May 26, 2004 link
The corn has germinated. There are about a hundred little green spikes sticking up, like a bed of nails.
May 23, 2004 link
I wanted to plant seeds this weekend, but it was too muddy. We’ve had thunderstorms every day this week, and the ground is saturated.
Instead, I focused on pruning the trees. Tom came over, and we spent several hours sawing and chopping the low hanging branches on three different trees. These trees obviously hadn’t been pruned for a long time, or possibly never. There were branches growing downward, tangled clumps and plenty of dead wood.
We pruned a maple, a old leggy lilac and a giant catalpa. We were surprised by the huge pile of prunings we accumulated. We expected to just cut off a few branches, but we ended up doing some major thinning of the lower branches. The problem was that the branches were so low that I bumped into them all the time when passing underneath. They blocked quite a bit of sunlight.
The catalpa was the most fun. This tree is ancient. The trunk is too big to encircle with my arms. Unfortunately, there were lots of suckers rising from the base, and plenty of dead wood higher up. I handled the suckers, and Tom climbed up into the tree to prune the dead wood.
It’s too bad that the grand old catalpa has been uncared for. But the dry dead branches will not be wasted. I chopped them into short lengths for firewood. I sawed and sawed and sawed until I had a nice collection of sticks, bigger sticks and logs. It should be enough to power my barbecue grill all summer. Anybody know if catalpa wood makes a decent fire for cooking? Talk to me.
May 18, 2004 link
Extreme Makeover: Garden Edition. While doing laundry on Saturday afternooon, I started thinking about my schedule for the next few weeks. I had the stunning realization that the next seven days would make-or-break the 2004 garden.
Looking ahead, I remembered that the weekends of May 29-30 and June 5-6 were solidly booked with visits from out-of-town friends, parties, barbecues and shenanigans. (Yeah, I know—poor me. My life isn’t usually so action-packed.)
This means I will miss out on two whole weekends of prime-time gardening during the crucial planting season. I’ll make time for daily watering, but won’t have time for much else during that period. (What about weekday evenings, you ask? Nope—I don’t get home from work until 8:00 PM.)
So, I concluded that I need to have the garden humming along smoothly before May 24.At this point, most of the backyard was knee-deep in dandelions and violets. Although I had uprooted many of them last year, they were back with a vengeance. Ugh.
To make a long story shorter, I spent about seven hours on Sunday with a shovel in my hand. I dug up as may weeds as I could, tossing them onto my new compost pile. The rest were turned up and left to bake in the sun. At the end of the day I smoothed everything over with a rake, sifting through the soil for leftovers bits of weeds. By sundown, I had prepared a series of beds and laid-out the pathways around them.
I skipped work on Monday to build upon my momentum. The beds were ready, but nothing was planted in them yet.
First I needed to trim the hedges. I’m not sure why, but they were calling out to me. I couldn’t go any further without satisfying my urge to chop.
I know most vegetable gardens are not really grown for their beauty; they’re grown for fun and function. Nevertheless, my garden is just butt-ugly. Even in veggie garden terms, it’s pretty scruffy looking. Trimming the hedges seems to help the overall appearance of the place. The clean straight lines of the bushes bring some order to the chaos.
The other problem is that I’ve never established a clearly-defined set of pathways. In between the plants are bare spaces of dirt which I walk on. When it rains, they become bare spaces of mud. These informal walkways are scattered with trampled-down weeds and piles of debris.
Step Two of my extreme garden makeover was creating some real permanent paths with a layer of shredded bark mulch. This will keep the weeds down and give me a less muddy surface to walk on.
I needed to get some mulch. I don’t have a car. If I had a valid driver’s license (don’t ask), I would have rented a U-Haul. I could have a truckload of mulch delivered, but where would they dump it? On my front stoop? Besides, I needed the mulch immediately. No time to waste.
I formulated a cockamamie plan: I would walk over to the Home Depot (about a half-mile), and buy several bags of mulch. Then I would “borrow” the store’s shopping cart to wheel the load home. As long as I didn’t get caught, it would be perfect.
When I got to the Home Depot, I counted five security guards patrolling the parking lot. What the—? I didn’t know they had such a security problem at Home Depot… My plan’s cockamamie-factor was increasing rapidly. What if I got caught, and they left me on the sidewalk with eight bags of mulch and no shopping cart?
