Quieting Life

Winding it Down

Wasn't I just out showering under the stars? Still waiting for tomatoes to ripen? Now I'm on the back end of the gardening season, undoing a summer's worth of doing. 'Winding down' is really too gentle a way to describe it. If the beginning is a slow unspooling over the course of a few months – planting a little of this, trotting a favorite shovel out of the shed, adding another jug of something to the potting bench...staking this, pruning that – the putting to bed is more like a high-speed death spiral, a mad scramble to get everything put away, cleaned up, and battened down before the whole machine slams into winter.

It would be nice if I had pictures and prose to show for the last two months, but the reality of maintaining the garden and preserving its generous output while putting together a pair of training manuals for a bunch of new cars (my 'real' job) leaves little time or headspace for reportage. I've got a fine haul to show for my efforts, though.

Garden Report: July 30

Every gardener I talk to says the same thing, even the professional growers. Sure, endless watering because it refused to rain (the drought finally broke last week)...but holy crap the bugs. I've been gardening for 25 years, and I've never felt so under assault. That fella there in the picture is a red-legged grasshopper, measuring over 2 inches long. There are dozens like him out in the yard, each capable of devouring many times his body weight in tasty plant material every day. Add to that his lesser cousins, numbering in the thousands. Factor in the flea, tortoise, and cucumber beetles, the cabbage loopers and moth worms, centi- and millipedes, slugs and snails, all in quantities enough to make me queasy; it's a wonder there's a single leaf left. But.

I am vigilant. I prevail. And my garden thrives, flourishes – and feeds us.

Garden Report: June 15

Or, the waiting is the hardest part. This happens every year, once all the prep work is done, and everything is planted, and all the seeds have sprouted. Just waiting. Waiting for the roots to settle in so the tops can start to grow. Waiting for a stretch of hot sunny days to tilt all the new growth towards lushness. Waiting for the first little flowers to promise eventual tomatoes and cucumbers and peas. Waiting to be fed from all my hard work. Waiting.

These are the days of obsessive coddling. The morning rounds, coffee in hand, checking for signs of growth, checking for pests, checking for malnutrition indicators. Catch trouble early – feed a little, water a lot, pinch out the tips, thin the seedlings, pick and squish the bugs. These are the days that ensure happy rewards later on. For now the garden gives up little in return for all that care, mostly leaves of one kind or another: spinach, baby lettuce and arugula, some cilantro. Garlic scapes this week. I have to remind myself that in another month I'll be scrambling to keep up with its bounty. But for now, just waiting.

Garden Report: May 11

Most of us gardeners here in the northeast got punked by the unnaturally warm weather in March. Part of me knew we'd probably pay for the heat with a long stretch of grey wet chill (and we did), but the optimistic me went ahead as though the planting season had begun. I started some peas indoors, scattered spinach seed across a bed, and expected to get salad greens and root vegetables seeded in short order. Almost two months later, I've only just gotten lettuce and arugula started – no carrots, beets, or parsnips yet.