Gardening

I have been starting seeds for my vegetable garden. This is only my second year to have a garden so I’m still in the learning stages. Last year we started plants from seed too, but we just started everything at the same time and planted it all in the garden at the same time. Learned a few things from that!! So this year I have been visiting websites, using catalogs from local seed companies, and reading books and pamphlets on gardening. A lot of it just confuses me but I did find this awesome planting chart that tells you how far apart to plants things, what seeds to start inside, and which to plant directly into the garden. It also tells you when to plant, how log before you can start to harvest, and tons of other info that I don’t really know how I’ll use just yet.

So, for the last two evening, as I watch TV, I’ve been starting seeds in trays. This is the time to start eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. I have everything set up on the coffee table, I have 7 trays with 72 starter pellets in each, a knife to open the seed packets, and a pair of tweezers for placing exactly 2 seeds into each little starter glob of dirt. Oh yeah, I also have a table lamp set up because I need more light to see what the hell I’m doing. Those seeds are wicked small. All those years of playing Operation as a child have finally paid off!

What I realized is that even though it seems like they don’t put very many seeds in a packet, they really do. On average I’ve started about 36 of each and that is using only about half of the seeds in a packet. So, I’m going to have more plants than I will have room in my garden for, and I still have all these seeds left over with not dirt for them. Nature is pretty incredible when you think about how many seeds a single plant can produce, it’s a wonder we aren’t overtaken by plants every day. I still hate to waste the seeds I didn’t use, so I’m saving them and keeping them with their envelopes and I will pass them on to the neighborhood school which has a garden where the kids learn to become gardeners. As for the extra plants I grow, I will share them with my neighbors, or maybe I’ll get a booth at the local farmers market and sell them. I would be like a real farmer! LOL

Some of the things I really like about gardening are:
-- I like getting out and moving around, which I really need to do that
-- I get a kick out of watching the plants grows
-- I feel completely accomplished when I pick and use what I’ve grown
-- I love sharing the harvest with my family, friends and neighbors
-- I feel a sense of connection with my ancestors who were farmers
-- I like that I know exactly how and where my food was grown
-- I enjoy when the kids come by and they get to pick something, they get so excited
-- I like watching my cat pretend to be a jungle cat as she slinks through the plants
-- I enjoy sitting on the patio and listening to the wind rustle the corn as the sun sets

White trash tomatoes and the smack down

You know my sister and I have been working on putting in a vegetable garden at my house this year. It’s awesome! 100 square feet of raised beds. We spent a weekend hauling dirt from up the road to our beds. No we didn’t actually do it ourselves. My son Matt and his friend Jason did the work, but we cooked for them, and they will get picking rights.

Last weekend we finally got plants into the ground. Yes, Danna and I did that work ourselves. We planted starts for corn, peas, beans, cucumbers, radishes, shallots, Walla-Walla onions, Anaheim peppers, red bell peppers, garlic and tomatoes. We didn’t plant the tomatoes in the garden. We planted one in a Topsey-Tervey. You know that thing they advertise on TV that hangs from the patio and you plant the tomato upside down in the bottom? The others we planted in buckets. As our friend Debbi says, we’re having a smack down to see which method works best.

After we were done, we were sitting on the patio admiring our work and enjoying a drink. I pointed out to my sister that we needed to move the tomatoes to the far end of the garden. She asked why and I explained that they were unattractive where we had them. That particular placement kind of screamed WHITE TRASH. We had planted them in empty cat litter bucket with all the labeling still on them.

Danna informed me that if people didn’t know that about us yet, they probably wouldn’t catch on. So the tomato buckets remain in their original positions. I’ll let you know how the Great Tomato Smack Down goes.

Gardens and Stooges

I’m so tired of the rain and grey skies!! I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. I’m just so over it all!! I want to sit out in the sun and warm my poor old decrepit bones. I’m really, really tired of being cold! I miserable!! --- Don’t you feel sorry for me?

I really am ready for spring to be here in all of her glory. This past weekend I planted flowers in my pots, hung window boxes, and finished trimming the bushes. Ok so maybe it was more like hacking at them, and Danna (my sister) helped A LOT, but it got done. The yard is looking pretty good; the flowers just need to grow now.

Yesterday Danna said we should put a veggie garden in my backyard. Excellent idea; as most of her ideas are! I have a good yard for a garden for several reasons: 1) My backyard gets great sunlight all day, 2) There’s plenty of room, and 3) I don’t have any kids or dogs, or all the things that go with them. Danna’s plan is to get the kids involved in the planning, prepping, planting and growing of the garden. This of course means she will be doing the lion’s share to the work, but the kids will still have a blast and learn something in spite of their short attention spans. I will try to remember to water it, and help as I can. I have to admit my attention span isn’t too long either.

I’m really excited to have a garden at my house. I like gardens, I just can’t stay interested in caring for them, but I will do very well if there is someone there to do the work with. I suck at solo endeavors, I’m much better with at least one other person to work with, or a team. You know having someone to talk to and laugh with as you do the work. Without that the work seems to take forever and I can find very little joy in it.

I never really got the whole convent and monastery thing where you work from sun up to sun down in silence. How does drudgery pleasing God? When does a loving parent wish that on their child? It’s a total mystery to me, which probably explains why I have a hard time with religion in general.

I want a faith that’s about possibilities, opportunity and being all you can be --- wait that’s the Army! The point is religion always seems to be about don’t do this and don’t do that; about you must be this or believe that to be accepted. It drives me crazy when people say things like you can’t get into heaven unless you believe in God, or you have to accept Jesus as your savior. REALLY? I better hope I was born and raised in the Bible Belt and not some corner of China where I’ve never heard of Jesus, because in that case I’m just plain out of luck.

What if the Muslims have it right, or the Buddhists and we’re all wasting our time in church? What if the Bushmen of Africa have the real answer? Because you know we all think we have the right answer, and if there can only be one (Highlander reference) how do we truly know?

The common answer in Christianity is kinda like the one your mom gave you growing when you’d just keep asking “Why?” to every answer, “Because I said so!!!!” “God says so” or “Jesus says so”, on and on. Faith equals obedience, because I said so. And, by the way, it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t earn a place unless you are obedient and believe. God gives us reason and independent thought to set us above the animals and then says, wait you can’t use it where I’m concerned. How do you accept what reason tells you is not true? It’s like the freaking chicken and egg question. Was God really just trying to see who he could make crazy?

I get visions of God sitting in the clouds with the heavenly host, eating pop corn and sucking down sodas watching us wrestle with this. We have to be endlessly entertaining. We can cure disease, overcome natural disasters, rearrange the earth to meet our needs but in the end, no matter the millions of things we can do in coordination, it comes down to the very few differences that keep us separate. Watching this has to be something like watching an ant colony where all the ants are clones of Curly, Mo and Larry.