Because Beauty Doesn't Last Forever

It is Barrington who helped me notice the iris.  That last morning in October I sat with him in the chair -- holding him, cherishing him -- I determined to notice the soft feel of his coat, the tender look of his eyes, the resilient flex of his ears...so I could remember.  It was a life and death exercise in presence; paying close attention.

I thought of him again a few mornings ago when Tir led me out the front door onto the porch.  In the flower bed off to the right was the yellow iris in full presentation.  The bud had been teasing us for days with peeks of pigment escaping from the edges of its fist.  This morning, however, while we slept it had relaxed and offered its full self to the birds or the sky or whomever might glance in its direction.  And remembering Barrington's lesson that life and beauty are both fragile and fleeting, I made a point of accepting the gift the iris had worked these past several weeks to deliver -- the yellow, at once subtle and rich; the crepe petals folded gracefully into a still life ballet; the stem, sentry straight and tall.

In a different time and frame of mind I would have noticed the bloom, perhaps even mentioned its loveliness, but moved routinely on; forgetting how short is the life of beauty.  Already the crab apple blossoms, so long expected, are all but gone, and the tulips are leaning and faded.  But the peony bushes are still covered in balls, and the cucumber flowers portend summer fruit.

And just this morning, the lavender iris -- last evening yet but a promise and a tease -- had opened.  I noticed, and I will treasure the joy of its splendor for however many hours or days it shares it.  Because Barrington taught me the importance of paying close attention.

In the Ground and Growing -- Hopefully

I know, I know.  I haven't been writing.  It's just that this gardening business is work.  For the past couple of months my indulgent wife has tolerated seedlings and gro-lamps in the living room; over the past week, sans gro-lights, the little sprouts have spent increasing hours on the deck, "hardening off" as the gardening books call it.  And now, just to telegraph our progress, I am in hopes that as of today there will be a little break -- but I'm not counting on it.  As of today, the main garden and the deck are planted.  Whew!

The main garden ended up 40-feet by 25-feet -- 10 trenches, including flowers.  And just for the record, that trench digging is no picnic.  Yesterday I shared with the congregation this little snapshot of the challenge:

The process had been demonstrated for me, and I had practiced with a mentor who had ultimately loaned me his equipment.  But when I subsequently set it down on the ground that I would be planting and pulled the ignition rope, progress was miserably slow and tedious; and when the time we had was exhausted for the day, we were exhausted, too, with precious little having been accomplished.  We were discouraged and maybe a little panicked about how we were going to get it all done. 

The equipment was part of – if not the primary – problem.  It seemed almost impotent in the face of the task at hand, and so when we got back home we began scouring the internet for better options.  And the next morning we became the proud owners of a brand new tiller of our own – sharper, more powerful, more suited to the task.  Reaching the garden site, I gassed it up, pulled the rope and smiled as its tines dug into the turf that had put up such formidable resistance the day before.  The task was going well, and I was growing tentatively optimistic with every pass that I might just get this done, when suddenly the engine stalled.  Pulling the rope, the engine quickly restarted, but died again only a few steps later – a pattern that repeated itself time and time again.  Quickly my panic about the work still remaining returned with the bitter encroachment of unborn hope that was dying. 

 Even when it got easier, it wasn't easy.  But finally the last one was finished, by yesterday afternoon the last seeds had been sprinkled, the last seedlings had been spaded in, and it was time to call it an evening.  This morning Larry and I set up the fence netting -- plus an added little bit of deer discouragement -- supported the tomatoes and tomatillos, watered one last time, and I exhaled.  If you are interested, you can view the layout online.

This afternoon, I tackled the deck garden -- those 20 PVC pipes, all but two of which are 4-inch pipes cut 40-inches tall and filled with soil.  Lettuce, swiss chard, both purple and green tomatillos, various peppers, and tomatoes.  Too many tomatoes.  Between the garden and the deck, exceedingly too many tomatoes.  But, we'll see.  Who knows what will materialize? 

For now, Tir thinks it is time for a rest.  For the record, I agree.

