A Place Like This......

The Rhythm of the Garden

Inbetween the rain drops and the cold weather, we're preparing our garden for planting. there is something so hopeful in this project. It is the reconnection with the earth and the hope that spring will be here very soon.

While growing up, my family had a huge garden, almost verging on a farm. A couple of years after I was married and living in Pennsylvania, I remember digging up the entire backyard to put in a begetable garden like the one in my childhood memeory. Wow, what a lot of work! Weeding, handwatering, ....weeding,weeding, and yet more weeding. All of these efforts produced very little yield. To say I was discouraged was an understatement.

 

It was around this time that I met this lovely French woman who introduced me to the term potager or kitchen garden. Kitchen gardens are often times in raised beds or in enclosed garden spaces. She really was more like my gardening angel. We took fieldtrips to the Rodale tests gardens. We made compost, I learned what to plant when and when to plant what. That year I had a great harvest and have been kitchen gardening ever since.

This is in Versaille France. Thank god I don't have to weed that.

Every year I go through my favorite seed catalogs including seeds of change, an organic seed company and I plan my garden. And then the moment arrives when I re-enter the garden. There is a moment when I distinctly feel the rhythm of the garden starting again. It is my annual marker that it's to reawaken.

  
 


 

Early Morning

Eventhough it's been raining, I decided that this year I wouldn't lose my blueberry bushes to the privet hedge. So out I trod over soggy land to start digging out my wonderful little friends.....the blueberry bushes.

This morning greeted me with mild temperatures, a lovely fog, and the threat of rain. I'm just going to have to embrace the saying,"There isn't bad weather only bad clothing."

I'm going out friends.....be back tomorrow.

  

A Day of Beauty

The last couple of days have seen us in our home doing "winter" type activities. Tropical storm Ida brought with her several inches of rains and wind,so when the sun came out today I decided it was time for a day of beauty.

It's amazing how quickly things change in a garden. One minute we were in fall and the next, after just one storm, the scenery has clearly taken on more of the appearance of winter, but beauty was to be found none-the-less

The fairy tree is moulting.

 
On top of fairy village.

I've found those figs I've been looking for.

My beautiful flowers are saying goodbye until spring....

except this beauty here.

Now I'm off to gather wood. Enjoy your day of beauty wherever you may find it.

How Much is Too Many?

I ask this pertaining to the topic of carrots, but I'll get to this is a little bit. Being back home has been wonderful. There is a lot of things going on. We are replacing all of the windows in our very old house,the kids were out on fall break and we saw many colleges for mimi, and then there is the morning constitutional.

I always walk in my garden in the morning.Everything has changed. When I left for Sweden is was still summer but changing towards fall. Now...it's just plain ol'Fall. I love it. So wrapped up in my favorite sweater, I walk to our kitchen garden to see if there is anything left to pick. The nasturiums are still blooming, the green beans are done. Oh look we still have little pumpkins and that's when I saw them.

Glancing across the garden with their little greens waving at me were a box of carrots. I had forgotten I had planted them.

So I went over and pulled one to see if it was ready.....yep....it's ready.

I pulled and pulled and so many came out that I ran up to the house to get something to put them in. That's when I discovered that this was only half the box pulled and I had hundreds of carrots.

There were more...as in more carrots. As I was putting the pulled carrots in the basket I noticed another box filled with happy waving carrots. I must have forgotten I planted carrots and planted More carrots. My son, in his kindness, reminded me that I planted a box for the rabbits. Oh yes, the rabbits! Well we have a vixen and her cubs in the yard so there haven't been any rabbits. Hence,....we have many carrots.

And then, there is this sweet man I'm married to, who was so excited about the carrots. He washed every single one of them and is excited about the rest to come. "Don't worry" , he says, "we will make good use of them."

I'm looking for pickling,relish,carrot sort of recipes. Can you help?

Portland Farmer's Market

Everyday thePortland's Farmer's Market finds a different corner of the city to sell it's finest produce,cheese,fish, flowers, and baked goods in, all tossed up with some fantastic live music.  Best of all....they invite school age children to take cooking classes at the market to prepare an in season feast. Bon Appetit !

 

  

  

My Morning Stroll

       

Everyday before my little household wakes up I find myself alone in one of two places. In winter I am wrapped up in a blanket sitting on my screen porch, viewing the mountains as the sun comes up. In summer,I wander around my garden and see how things have evolved while I've been asleep. These moments I take to get myself settled in the new day.

Anne Lamott in her book ,"Bird by Bird "talks about gardens as a metaphor for writers...."The garden didn't start out as metaphor but as paradise. Then, as now, the garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe. It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storng food......And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph........."

And  as my day emerges from it's sleepy slumber, so does my garden and all of the goodness that I am wishing for my little family upstairs asleep.  Have a wonderful and great day !

      

                          

                         

                         

By the Light, of the Silvery Moon...it's time to get planted

        

Hello friends. It's so good to be home. I was away in Savannah last week, more about that later. All the way home, all seven hours of the way home, I was thinking about planting the kitchen garden this weekend.

I always think of myself as a challenged gardener. I do grow a great garden every year but the biggest obstacle is being an organic gardener in Tennessee. I've had very good success with cross planting to keep the bug and critter population down. The second thing I've done for the last 4 years is to plant by the moon. Rudolf Steiner wrote rather extensively on this topic. When I go back to my gardening journals I find that this method of planting actually has given me a larger and healthier harvest. Even during the drought two years ago I had a good harvest,even after they made us stop watering. 

So without further adieu I now happily announce this years Moon planting schedule which starts tomorrow.

Sunday & Monday: April 26 & 27 are the most perfect days to plant root crops i.e. carrots, radishes, anything that grows underground. This would also include beets,leeks,onions, parsnips, potatoes, turnips etc.

Wednesday and Thursday, April 29th & 30th is when you should plant flower crops. Borage,broccoli,cauliflower and artichokes.

May 1st & 2nd are leafy plant days: Basil,Brussel sprouts, celery, dill , rhubarb, spinach, cabbage, cucumbers, and lettuces.

May 2nd-5th are fruit planting days. Any fruit which makes it's own seed ,like strawberries,peaches, plums, eggplants, zucchinis, peppers, chili's, fava beans, broad beans, peas, cor ,tomatoes, and any sort of squash.

Please note that I did not list every type of plant but I'm just giving a general idea of what one can grow.

One of the happiest times of year for us as a family is to get out there in the garden. So let gardening season begin. Yiippeeeee!

            

Renewal

                   

                              

I've just returned home to an entirely new season. When I left it was cold and rainy with only a couple of sprouts coming up from the earth. Now spring has truly sprung and with a renewal of my love of gardening. Starting in January when the seed catalogs come I painstakingly look through my gardening journals and make my decision as to what I should plant.

         

 Everything is ordered an on it's way to me here. As I wait I will prepare my soil with the hot compost which has been baking all winter. Oh how I love spring.......it's time to dig in the dirt. Oh how I dream of the harvest to come.

                       

                    

Plums in Waiting

As I was sitting on the screen porch today enjoying a warm Sunday afternoon, I noticed the plum tree in the kitchen garden leaning to the right side, as if very heavy.  So I had to see for myself.....could it be that this plum tree, that I planted 6 years ago finally has fruit on it ?

I didn't want to get my hopes up . Last year after it had an extensive blooming period dropped it's fruit in April during the sub-zero temperatures.

When I arrived in the kitchen garden I was met with hundreds of unrippened plums on the tree. It will be an incredbile harvest of Italian plums. So excited am I that I will leave all of you with a poem about plums.

   

This is just to Say   by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

taht were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

So sweet

and so cold.