camille Pissaro, 1901)

The harvest points to the same outcome. The plants we grow here have to fit their reproductive lives into this change, utilizing the sun’s fullness during June, July and August. Then, the flowering and making of seed bearing fruits or pods or increased roots needs to be finishing, otherwise the seeds and their containers will not be ready for September’s chill and October’s frost.

The vegetables are a calendar, too, marking time with their cycles of growth, fruiting and decay. Many of our onions are drying in the shed. About half of the garlic and another large batch of onions are curing in the sun, then they’ll go in the shed, too. The sun, the winds, the temperatures, the weather all change, too, bringing with them the seasons we know. This is the source of the ur-faith, the one before all others and the one common enough and true enough to do even if nothing all else is added.