The heat is on. It was up to 85 degrees today with humidity to spare. You know, the kind that makes the hair on your neck perpetually wet and sticky and that makes you worry all day that you might smell.

I forgot to remember: my joints ache in the humidity.

Just because it isn't raining doesn't mean the humidity isn't high or that I won't ache. So today, I ache. All day.

I deliberated on the virtues of watering my garden, my fledgling seedlings versus the coming water shortage. Every summer in Northern Virginia ends with a drought, and with good reason. When temperatures start in April to climb in to the 80s, the summer can only end with temps well above 100 degrees, like last summer. This does not incline the weather to produce copius amounts of rain. Heat and humidity does throw a few thunderstorms this way and that, but usually they are of the short and heavy kind, like a George Costanza storm. It blows in fast and furious, makes a lot of fuss but in the end does no good whatsoever - to boost the water table.

Part of my watering deliberation involved the effort it takes to pull out the hose. That's a great attitude for a tiny farmer.

I read an article in Organic Gardening Magazine about making little irrigation drippers out of inverted juice cartons.

http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-26-27-1664,00.html

This sounds like a great idea because I certainly don't have the money to irrigate my entire property. I'm just feeling a little fussy about having ugly juice cartons all around the garden. However, having already pointed out the mess in my garden, I guess I should relent.
I can't help but want to buy a rain barrel, however my husband is not fully on board with spending over $100 for a giant barrel and then sawing off the bottom portion of one of our rain spouts. This won't do anything to solve my issues about dragging the hose around, since the hose connects to the bottom of the rain barrel, but it does put concerns about drought into perspective and certainly provides a use for rainwater runoff.

Dirty Girl

There is something that seems rather obvious that I've just noticed about working in the garden. It's really dirty work.

Wow! What an insight!

I was just thinking about how magazines usually show such elegant people in the garden with designer gloves and garden clogs. But no dirt. Everything looks so beautiful! To say that I was dirty today, and everyday, doesn't really sum it up. I feel like a chronic dirtball. Usually I tell myself that I'm just dirty for a little bit today but then I'll wash up. But I don't ever end up washing up until late at night. It occurs to me that most people only ever see me when I'm dirty. In their minds, I think I must be a farmer. In fact, as I crawled around my small little vegetable garden I realized that I am a farmer. A very teeny tiny farmer.

The bucket of manure really got to me, that tangy, nasty smell going right to my brain. It's ground into my pants and under my nails. Dirty girl! There is still junk all over the patio, piles of pulled weeds, tools, spilled dirt and manure and across the vast, wastefull lawn is a trail of leaves and roots and dirtballs that I yanked out of various places and dragged back for composting. The vegetable garden is not something you would see in Better Homes and Gardens. One of my son's friends stepped on a small marigold totally squashing it. There are footprints all through the dirt, in spite of the fact that I laid out a nice brick path to help me reach the plants in back. And then there's another trail of weeds and leaves headed for composting that seems to spread all over. It's not pretty. How do people make pretty gardens? Maybe it's not time for pretty, yet since it's only mid-spring. Besides, it's a vegetable garden, a working garden, not a show garden. It's hard work in there! The perennials are much easier to deal with and look much neater, but the vegetables look like they are being bothered every day.

The upside to all of this dirt is that my early girl tomatoes are already starting to flower!!! Tomatoes!! In May!!!

Doctor, Doctor!

Bending over into the trashcan this morning to retrieve my wallet (oops, dropsies) I caught a whiff of something lovely, probably dead mice. I jumped back and - whack- hit my head on the giant lid. Our county-issued trash can is almost as tall as I am and the lid is like a car hood. In any case, after whacking my head I stumbled back and hit my elbow on the frame of my car. This, I'm sure, was a sight to behold to anyone happening to catch the show at 7:30 this morning. I have discovered that having weakness in my legs has caused me to become much more clumsy than usual. So now instead of just dealing with the usual spinal problems and joint pains, I'm usually walking around with a lump, bruises and large cuts, too. It looks like someone has been pushing me down the stairs every day.



To balance this, I started seeing a chiropractor. In addition to not being able to tolerate the pain anymore, I got sick and tired of falling over. The last two weeks I've been going to the doctor three times a week and I have to say, it's been amazing. No crack, crack, crack here; it's electric stimulation around the spinal chord followed by gentle manipulation and stretching of the lower back. Very slight, very gentle, very, very healing. Granted, I was not exactly the poster child for gracefulness this morning, but in general I feel like it's been helping. What more can I ask for?



Something happened to me about the second day I was at the chiropractor, laying on the table with the electric stim and heating pads and a soundtrack of calming music lulling me into a healing slumber. I realized that it wasn't just the action of going there and getting adjusted but the feeling of being healed that was helping me, the feeling I have that someone actually cares if I get better.