One Final Adolescent Pause Before Spring

The penultimate move. The tomatoes and the tomatillos were beginning to look like redwoods, towering out of their 4" pots, dusting the bulbs of the gro-lights suspended above them. Healthy, by all appearance, and aching skyward, the conclusion was unavoidable that the time had arrived for one last staging move. Steve had alerted me weeks ago to the need for multiple moves. It wouldn't be so easy as to poke a seed into some potting soil, water every now and then, and wait for the eventual day the weather permitted their relocation to the garden. There would be stages, each of which would require its own particular attention and intervention. Like any childhood, I suppose, each phase has its own work to accomplish -- crawling, walking, speaking, exploring, rebelling, until finally, if those prior phases have been worked well, thriving in maturity and bearing some kind of fruit. At this stage of my horticultural parenting, I can yet still only dream about the fruit. And I suspect I still have some rebellion to which I can look forward. But the little stems that once were tiny seeds are steadily growing up.  They may not yet have reached adulthood, but are well into adolescence.  "Sunrise; sunset..."

It was that "up" part that was preoccupying me. Having transplanted them once already, and with a few weeks still before the actual garden, it was time to make that penultimate move. To maximize root development, they needed more soil, which meant they needed a deeper setting, which meant they needed a taller nest. Large drinking cups were the appropriate solution, but a pass through Costco and Target left us empty handed. What we needed, it suddenly dawned on us, were some of those "generous" drinking cups that convenience stores offer. But we needed something like a dozen of the cups, and on this particular Sunday afternoon we weren't really quite that thirsty. Nevertheless, we pulled into a parking space at the nearest Kum and Go and, with our best "the worst they can do is say no" lack of inhibition, we scouted out the options near the beverage fountain, and approached the cashier. Wisely, I let Lori do the talking. "We are working on this gardening project," she began, "and we need to transplant our tomato seedlings into something larger. What would it cost to buy a dozen or so of these empty cups?"

"Well," the obviously flummoxed, but customer-centered employee responded, "probably nothing." With that, he proceeded to the beverage area, opened a cabinet and counted out 12 empty cups. Twelve 44 oz cups. Now we are talking "root capacity!"  We positively giggled all the way home.

Now successfully rearranged and no doubt curiously getting acquainted with their new digs, the seedlings -- along with the rest of us -- are anxiously awaiting bona fide spring when roots can sink themselves into genuine soil, and reach legitimately toward the sky and not merely toward the ceiling. Maybe it is only natural that garden planting and graduations happen around the same time of year. 

In the meantime, grow little roots. There are yet a few weeks to go.  Eventually and surely the storms will come and the winds will blow and the predators will come and nibble at your leaves -- and worse.   So grow -- grow deep.  Soon enough you are going to need all the strength and nourishment you can provide.

Celestial Dawning in our Living Room

We decided we needed more light.  It wasn't so much an existential realization, but yet another gardening one.  It had been that kind of a day.  Earlier, we had tangentially filled up the 18 deck tubes with soil in preparation for their planting in the upcoming weeks.  In the living room, the four-foot table supporting the seeding trays was busily soaking up the sun with a little reinforcement after sunset, but the grow-lights we had purchased were only marginally covering the seedlings -- and that only if we continued to move them around on the table every day or so.  Given the facts that we were in the process of planting a few more seeds that Steve had mailed us, and that in the next day or two we would need to separate several of the already-leafing sprouts currently sharing space into compartments of their own, more light was going to be a necessity.  The recent issue of Urban Farm magazine had a design for a build-it-yourself model, constructed from basic florescent shop light fixtures and 1 1/4" PVC pipe and connectors.  We decided to give it a try.

Thanks to the helpful employee at Lowe's who was willing to saw our two 10-foot lengths of pipe into the prescribed permutations, and gather up the various "T's", "angles" and "ends," all we had to do was assemble and place.  Now, with this addition of these 4 four-foot florescent bulbs to our previous 2 two-foot ones, our living room is aglow.  It remains to be seen if the new light will coax seeds out of the soil, but it almost certainly is drawing neighbors out of their houses to ponder this new celestial phenomenon:  the Aurora Borealis of Crown Colony Court.

Crop Report:
Cucumbers -- adding second generation of leaves
Brandywine Tomatoes -- strong, with true leaves
Green Zebra-striped Tomatoes -- questionable
Leeks -- wispy, but sturdy
Beets -- Hanging in there
Chard -- withered
Peppers -- encouraging
Flowers -- mixed bag

The Site in Sight

Yesterday was "Selection Sunday" -- though not for me in the same sense that it was for the rest of the country.  While basketball teams from coast to coast were biting their nails in anticipation of NCAA tournament invitations, Lori, Harold, Sandy and I were were tromping over the Ladd's property evaluating options for siting the garden.  I felt like Goldilocks tasting porridge.  One site was too wet.  One site was too near the corn field that receives regular chemical sprays.  One site was too shaded by surrounding trees...

