Sowing the Seeds

I always begin to feel like a mother when Spring starts to show it's sleepy eyes, peeking out through the cracks of the frozen, tired ground. It's planning time, shortly followed by early planting time.

This is year #2 for the Great Simplicity garden, and I'm looking forward to increased variety in produce, as well as a slightly better idea of just what I might be doing out there. The primary evidence of that is my attempt at planning out the garden. Note that this attempt might already have been foiled by my >$100 seed order because I just had to have everything that looked even a bit delicious or beautiful!

Nevertheless, I feel more equipped this year. I'm starting some plants from seed this time - many more than I did last year. And I've got a journal. A real paper journal. And I've even written in it. To date, I've planted several pepper and tomato varieties indoors, and just two days ago transplanted some onion seed starts from indoors to out. (just after finally tilling the garden with a Mantis - my new LOVE and now highly coveted piece of yard equipment. Maybe Santa will think of me and my garden this year ;) ) There are also some Japanese yellow eggplants - but I don't have high hopes for them.

I've direct sown spinach in the garden, and have plans to begin the root veggies this coming weekend. So far, everything is running along fairly smoothly. Those of you who are seasoned gardeners are probably laughing at my momentary confidence with the status of things...May will bring with it better weather and a fury of planting and staking, followed by wave after wave of harvesting through June, July, and August...oh yes, and there will be canning.

Right now, in the quiet of the preparatory season, I am content, and excited about the fruit that is to come.

Full Up

It's always dangerous to launch into a blog post when you're not sure where it's going to end up, but it's been far too long, so here goes...

This past summer in my work life was one of the busiest I've ever had - I keep mentally swearing never to repeat such ridiculousness in the future, so remind me of this about the time April rolls around, ok? On the other hand, the home front was was busy too - but in a different way!

Last April, I talked about emergence from the liminal spaces life throws us into every now and again. I predicted that our garden would provide us with the kind of hope and inspiration needed to pull us out into the light again. Well, I'm not sure if it pulled us out, but it certainly kept us so busy that we forgot to worry so much and were definitely able to move forward into new phases of life.

Now it's October. The garden has been done producing for a good month, and we dug it out last week. But I am happy to say that, literally, the cupboard is not bare.



Not only did we enjoy fresh produce all summer, we canned peppers and tomato sauce, chili sauce, and relish, mushrooms, squash, and apples - sauce and butter.

Needless to say, we will definitely be doing this again next summer! And rumor has it the garden will be ever bigger!

Bounty

Living the simple life definitely keeps a person busy! I've hardly been blogging because I've hardly had time to - and for a change, it's been a pleasure to be lacking time rather than a nuisance!

This year the latent farmer in me began to emerge. It all started back in April, when I convinced B that we should clear and till one entire level of our yard - approximately 500 sq. ft.!! The rest is not quite yet history.

Planting happened a bit late this year. We've had an unusually cold summer, with only a few days above 90 (no complaining here!). In early June, we planted beans, radishes, green peppers that turn red, green peppers that turn yellow, gypsy peppers, jalapeno peppers, hungarian wax peppers, three different varieties of cherry tomatoes, 3 different varieties of large tomatoes, roma tomatoes, pineapple heirloom tomatoes, cherokee chocolate heirloom tomatoes, brussels sprouts, eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, yukon gold potatoes, 4 varieties of sweet potatoes, and red beats. And it honestly has not, until this moment when I listed it out on the screen, occurred to me that this was a friggin' huge garden!

We planted. We waited. The red beets came up. The red beets were promptly eaten by rabbits. The beans came up. The beans were promptly infested and devoured by bean beatles. But gradually, things started to come in, peek up through the soil. We learned how to control the pests - naturally! - and blossoms formed.

Now, we are in the thick of harvest. We're picking, and eating, and canning. I cannot tell you how much joy this brings me. When our first tomatoes started to turn red, I think I felt something akin to the excitement a woman must feel when giving birth - or at least after giving birth when the pain has subsided. We haven't bought vegetables in a grocery store or at market in over a month. We go to the store so sporadically now, that I often forget to go, opting to use up something that's been in our cabinet for awhile rather than rush to buy a new ingredient.

