Category Archives: Garden

The True Apocalypse

Spring                                                     Hare Moon

Tucson.  The Horse Latitudes.

The second of the three workshops, this one focusing on depth work, finished this afternoon.  Again, because of the nature of the workshops, they’re hard to summarize and its difficult to convey their spirit except to say its most like a contemplative secular retreat.  Which is, come to think of it, just what it is.

I can convey the spirit of this workshop by transcribing here the results of the next to last exercise. This one was to create a spontaneous statement, a testament, of what we believe to be true right now.  This was written following a long meditation, with no forethought.

Here are the things I know to be true:

Love forms the cross on which we all live.  The soil is the foundation of life. Our ancestors hold us up, have our backs. (FYI: those of you at Frank’s will know how this came to mind.)

The sun is a god who gives of himself wholly.  The light of the sun is holy and blesses what it touches.

The soil embraces the sun, marries the sun, goes into throes of ecstasy with the sun producing, producing, producing.

As the earth turns the soils embrace of the sun weakens and strengthens, weakens and strengthens and from these rhythms we get life eternal, abundant, gracious and undeserved.

We celebrate each other as moving, loving sons and daughters borne of the sun and the soils embrace-nothing more and nothing less.  We owe ourselves fealty to these two, our parents, our true god and our true goddess without whom we are nothing-brittle, cold, frozen, shattered.

We need no other religion, no other philosophy, no other politics than fealty to sun and soil.  They have given us what we need, they will give us what we need-unless we change their marriage to one which can no longer include the human family.  If we do, it will be the final anathema, the true apocalypse and the end of a long love affair.

Now

Spring                                             Hare Moon

The first of three workshops has finished.  This one, life context, positions you in the current period of your life.  It’s been, as always, a moving and insight producing time.  These workshops move below the surface and defy easy summary, but I have had one clear outcome from this one.  I’m in a golden moment.

I’m healthy, loved and loving.  Kate and I are in a great place and the kids are living their adult lives, not without challenges, but they’re facing those.  The dogs are love in a furry form.

The garden and the bees give Kate and me a joint work that is nourishing, enriching and sustainable. We’re doing it in a way that will make our land more healthy rather than less.

The creative projects I’ve got underway:  Ovid, Unmaking trilogy, reimagining faith, taking MOOCs, working with the Sierra Club, and my ongoing immersion in the world of art have juice.  Still.

I have the good fortune to have good friends in the Woollies and among the docent corps (former and current).  Deepening, intensifying, celebrating, enjoying.  That’s what’s called for right now.

Melting

Imbolc                                                                Hare Moon

It’s melting! It’s melting!  Yes, like the wicked witch in the land of Oz the snow built up and preserved for so long has begun to melt.  It runs down gutter spouts, leaves crusty holes in the various hills of snow around the house.  The sun smiles and as it has grown higher in the sky its smile has increased in warmth.  The Great Wheel may have been slowed a bit this winter, but it seems to have gotten better purchase.

This does not, though, for those of you far away in warmer lands, release us from the grip of winter.  The ground stays frozen as long as there is snow on it and after the snow leaves it takes a while for the soil to warm up.

Outdoor gardening work won’t start for at least another month, maybe a bit longer.  Some forestry tasks might get done after I get back from Arizona.  The momentum has shifted and the new growing season is struggling to get born.

Warmer

Imbolc                                                                  Hare Moon

50 degrees yesterday.  Dripping ice created a torrent in our downspouts, as if a hard rain was falling.  This is still, I think, a gradual melt, so I’m ok with the temperatures.  Not that I can do anything about them anyhow, of course. That rain forecast for today? Not so happy about that.  Slow melt good.  Fast melt bad.

Waking up to moist air, warm (over against -15) and carrying the scent of the woods and the soil, moves me forward along with the turning of the Great Wheel. My body begins to synch itself with the change, pushing me toward the outside, a part of me unfurling with the sun’s changed angle, the increased warmth.

A lot to do this week before I leave for Tucson, so I’d better get to it.  Finish the climate change course.  Send off my query letters.  Always more Latin.  A couple of putzy tech things. Call Enterprise. Get my packing organized.  A two week plus trip on the road requires different packing than a weekend flight to Denver.

Seed Orders

Imbolc                                                                Hare Moon

The Great Wheel has been nudged forward, beginning to turn toward spring: the light in the sky today and the moisture in the air, the sudden grittiness of the once pristine snow. The temperature, even now is 36 degrees.  Above freezing.

The seed orders, filled out a couple of weeks ago, went into Harris Seeds and the Seed Savers Exchange.  Plant orders too.  The garden map for 2014 came out and I figured the square footage for certain kinds of vegetables.  This information went out to Luke Lemmers of HighBrix Gardens.  He’ll send me nitrogen specific to the various beds.

Each one of these steps is gardening.  Gardening is not only hoe and rake, seeds and soil. It’s planning and knowing, sourcing.  This is the gardening work that can be done while the snow is still on the ground.

We did start our own seeds for a few years with a hydroponic set up, but the space it requires and the fussy of it didn’t appeal to me.  So now we buy transplants.  A bit more expensive, but much less hassle.

An important next step comes when the soil becomes workable and we can put in those hardy vegetables that like the cold.  Then, after May 15th or so, the usual last frost date for Andover, we’ll plant the tomatoes and peppers and egg plants and kale and chard and collard greens.  After that, it’s caring for the plants as they grow.

Look for our Beltane bonfire, May 1st, the official opening of the growing season.

Winter Time Archaeology

Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Finished first draft of my query letter.  It includes a synopsis of Missing, about 1,500 IMAG0365words, and the first five pages.  Missing itself, after revision 5.5, is at 103,000 or so.  I want to get some feedback on the query letter, then start sending it out to agents.  My plan is to get it out to 10 agents before I leave for Tucson and other points south west.