...but eventually, one location seemed "just right."  Nearer the house, the human activity might discourage at least some of the deer, the pellet evidence of which was ubiquitous around the property.  Nearer the house also means nearer the water; and the storage building is easily accessible, as well.  Once accomplished, the selection almost seemed to have selected itself.  Yes, perhaps it is narrower than some of the alternatives, but it compensates in length.  In any case, it offers plenty of space -- 40 X 20 feet was how we stepped it off, plus or minus.  Good sun in both morning and afternoon, little shade; a slight slope for drainage; water, existing turf, and -- most importantly -- an invitation.

I deposited my new lawnmower (still in its box), and my new roll of net fencing (still in its box) in the storage building, took one last anticipatory look at the site, willing its fertility, and rejoined the others inside the house.

Later that evening I could hardly keep my mind off the seedlings busily sprouting under the lights on the table in the living room.  Earlier in the weekend Lori had commented about how protective she has come to feel about the delicate little stems creeping above the soil.  Ditto for me.  Already we have a great deal of emotional energy, affection and anticipation invested in them.  The prospect of freakish frosts, abusing winds, nibbling rabbits and deer and burrowing squirrels and moles feels a little like it did to drive out of the college dormitory parking lot the first time, leaving my children behind.  Exposed; vulnerable; subject to all the vicissitudes of real life's independence; hoping -- praying -- that the parts over which a parent has any control in their raising will prove to be strong enough; praying that the parts over which parents have no control will not prove too destructive.

To be sure, "dropping off" my little seedlings is still some time away.  It's weeks, yet, until the frost threat is safely past, and my wispy little green children still have lots of growing and strengthening to do.  There will be thinning, yet, and separating and re-potting to allow for still sturdier roots.  

But that eventual day is, nonetheless, approaching; and it's fun to move forward with a mental picture of where their roots will finally stretch.  Rooted, stretching, and hopefully producing something edible.

All the odds against it, notwithstanding.

Tracing the Seeds of the Seeding

Progress Report:
Swiss Chard sprouting wildly
Beets running a close second
Leeks whisping skyward
Green zebra stripe tomatoes progressing nicely
Brandywine tomatoes coming along
Finally some movement on the cucumbers
Marigolds, calendula, and sunflowers showing strength
Only two pepper sprouts.
Chiles holding firm at zilch.  Zero.  Come on, Anaheims, Anchos and pimientos!  Do something!

So how did this madness begin?  So far I have invested more in seeds than I care to confess.  I have purchased grow-lights, net fencing, a reel mower, organic potting mix, seeding cells, and base materials for 18 growing tubes to be positioned on our deck.
               ...And untold numbers of books.
                       ...Plus subscriptions to a couple of magazines.
 And let me just add that none of it has been cheap. 
Which is to say that I'd sure like to see some chiles.

How did all this begin?  It's hard to untangle the threads of it all to isolate that single one.  Indeed, perhaps it wasn't any single one, but rather the thickening accumulation of several.  It certainly reaches back a couple of years to our burgeoning interest in cooking.  Our culinary experience in Italy focused new light on real and fresh ingredients, which led to some heightened sensitivity to nutrition and health.  Reading about the industrial food system added a sickening feeling about the meats and vegetables we routinely used, and our involvement in two Community Supported Agriculture farms honed my appreciation and my intrigue.  More reading deepened my appreciation of agrarian values, and the grant work on terroir has put me intellectually spiritually in the thick of this passion.

But two awakenings dislodged me most violently from the relative safety and simplicity of my observational recliner.  I have no recollection which came first -- or if, more likely, they simply confronted me together like friends and family at an intervention.  One was the comprehension -- midwifed by the work of environmentalists armed with forecasts about peak oil, and readings about the simple mechanics of modern agriculture and its utter and complete dependence on cheap oil -- that food production as we have come to know it is unsustainable.  I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime -- maybe not even in my children's lifetime -- but not very far down this road we will reach an agricultural dead end.  If we can't any longer produce the fertilizers on which we have come to depend; if we couldn't transport it to or spread it on the fields it wouldn't do us any good even if we had it; if we couldn't fuel the equipment to harvest and transport it, it wouldn't do us any good to grow it; and then we would be stuck.  Empty fields.  Empty shelves.  Empty pantries.  Chances are that, shortly thereafter, we will get hungry, and hopefully somebody -- hopefully a lot of somebodies -- will still be around who remember how to grow something edible the old-fashioned way.