We've become more inventive cooks, and I'm learning to can. I'll have to do a post one of these days just on that process. This photo mosaic is a great representation of life at our house right now. Every time I look at those photos I can't help but grin. I am so overwhelmed by, and thrilled with, the bounty that my own hands and sweat - and, face it, luck - have produced.

1. Pickled Summer Squash, 2. Raw Summer Squash, 3. The Lady - Up Close, 4. Canned Hot Peppers, 5. Cans in a Row, 6. Fresh Picked, 7. Summer Bounty, 8. Post-weeding pristine, 9. The Canning Stage

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Liminality

Liminality - "the condition of being on a threshold or at the beginning of a process" (Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English); Also, where (how?) I've been for the last 2 months...

Anyone who knows Central Pennsylvania knows that just about the time you're ready for winter to be over, it starts to snow. It's been that kind of Spring, both in the natural world and in the personal one. For the last two months, I'm pretty sure B and I have come to understand a little bit better how that poor caterpillar feels all stuck up in his cocoon. At the same time plants and buds and caterpillars have been wrestling to burst forth and escape the clutches of Winter, we've been struggling to acknowledge, accept, and in some cases embrace, a great deal of change in our lives.

March 1, after a sudden onset of illness (though it had been a long time coming), B's Nana died. We were blessed to be with her as she faced death, blessed that she didn't suffer for a long time, blessed to gather together with family...but the void left by Nan's absence is SO great. Just writing about it now causes nearly every emotion in the pot to bubble up inside me...joy, sadness, comfort, pain, laughter, smiles, tears and memories.

The other big change of the season is that after a lifetime of living in Pennsylvania, and 15 years in their current household, B's parents are relocating....to Georgia! A great opportunity for his dad that couldn't be left on the table. They're excited, we're excited for them, and yet it's going to be SO different not to be able to drive an hour and a half down the road on a moment's notice to visit with them. The last several weeks have been filled with moving furniture from Nana's and his parents, cleaning basements, sorting through memories, and making new ones.

Things are starting to become clearer now...and more realistic, as B's dad is now working in GA and their PA house is on the market...his mom will shortly follow. There is such excitement at the promise of new adventures...but we will miss them and their proximity. Hooray for free nationwide long distance cell phone plans, blogs like this one, email, and frequent flyer miles (as long as the damn airlines don't all disappear!).

A side note is that during all of this time we've been computerless, which I think might have been by some grand design of One who knows us better than we know ourselves--and knows what's good for us! It's been refreshing to go home and be completely engaged in the personal rather than the virtual. Even now that our computer is back and functional, I hope to use it less than before.

I started this post with the word liminality. I've come to realize that it is an extremely important state of being - though not one that I'd wish on anyone forever! When life becomes turbulent and I lose my sense of grasp on things (are we ever REALLY in control??) I find myself feeling like an outsider looking in at the "normal" that is everyone else's lives; I feel like that cocooned caterpillar - all squished up and DYING to be able to burst forth and fly.

Our cocoon started to burst the first weekend of April, when we traveled to San Diego to celebrate the marriage of a life-long friend to his absolutely awesome fiancee. Weddings always elicit emotion, and when it's a marriage that is truly meant to be and brings friends and family together from past, present, near, and far, they are even more special. It as a wonderful weekend...we were so happy for our friends, and were able to reunite with some whom we've lost touch with in the past few years. Another of our childhood friends is expecting his first child this summer! With all of the joy and fun of that weekend...and the refreshing abrupt change in geography, our butterfly wings started to emerge.

Last Saturday, we left the liminality behind. It was truly amazing how I physically felt our departure from it. Suddenly, Spring won out over winter...Friday it rained, and Saturday the buds were bursting forth and the daylillies were reaching out of the ground with their first leaves, and the grass was GREEN! That day, we went into our yard, and broke ground for our first garden. This garden is a huge step for us. It's a mode of self provision, a living symbol of our work, a connection with our past - both our human heritage and our family traditions - and it will be something that we learn from. Perhaps most importantly, it is something that will connect us directly to the miracles and cycles of germination, growth, bounty, harvest, and yes, winter.

WELCOME SPRING!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, April 12, 2008