(June 5th, 2013)

That took the morning.  Tomorrow I’m putting together our seed and plant orders, calculating the kinds of nitrogen they will need based on the bed sizes for specific vegetables and getting an order for the nitrogen off to Luke Lemmer in Plato, Minnesota.  This is in plenty of time since our vegetable beds, raised about 18 inches off the ground, are invisible now.  It would require winter time archaeology to find them.

The Vegetable Garden
The Vegetable Garden

This is part of why I like four distinct seasons.   Planning a garden while 3 feet of snow lie in our yard and the temperature is in the teens headed toward the teens below makes the full cycle of life an experience rather than abstraction.

(February 21, 2014)

 

A Letter To Saudi Arabia

Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

Brother Mark, within a hundred miles of the Rub al Kahli, the empty quarter, asked me about the winter and the garden.  Here’s my reply:

It has been our most severe winter since 1978-79, which was only 8 years after I moved up here.  We just got 10 inches of snow and the temperatures are headed back down.  It’s 2 right now and we have -15 for a low forecast this Thursday.  Snow in our front yard is as high as my hip.  The raised beds in the vegetable garden have disappeared.

All the dogs are good right now.  Gertie gets around much better since she had the surgical crimp removed from her left rear knee.

Kate’s away at quilting retreat with her sister Anne.  Just me, the dogs and lots of snow.

Last year I began using products from International Ag Labs and they increased our production even though I used them for only part of the season.  The broadcast fertilizer went down fall and this spring I add nitrogen.  There’s also a transplant formula to use when planting.  These products improved the microbial life in the soil and add minerals found missing through soil tests.  I tested the vegetable garden and the orchard last fall.

International Ag labs moves gardens and farms toward sustainable agriculture by creating healthy soil.  This has always made sense to me and I’m pleased to have found them.  Bill Schmidt found them.

Over this weekend I plan to place my seed and plant orders.  Once I’ve done that I can 10002010 09 25_0301order nitrogen in forms specific for specific plants.  This means I will no longer have to rotate my crops because I’m building soils designed optimally for each plant type.

Tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, melons, bush beans, sugar snap peas, leeks, greens, herbs and peppers.  The garlic’s already in the ground.  This fall I’ll plant scallions at the same time I plant garlic.

The orchard is part of the program this year.  That means I’ll be spraying the trees as well as the vegetables.  These are foliar feedings, not insecticides.  That’s a weekly, sometimes twice-weekly job. There, are, too soil drenches every other week.

Aren’t you glad you asked?

The Storm Has Passed

Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Daytime silence.  The snow is higher around our house, in our orchard and vegetable 1000IMAG0028garden than I can ever remember it.  The garden shed, the honey house, the grandkids playhouse have foot-thick contoured roofs, snow conforming to their shape.  In the orchard the currants are visible only at the tips and snow climbs the trunks of the cherry, the plum, the apple and pear trees.  The fruit tree limbs dangle heavily, weighted down by snow clinging to them.  Cedars, spruce and Norway pines all droop, heavy with captured snow.  This kind of snow can injury trees, split limbs, even kill younger or more fragile trees.

The result is a quality of quiet I associate only with late night.  A muffled experience with no mufflers, the kind of quiet where the sounds of your mind and your ear try to compensate with small murmurings, chirpings, light buzzing.  Like the house has been wrapped in cotton.

It leaves me in a pleasant torpor, a vague holiday or weekend feeling on a Friday afternoon, wanting hot chocolate and a log fire.  Some jazz, a good book.  Mostly it feels like night, as if candles would be good, too, except the windows are ablaze with albedo returned sunlight off the new snowcover.

 

The Week Ahead

Imbolc                                                              Valentine Moon

Weather has warmed up over 40 degrees from the last few weeks and it’s still cold. That’s about where we live.  No volcanoes erupting to interfere with our lives though.

Today or tomorrow I’ll finish reviewing the edits made by Bob Klein to Missing.  Then it’s off to the agents.  I’ve probably taken more time getting to this point than a novel of this type warrants, but I’ve wanted to produce as good a book as I can.  The first two or three books sold can determine success over all (that is, being allowed to continue publishing) and I want to present clean, focused stories.

 

Also tomorrow I’m going to resume my P90X workouts.  I’ve taken a week + off to allow my chest to heal and it seems mostly calmed down now.  Dave Scott, the handy-man I mentioned a bit ago, has installed the new pull-up bar, the Stud Bar (Tm).  It will not pull out of the ceiling studs (aka Stud Bar) and I will not drop unceremoniously onto the concrete anymore.  This last makes me happy.

When Kate and I discussed my attendance at an Ira Progoff workshop, I initially wanted to go to an event in early May.  It was in Asheville, N.C. and the thought of contemplative work in the Blue Ridge mountains appealed to me.  But, she rightly observed, this was soon after our Colorado trip for Gabe’s birthday and at the beginning of the growing season.  Other dates and places I liked were either in the middle of the growing season or at the time of the honey harvest.  That’s how we chose the end of March.  No planting, no bees.  And I can make Denver on the way home, wishing an early birthday to granddaughter Ruth.

Another way of saying Tucson was not on the top of my list for places to go.

The polishing begins on the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha this week. Back to the beginning with careful attention to commentaries, dictionaries and other English translations.  The goal:  as well spoken a translation as I can muster plus commentary notes.

(st. jerome, patron saint of translators. and yet another great beard model)

It’s also week 7 of the Climate Change course.  This course has proved as influential for me as a weekend Kate and I spent in Iowa City with PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, a conference on climate change. That one propelled me into my work with the Sierra Club. Just where I’m headed now is not yet clear to me, but I’m for sure going to increase my activity level on adaptation.