That is when the other hand slapped me:  I wouldn't be one of them.  I don't have a clue how this stuff happens.  I grew up in the Hamburger Helper, blue-box mac and cheese generation quite thoroughly trained to gratefully receive my meals from the ever helpful food engineers at Betty Crocker, Duncan-Hines, General Mills, Swift, Kraft, Hormel, et al.  They took care of all that "dirty work" and hassle; mine was simply the delicious job of boiling a little water, browning a little meat scraped off the styrofoam tray, microwaving a little of this or that, and enjoying.  Well, at least eating.  I have no idea how food really comes to be.  In fact, save how to put some words together, and some musical notes, I don't know how to do much of anything.

And that sobering reality started keeping me up at night.
Until I couldn't stand it anymore.
I had caught a bad case of farm envy.  Hatched in the deepest recesses of my soul was the disruptive determination to gain the holy experience -- to participate in the sacred synergy -- of putting food on the table, from literal start to finish.  Soil to supper.  Dirt to dinner.  Bat guano, worm casings, sphagnum, patience, attentiveness and all.

And so the education has begun.  Already I am unspeakably blessed.  Not every guy has a wife so loving, so supportive and indulgent as to allow a seeding operation in the living room.  And no nascent farmer with such a total absence of knowledge has any right to expect even a single germinated seed to give him such hope.  But there this table stands:  front and center in the living room, sprouting.

There is this other problem, of course.  A loving and supportive wife I have; organic nutrients I can get.  Grow-lights I can plug into a timer.  But patience?  That, shall I say, is a "growing edge."

That will have to be enough said for now.  It's time to mist my crops again.

And pray.

Watching for Old Fashioned Growth

Along the curiously winding path toward this whole "farming" endeavor was the Practical Farmers of Iowa annual conference that Lori and I attended in January.  During the course of that helpful event we became fond of two elderly but quite enthusiastic gentlemen in the exhibit area marketing a "revolutionary" snake oil reputed to accentuate photosynthesis, thereby accelerating and strengthening plant growth.  On a real farm you would apply it by the gallon.  In our application, a mister would suffice.  Of course we couldn't resist.  We bought it and have been eagerly awaiting the growing season.

Not quite sure of what it is -- and the research documents we were given notwithstanding -- and not quite sure, therefore, of it ultimate safety ("absolutely organic and safe" we were promised), we took the road more cautious and declined application on anything edible.  The flower seeds, however, were fair game.  We set up a kind of "test plot", with one row of flower seeds getting regular mists of this elixir of the gods; the companion row getting H2O alone.  All this, of course, was set in motion on Saturday when the grand seeding took place.  Since that time, my days have been happily anchored around animated misting -- 3 if not 4 times per day; anytime the soil betrayed signs of drying.  I am pursuing this project "by the book" since I have no experience, and the books say "keep the soil moist" -- a more challenging rubric than one might think.  A "day job" sort of gets in the way.

So, the misting -- both ways.  It was with some lament, then, that I jumped on a plane yesterday and left the "farming" to Lori.  She is, of course, immanently qualified and capable -- at least if my own expertise is any measure -- so it wasn't concern as much as envy:  she would get to tend and watch for precious signs of progress while I sat in day-long meetings.

Sure enough, then -- last night as I was getting ready for bed, my cell phone signaled the arrival of a message; a photograph, it turned out to be, from home, with the simple descriptor, "Growth!"  Sure enough, there, plainly visible in the grainy cellphone camera close-up, was green.  "Snake oil" green, it turns out.  Yes, the only seeding cells so far showing any movement whatsoever are those nudged along by our super mist.

Now I am having second thoughts.  Maybe we have been too cautious.  Just think of the pumpkin-size tomatoes we could have had if we had only sprayed the stuff on those seeds; just think of the beanstalk we could have grown on which we could have almost certainly climbed to the heavens.

But, then, come to think of it that whole beanstalk thing came with it own share of problems.  I reminded myself that I would be giddily content to see a tomato or a squash or an anything of any size at all sprout from one of these little seeds.  And, at the end of the day, I would just as soon watch it happen the old-fashioned way -- with water and sun, and soil and care...

...and time.