I don't know if other people's spouses or significant others get fed up with their illness, but mine does. That sounds pretty mean, I guess. Sometimes I think he's wondering what he's done wrong to end up with this gimpy, grumpy, dirty woman. There are times when I am impatient with myself for being slow or dragging because I'm in pain, so I'm not sure why I expect infinite patience from someone else; maybe it is asking too much. But I do wonder if other people have spouses who actually empathize with them when they are hurting rather than feeling burdened or let down. What is that like?

Speaking of Explosions...

So if I want to just work peacefully outside in the garden, apparently I now have to wear a gasmask. The kids are playing on the swings as I finish putting some worm poop fertilizer -www.terracycle.net - on my tomatoes. Then it is quiet. This is not a good sign. I call for the kids, silence and then, a whoosh, slam, splash! And then the smell. My nine-year-old son just learned how to make stink bombs from a friend at school.

Gardening will never be safe again.

Explosions

The house is now in order. Over this last weekend we moved into the house where the gardening has been taking place. Yes, indeed I have been gardening at a vacant house. How's that for insanity? The upside is that the garden looks lovely and cared for and I feel alive and well just looking at it. However, and this is a big thing to me, the garden and lawn at the house we moved out of looks like hell.

I am all for clean slates and fresh starts and this is what I have been trying to give myself by gardening early in this new home. But I can't help but think that I've left a lot of garbage behind me, weeds and overgrown grass, not to mention the crap still lingering inside the house: the dust balls, the boxes, the trash that needs to be thrown out. And god, oh god, the mice! While inspecting my basement and garage yesterday, I discovered no less than eight dead mice stuck in those horrible glue traps. Just thinking about it makes my stomach turn over; more than that, I am sad that eight creatures had to die that way, stuck to a glue trap. Apparently, the exterminator paid a visit and set traps after discovering the treasure trove of mouse turds in our basement. I wish he had told me he set glue traps because I would have removed them and put out humane traps. I used one last week and caught a little brown mouse whom I drove about five miles away and released.

In any case, cleaning out the mice and the turds and all the crap we left behind actually caused me to cry. I stood there with the freaking broom surrounded by piles of mouse crap and my kids' old cradle (which had been partially standing in mouse crap) and I just cried. I cried for the dead mice. I cried for the fact that I would have to clean up all that crap and didn't want to contract hanta virus. I cried for the cradle that held my babies when they were so small they couldn't even hold up their own heads, and now here it was standing in a pile of mouse crap. I cried for the baggage the last four years has brought down on me, on us, and I cried for not being able to hold on, to control time and for losing my babies to the grown kids that they've become.

Today I went outside into my new garden and I enriched the soil with some grass clippings, which provide extra nitrogen as they decay. I stood and smiled contentedly with what I knew was to come....then I broke into a run, hopped into the car and drove. I listened to Anna Nalick singing "Breathe, just breathe...." which is what I need to do and what I can't get out of my head. When I pulled into the driveway of the old house, my neighbors waved hello as if nothing had changed. But I attacked the garden there like it was a last shot at redemption, redeeming this garden to allow the light to shine through to the beauty that was beginning to emerge from beneath. I emptied the baggage of a full winter and half of the spring full of choking weeds and invasive plants which had leapt from their beds and were beginning to strangle the shrubs I had worked so hard over the last few years to enliven. As I ripped and pulled, I felt something in my body begin to surge, and this time it wasn't pain and it wasn't a sadness.
It became a lightening. A lifting. A something that hasn't happened before. It was a shot of adrenaline that engorged my muscles and I felt it ripple over my brain like a shiver and felt it power me beyond what I knew I could ever be capable of doing. Just when I've begun to think that my body has forsaken me, this shedding event enlivened me and empowered me somehow that I don't quite understand yet. But I know it is now three hours later and I still don't have any pain and that is unique.

Sometimes changes happen and they happen to us. Sometimes the changes come and we burst through them. Right now I am bursting, a peony who becomes an explosive, hand-sized flower almost overnight from a tiny, tightly-rolled bud, bright and bold and beautiful, daring the world to ignore it.

I just read the beginning of Chapter One from Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben.
http://www.billmckibben.com/deep-economy-excerpt.html

Wow. He is totally spot on about the end of the surge of the Industrial Revolution. All of this, all of what we know was the boon from the discovery of coal and oil and of man's discovery of how to put it to use for us. But we've now passed over the the halfway mark and are in the decline. Those supplies are drying up, we have to acknowledge that we can't rely on fossil fuels forever and that a new reality has to emerge for how we live and who we are, not just as Americans but as humans.

