WHERE Has She Been????!!

So… I kind of pulled in my flaps there for awhile, concentrated on local stuff and what was directly in front of my nose… got appointed as Flora on the AGRICULTURE Committee-of–one by the local Grange.  Only have personal gardening experience under my belt, gained at great personal expense from whatever land where I’m living, quite subjective but have been writing about that for entertainment’s sake  and for whatever use it might be. 

The last few of these chatty little missives are below  (sorree!!!  missing the first one or 2 due to having deleted my Sent folder awhile back in some fit of obsessive tidying up…).  The writings  were based around my continuingly failing efforts to get some edible-pod peas up & at ’em…

couple weeks after the previous (lost) email: 

dear Neighbor!

In my life there are 2 Opposing Forces: 

the draw of the garden

&

anything else I’m spozed to be doing…

Praise be for this rainy morning!  It keeps me inside working on Saturday Mkt inventory– perhaps running a nursery instead of a fiber factory would solve this conflict!!

And with this dismal weekend forecast, praise be that I had the good sense to capitulate to yesterday’s sun, & painted the new chickenhouse… one step closer to moving the chickens behind the yurt, where they can tear up the ground as they see fit… this fall I’ll move them elsewhere and plant the winter garden on Newly Tilled, weedfree soil!  And maybe gather all the leftover windows for a small and MOUSEPROOF greenhouse to sprout spring seeds earlier…

I also managed to get some WallaWalla onion starts and a few greening garlic cloves out of the kitchen into a bed under an old-growth collard, which has survived its 2nd winter.

In this lifetime I’ve been exposed to Gardening in the mode of  Organic Gardening magazine, Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamics & companion planting, Alan Chadwick’s double-dig French intensive method, Michelle Small Wright, her pendulum & plant devas, Ruth Stout who mulches heavily with straw, planting by moon sign etc. etc… but my Words to Live by come from a successful commercial organic gardener in No. CA, who allows as how in his business the best time of all to plant is

WHEN HE HAS TIME TO…

I’m going with that.

But what about pruning?  The 2 appletrees in our lower meadow haven’t budded out yet, and I see that that ol’ guy farther down the valley at 4 Corners is right now whacking at his graceful old trees that bear heavily every year, and have been shaped for greater ease in picking… am I gonna be too late for the AGAINTH year to prune my own??

PEA BULLETIN:  I pried one out of its eggshell planter a moment ago, and lo!  a tiny ROOT is nosing out…

Wish us SUN!! and WARMTH!!! for the first park block Markets… Sorry to miss your companionship at the Grange, another conflict…

13 April 2008:  FLUNK!! 

Well, so much for planting peas in darling eggshells thereby incorporating calcium into the soil, and other apparently worthy side effects…

In the first place I hadn’t checked the expiration date on my seed packet, and scored only THREE sprouts… whose shells I duly scrunched and planted outside  (while replanting their sister shells with fresh seed…)   Just checked on the Outsiders.  Their roots are… nonexistent!!!!  Previous pea transplants from flats always trailed unmanageably enthusiastic roots. Poor dears.  I emptied them out and stuck them right into the dirt, gonna put the rest of the pea seeds, now thoroughly soaked at least, in the great outside garden too.  So much for Cleverness!!  Now we’ll see if they survive our All-Seeing Robins.  I’m outta here to visit #2 Son & Family, these peas have 12 days ’til I get back to show their stuff…

Say, have you come across gardening books by Jerry Baker?  Some ol’ guy (whoa, better watch that designation, folks are beginning to think of ME in that category…) some EXPERIENCED guy whose books have alliterative subtitles like How to Have Terrific Trees, Perfect Pots, Veritable Vegetables, Fantastic Flowers, etc.  He mixes up all this stuff out of the kitchen for fertilizer, like instant tea, baby shampoo, Coca-Cola, green peppers, etc.  I’m stumbling along, trying to translate into my NPK basic gardener formula (N=nitrogen for leaf, P=potassium for fruit, K=phosphorus for roots, correct me if I mixed that all up)… most of his recipes are a mystery yet sound somehow feasible…  and will become my next atypical experiments!!  Now that eggshells have failed me as planters…

I just hate leaving home any time because so much goes on in the great outofdoors as soon as I ‘m gone… but I do (begrudgingly) wish you Favorable & Inviting Gardening Weather…

Catch up with you in a couple weeks! 

Save me a couple Great Plants from the Grange sale!!

6 May 2008:  ONGOING PEA PROJECTHi there!!!  I’m back from travelling!!  and have found that spring continued right on without me, well!!!… Got over jetlag enough to chase the lawnmower around– REALLY NEEDED to do this before leaving but it was just too wet.  Some trimming around beds now and we’ll be looking all sharp, not shaggy~~So.  About the PEAS, that continuing saga:  I craftily planted a flatful before leaving, and, craftier yet, left them in the bathtub: no slugs!

At least the slugs’re small this year, the cold mustve done in all those grandfathers from last summer.  I AM still besieged, though– now by small critters sneaking onto the porch at night to snack on sunflower sprouts.  They got ALL of the ones I brought back from an elementary school sale in Oslo, in a dear little packet laboriously embellished with  cursive 2nd grade writing:  ” 5 Seeds from the Heart of a Child”.  MY heart’s broken!!  But ‘foreign food’ seems attractive to all diners…

FINALLY got the pasture fence tight against rabbits, and my angoras’ve been out for a few romps already.  Wish you’d’ve seen them, it’d’ve warmed the cockles of your heart!  At first they’re a little out of shape from a long wet winter, but soon they become quite spry. We were delighted to acquire some folding fence from Jewel Hoback’s yard sale, and craftily surround their unsuspecting little selves when night approaches.

I have all males.  Had some females when we had a breeding program, but they’re so territorial– they’d fight each other when out together.  The males just chase around humping each other… I’m totally behind ‘Make Love Not War’.

We have lots of cherries setting up this year (I’m sure the robins have noticed!!! and the squirrels, who like them any size, for their pits) but the plums, blooming early, don’t look so abundant.  Gonna check the apples, we might after 20-odd years, be in luck this time!!  We accidentally drowned 5 pollinators in the raingauge, so dismaying in these times:  apparently the thinning ozone layer has damaged their eyes, and they have trouble both locating the flowers and then finding their way back home.  How utterly sad.

Now!  One more bed to finish weeding, then the mulch pile gets spread all over everything, leaving me room to clean the sheepfold.  After that, get the new chicken yard going so as those girls can tear up yet ANOTHER garden bed (what am I THINKING??? this domesticated meadow is TOO LARGE for one burdened woman already…) and then it’s on to the log splitter, what fun!  It’s my Tonka now, all the sons are off seeking their own futures…

Wishing you: friable soils.  Fertile seeds.  Occasional summer showers!