Lughnasa (the last day for 2014) College Moon
The season of first harvests is drawing to a close. In our garden the harvest is largely over with only raspberries, leeks, carrots and beets left. Well, a few peppers and an egg plant might make it, but they’re pretty small. Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, this is the last Lughnasa in Minnesota. When we hit August 1st next year, we’ll either be looking at vegetables in a new garden or getting a garden ready for 2016.
It’s been an abundant year here with plenty of onions, garlic, beets, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, collard greens and chard already brought in. There are all the herbs, too, plus the currants and the gooseberries, the blueberries. Apples, cherries, pears and plums were in scant supply this year, but that means the new owners should have a great crop next year.
What I’ve learned about horticulture and bees, I’ve learned thanks to this land. The soil and the sun, the rain and the plants have all offered themselves as partners, and willing partners. Their language is more clear, more straightforward than the one in which I write here. I’m ready now for another teacher, for Rocky Mountain soil and sun, the sparser rain and more abundant snow, for plants that thrive on elevated ground.
Too, there is a project, a project of wondering. How will a lifelong flatlander, a Midwestern boy all his days, react to life among the earth risen up, pushed away from the surface, grown massive and hard? How will a 40 year Minnesotan, who has lived among lakes and rain and rivers, with cropland and gardens, respond to an arid land where the dominant element is rock, tough and tall? This is not a wondering about which is better, but about what each place teaches.
This student is definitely ready.