Like the Home Depot’s commercials say: I’ve got problems; they’ve got answers. While browsing, I found an enormous wheelbarrow that would do the job nicely. I loaded it up with eight bags of mulch, paid and hit the road. I got a few odd looks while chugging along the street with my huge wheelbarrow, but it was okay.
Back in the garden, I spread the mulch thickly over my new paths. Eight bags don’t go very far. I’ll need to make some return trips for more mulch. But that can wait. First I need to get all the seeds in the ground.
May 10, 2004 link
Well, the weather was beautiful over the weekend. Where was I? I was inside, working on a last-minute project for a client. Maybe I’ll take a
day off of work this week to plant some corn.
May 6, 2004 link
“Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.”
—George Washington
“Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”
—Thomas Jefferson
I’m not reprinting these quotes to suggest that I’m virtuous, or to suggest that others lack virtue. I’m also not endorsing the idea that America’s founding fathers possessed an extraordinary wisdom beyond that of ordinary citizens. But—as the architects of democracy—I think they understood the fundamental link between farming and good citizenship.
One of my favorite books is Victor Davis Hanson’s The Land Was Everything, in which he argues that independent farmers are the foundation of democracy. The lessons learned through agriculture, he says, allow farmers “to see things as others do not”. Democracy depends on individual decisions. Our agrarian citizens provide “an autonomous, outspoken, and critical group” of independent thinkers who have experienced not only the bounty of nature, but the violence of insect attacks, the random brutality of disease and death, and the daily struggle for survival. These experiences inform their perspectives in a way which is practical, yet ultimately hopeful.
Hanson’s ideas are nothing new. These are the same virtues mentioned by Jefferson.
Americans today are fascinated with the idea of heroism—we celebrate those who possess a level of virtue that we don’t see in ourselves. Hanson and Jefferson remind us to also celebrate the everyday heroism of those peculiar folks who forgo a comfortable corporate life to engage in a daily battle with nature. Despite the fact that their efforts provide food for our entire country, these folks are unrecognized. Their heroism is rewarded with indifference.
Professors Deborah and Frank Popper recently published an interesting essay that references Jefferson’s theories about agricultural virtue. Their central question is what will eventually happen when America’s agricultural past is completely forgotten. How will this affect our country’s social, economic and physical health? In a bigger-picture sense, how will this impact the concept and practice of democracy?
May 4, 2004 link
The Spring planting rush is underway. As a busy individual, I have to limit my garden work to dedicated blocks of time
on the weekends. It’s an efficient way to do it, but my legs and back end up sore on Monday from the frantic shoveling, crouching, bending down and crawling around in the mud. Planting a garden is no walk in the park.
I spent Sunday afternoon pulling out weeds and smoothing out some blocks of soil. Then I did something very unusual (for me). I planted some flowers.
In general, I find flowers to be frivolous. If I’m going to be sore on Monday, it better be for the sake of several pounds of food. I like flowers. I appreciate their beauty…in somebody else’s garden. But I’m a food grower, not a flower person. It just seems like a waste of time to me. Where’s the payoff? I’d rather put that time to good use—by watching sports or drinking beer, for instance.
Anyway, there weren’t any good games on TV, so I decided to plant some flowers.
- Marigolds—The classic flower for people who don’t care much about flowers. Low maintenance, large colorful blooms, long season. Supposedly, they also repel harmful insects.
- Cosmos—The seeds were sent to me by Mrs. Crisman of Chaska, Minnesota. She grew and collected the seeds herself. That’s dedication.
- Sunflowers—They’re big and gaudy. The stalks are thick like small tree trunks. Ain’t nothing frivolous about these suckers.
In addition, there are an abundance of daylilies already growing. Everywhere.
I also planted:
- Onions—I scattered clusters of onions all over the place. I don’ like the way they look when planted in rows. They get all floppy. So I decided to tuck them in between other things. They’ll grow nice and tall in the Spring, then blend into the background when Summer’s heatwave hits.
- Dill—The “Mammoth” variety grows into a big lacy hedge. It smells whenever you get near it.
- More Radishes—The first ones never sprouted. I hope the seeds aren’t duds.