As we sit, those fuel supplies are being depleted minute after minute. As individuals it feels powerless to watch as industry bypasses us, raping the environment, lining their pockets with profits all at the expense of the average worker and meanwhile we settle into deep decline. There has to be a major shift in the way we experience life, not just how we do business. The point McKibben makes about economic GROWTH as the be all, end all of global industry for the last two centuries explains this, that we live the 'bigger is better' mentality without even thinking. But in order to escape, to break free and change direction, we need a new mentality, that bigger is not always better it's just bigger and sometimes more fragile and prone to breakage (as in the adage "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."). America as an empire is in decline, economically, socially, industrially, agriculturally. We have to find a way to arrest the crash of our civilization, slow it down to a plateau of live-ability. We cannot continue to grow indefinitely. There is a ceiling and all evidence is showing that we have not only hit that ceiling, we have splattered ourselves against it and are now watching as the broken pieces rain down upon us, confused and utterly ignorant to the consequences; that we may choke on our own matter. As the fallout rises, we drown in our greed.

I think the only way we are going to back away from this crisis is the general consensus of the voices of those who are feeling it the most and those who hear their cry. But it's certainly not something that those in power will relinquish easily. Who wants to abandon their home in the Hamptons, their Hummer or their 5 million dollar home?
I'm not advocating a socialist population or government in any way, but the way that wealth is distributed in 2008 in America is beyond stratospheric. The gulph between the "have's" and "have-nots" has never been wider. There is nothing left for all of us to do but fall down.

Shaky, Achy Garden Girl

Sometimes when it rains hard for a few hours, the trees seem to appear greener and the birds seem louder. Today there is a soothing rain falling, off and on, at a very moderate rate making for lovely background sounds and colors. Plus, the garden won't need water for a few days.

In keeping with the 'green theme' it's important to note the water situation. Watering every day, even when the seed or plant packages tell you to, is not a good idea. Conservation is a major principle of green gardening, so it's best to choose plants that either don't need a lot of water, or that can be forced to root down farther with infrequent but deep watering. Many perennials will sink their roots farther down and out into the soil to obtain water when water is not coming from above. You can force this situation by withholding water, and then giving a less frequent good soaking of about one inch of water.

So the rain today alleviates this problem for me. And it is good well beyond the conservation issue. In the humidity, my bones ache like crazy. My arthritis is acting up in my spine, my hands, knees, shoulders...pretty much everywhere. It's okay. I think most people start to degenerate in one way or another anyway, in the spine and elsewhere, as they age. I sometimes refer to my facial wrinkles as visual decomposition, but no one really likes to hear that. The spondoloysthesis is when the vertabrae in your back slip forward and pinch the discs and nerves. My pelvic nerves are pinched which are the ones that support my legs, so sometimes I just randomly fall down for no good reason. I think that's fun!

I should mention that I'm 38, not 98.

The good thing for today is that when I'm feeling like this, I can't do much in the way of heavy lifting or bending down so that leaves fewer options available, and this is when I blog.

Here is the part where I wax philosophical on my perceived disability:

I was a really active kid, a tomboy really. As a preteen and teenager I was a decent athlete, very physically strong, a fast runner - a GOOD runner, and very energetic. It's only in the last four years or so that I have started to notice myself slowing down. For awhile I wrote it off as stress; we were at the time living in Italy (in 2004) on a military base and my husband was in Iraq. After that I thought it was just normal aging. Then I noticed that women my age, friends, were running marathons and climbing mountains and hiking the Appalachian Trail. This was a big "hmmm" -inducer for me.
Realizing that you're not as strong as you used to be is a turning point for all of us; some of us come to that point earlier in life than others. Many others have come to it long before I have, so I will resist the self-pity trap. It's more a matter of recognizing it and compensating for it, realizing that some days will be better than others and that when I push myself TOO hard, I will pay for it in pain.

So, for today, I think I'm going to take my lesson from the rain and just simply fall down.
No, no, that's not what I meant. Try again.

So for today, I think I'm going to use the rain as an excuse to crawl back to bed.
I didn't mean that either....

So for today, I'm going to take my cue from my joints and simply slow down!

(that's better, don't you think?)

Do You Think I'm Too Neurotic? Do You? Do You?

Now that we will be moving in two weeks, there has been more interest from the soon-to-be-old neighbors such as, "What does it look like" and "How many bedrooms" and that sort of thing. But not ONCE has anyone asked about the garden (mock surprise!).

I brought my neighbor and her two kids over yesterday to see the place - our first visitors. Although the house is empty still, all the work is done and all we need is to move in. We did the requisite tour and then went outside to see the garden (at my insistence). As I bemoaned the lack of imagination the previous owners had in the garden, planting only Hostas in the shade and azalea bushes in the sun, she turned and looked at me thoughtfully and remarked, "At least it has something around it. Ours is just dirt."

And indeed when I thought about it, her garden is mostly dirt because their house is under the shade of about 10 oak trees from the surrounding woods. Not even the grass will grow.

I decided that this was not the right time to suggest plants that she could put in the shade.

Instead, I realized two things:

1) That no one I know obsesses about gardening the way I do

and

2) Maybe I need to meet some new people : )

Of course I could ponder the idea of finding fulfillment in other ways as well, but that would be too difficult.

Ha.

I allowed myself to take the day off from the garden today because I have become, well, I've become painfully obsessive. I think maybe it's easier to focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else when everything else is so irritating or overwhelming, like moving. Like going to two funerals in one week. And all the rest of the stuff that creeps up from time to time.

The garden is a refuge but it shouldn't be my holding cell, my padded room.

Today I let myself out and found out that I have things to do and people to talk to, and that was at least as refreshing as dirt.

Amending the Soil

Now that I've discovered the real soil lurking beneath all of that plastic, I've been turning over in my mind what to do with it. The clay is so tough that it can be baked into rock. To test, I took balls of the stuff out of the ground and left it out on the driveway to bake for a few hot days. Voila! Hard as rock. That's pretty impressive, however it's not a great characteristic for a garden. Thick clay doesn't drain well and most plants need soil with good drainage to protect the roots from mold and rot.

To alleviate this situation, I'm going to need to amend the soil. The clay is under only about 3 inches of useable soil so most plants will sink their roots down into it. There are two options before me:

1) Amend only the holes I dig for planting (hoping that over time, most of the garden area will become more plant-friendly)
OR
2) Dig up the whole thing, till it, add ingredients, and then plant.

I go for option one. I may till parts of it, but the idea of tilling almost 1000 square feet of clay is enough to make my joints ache in anticipation.

***Science Nerd Alert***
To make the clay more friendly, I'm going to need something gritty to till into it, like sand. This will make the clay looser and will help water to drain off from around plant roots rather than sit on top of the clay. In addition, I'm adding fresh compost and organic garden soil. The compost is something you can make at home and I'll write another post about that. However, only half of my compost pile is ready so I bought a bucket-full at Whole Foods.

I haven't, however, checked the pH of my soil. Most real gardeners do that but I just am too busy/lazy to do so. If the soil is acidic then I will need to add some alkaloid to it; if it is too alkaloid, I'd add an acid. For growing vegetables it is good to have a soil pH between 6.5 and 7, with 7 being neutral or the pH of water.

(There is, obviously, a lot of science behind WHY things are done in the garden. If you just want to DO it and get done, skip the science parts for now. I just like to know WHY.)

So far, the seedlings I've planted out look happy in the mix.

See photos for rudbeckia (Black Eyed Susan), Echinacea (Purple Coneflower) and stachys lanata (Lamb's Ears).

I know it's irritating and somewhat snotty that I've used the Latin plant names, but to be honest when you live in different places and are looking for plants that you like, you simply can't use the local, familiar name. Rudbeckia is still rudbeckia in Italy, Portugal or Oman. But calling it Black Eyed Susan will simply cause confused looks on the faces of nursery staff. That is the colloquial name given the plant by those who discovered and cultivated it in North America. Those names can even vary by region! So I continue to be a Latin snob for the sake of clarity.

The Obsession Begins

I'm obsessed , completely and totally obsessed. I dream about it...the dirt, the green plants, the smell of the compost. There is almost nothing I would rather do than have my hands in the soil, planting, digging, feeding, arranging, harvesting.

The obsession began harmlessly enough during my first year of marriage in our home in the Azores. We had a sparse little garden in our concrete yard. The few plants we did have quickly died as I simply didn't know I had to water them. Certainly I had my talents, but apparently gardening wasn't one of them. I remember thinking to myself that the rain was supposed to come and water the plants; I didn't know I had to help that along.

We've lived in an awful lot of climate zones, from frigid Zone 10 in South Dakota to the balmy Zone 3 of Southern Virginia and Alabama. There have been many others in between, including Portugal and Italy where sandy, loamy soil is abundant; in fact the soil in Italy is so sandy it is mostly what I would call full of rocks.

Over many years of brutally killing a lot of innocent plants, I am now presiding over the largest garden yet, about 1100 square feet of garden space, which, for me might as well be the "back 40", it seems so overwhelming.

Over time, I've learned a lot and I've also weaned myself off of conventional garden products and now grow an exclusively organic garden. But it's not easy, especially now that we've just bought this new home with the new garden and I've inherited the past owner's weird gardening choices, none of which are organic. There are plastic weed covers in all the gardens, two and three layers in some places. Plastic doesn't really speak "organics" to me.

This is my first time truly attempting to grow vegetables. My goal is to sustain my family, organically, using seeds from local growers. I refuse to let the corporations control what my family eats and I refuse to watch diverse local species of plants be driven into extinction. So this is me. My politics combined with my crunchiness as foisted upon my family. I'm learning as I go and want to trace that progress through this blog.