Gnome in the Northwest Corner

current garden plan 9.21.10

No, this isn't a secret play for the San Diego Chargers.  This is use 101 for my chalkboard dining room table... thinking out the garden plan.

This is generally what things look like right about now... the lettuces are taking well, and the summer crops are still holding their ground - green tomatoes and flowers, a single eggplant FINALLY forming and actually a few peppers growing.  But, things are going to have to change....  And soon, since the following seed packets have arrived:

Botanical Interests : Early Wonder Beets, Cherry Belle Radishes, Gourmet Blend Beats, Carnival Blend Carrots, Brightest Brilliant Quinoa (particularly excited about that one!)

Territorial Seed Company:  Canoe Shelling Peas, Broad Windsor Fava Beans, Winter Density Romaine Lettuce, Sylvetta Wild Arugula, Red Marble Onions, Top Keeper Onions, Touchstone Gold Beets, Nantes Carrots (thrown in by Territorial for Plant a Row for the Hungry via Garden Writer's Org - these will be given away).

Then there are the ranunculus I want to plant and some seeds from last year of this or that nature.

We've had a marine layer for at least one week straight, so I'm thinking unless next week's weather forecast has some miraculous heat wave, I should sacrifice the tomatoes to let that ground rest for a month before I plant there again.   But, cutting down a bevy of green tomatoes will be hard....  Especially since I have only gotten one quart of tomato sauce with maybe another waiting in line in the bowl of tomatoes on the counter. 

It's a lot of seeds for a 5x12 plot (plus that little extra L), so it's going to be tricky.  But, with the handy dandy erasable chalk plan, I should be able to come up with something!   I'll keep you posted. 

Song of Songs

Let us go early to the vineyards

  to see if the vines have budded,

if their blossoms have opened,

  and if the pomegranates are in bloom --

there I will give you my love.

                                                  Song of Songs 7:12

I've been thinking a lot about pomegranates lately.  The tree in our community garden is hanging low with them and I'd gotten it in my head to make pomegranate jam.  Easier said than done, but I digress...

Long before I ever had ever held one, eaten one, or opened one, I loved pomegranates.  I don't know if it was the melding of the apple green and the garnet red or the little royal decoration at the top that reminded me of Max's crown in WHERE THE WILD THING ARE.  I was drawn to the gem-like seeds which were held like the greatest of treasure by this hardest of hard fruits.   The seeds glistened in paintings or photographs, seeming to me like the deep tones of reds went deeper and deeper into a tiny reflective pool.  I wondered if they tasted sweet or sour.  I wondered, before I knew, if that was even the part one might eat!

I'm not sure if I was drawn to them because pomegranates hold a special place in literature and once a "Lit Major" always a "Lit Major".  They showed up in books and poems representing fertility and beauty and abundance.  Pomegranates will often be eaten at Rosh Hashana dinner as Jewish tradition tells that pomegranates have 613 seeds which correspond to the 613 mitzvohs of the Torah. For them, these powerful fruits are a symbol of righteousness.  Or maybe it was just the exotic nature of them: The secrets that they might hold about far away desert lands.  They seemed forbidden and mysterious - as if they held primal information within them of who we are as people.  And in fact, the trees first grew in Iran and then during ancient times quickly spread to the Himalayan area of India and on to the Middle East, and Greece.  And having traveled in some of those regions and having felt the deep connection to them, to the earth - as if this is indeed where we sprung from - I think perhaps pomegranates actually do hold some secret to our being.

Now, of course, they are almost common place.  You can get them already juiced in your supermarket in the smallest of towns.  Doctors rave about the antioxidant nature of them.  They are being used for political and social maneuverings in Afghanastan to convince farmers to move from growing the lucrative crop of opium to the even more lucrative crop of pomegranates.   I mean have you seen the price of the juice?  Although, having attempted the jam, I have some theories about that.  But, again, I digress...

Ultimately, though, pomegranates are sexy.  When they ripen they gently split open revealing more and more of their plump, fertile, ruby seeds.  The darker, the sweeter.  Hanging open - their jewels to be plucked - they tempt birds and humans alike.   And they show up a lot in the grandest of grandest of literature: the bible.  While some scholars may argue that Song of Songs is a treatise on political dealings and conflict between beliefs and nations, others believe it might have been an early kind of erotic poetry.  But, no matter what the origin, there is our fruit in question front and center to the longing and desire with pomegranate-colored temple blushing and love making under its blossoms.  One can imagine lovers feeding each other the dark, sweet seeds while juices drip down upon their lips.  And maybe I'm just missing some romance in my life right now, but this seems reason enough to love pomegranates.

I would lead you

  and bring you to my mother's house --

I would give you spiced wine to drink,

  the nectar of my pomegranates.

                                                                                        Song of Songs 8:2

 Oh, and the pomegranate jam.  yeah, still taking those damn seeds out of them.  I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, please check out some photographs I took of the lovely poms from the garden over at www.squidpictures.blogspot.com

Farm City

It isn't a Fall day, but I'm pretending it is.  I've been sitting in my armchair with football on low in the background, mousaka warming on the stovetop for lunch, and a box of tissues because it seems I've found myself a cold.  Luckily I watered the garden yesterday (lettuce sprouts doing well!).  So, despite all the work I have in so many other vertical categories of my life, I decided to finish a book that my fellow gardener friend Kristin gave me for my birthday last year.  Shamefully, because of all the other reading I HAVE to do, it has taken me almost a year to finish a book for pleasure.  It is called FARM CITY: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter.  She takes you along on her adventures in urban farming including the joy and heartache attached to raising pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, bees, and vegetables.  Carpenter keeps you very entertained as she leads you through how quickly a desire for sustainability can lead to finding yourself doing everything from dumpster diving to massaging a pig's hind quarter with salt in the quest for some homemade prosciutto if you aren't careful!  All this takes place on an abandoned piece of land next to her apartment in a "bad" section of Oakland, CA.  I highly recommend it.  This paragraph caught my attention:

While rooting around the history of prosciutto making, I had stumbled upon this quote from Pliny the Elder, the ancient Roman naturalist, about Epicurus, the famous Greek hedonist:  "That the connoisseurs in the enjoyment of life of ease was the first to lay out a garden at Athens; up to this time it had never been thought of to dwell in the country in the middle of town."  The garden, as far as scholars can sort out, grew fruits and vegetables.  

She goes on to write that the notion that an urban farmer existed before Christ made her feel as if at its very core, there really is nothing new.  And that we are all a part of it.  

Indeed.

Cam's Garden

I'm probably the last garden blogger in LA to know about this guy, but he was featured in The LA Times today and just a few posts into his blog, I'm sort of digging him.  He's like the Apocalypse Now / Hunter S. Thompson version of a garden blogger.  

Caution:  Curse words and unkind thoughts towards gophers.

Cam's Garden

Tomato, Potato, Zucchini, Oh My! (what the heck do I do with it all!)

Bounty from one day last summer.

We've pretty much established that this Summer, my garden took a back seat to other kinds of growing (and hopefully harvesting).  It took a back seat to fitting in a yoga class or a long walk.  Sometimes it took a back seat to a bit of a longer sleep in the morning when my adrenals were kicking my butt.  It took a back seat to work, mostly.  All sowing was done there this year.  It had to.  And, of course, this past Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer I've had a strange and conflicted relationship to my 5 x 12 plot because of all that it meant for me before The Squeeze left me.  But, slowly, I'm getting back in the swing of things.... I have high hopes for the Fall plantings.

But, in the meantime, I'm a failed gardener this summer.  Oh sure, I've harvested one bowl worth of tomatoes and some herbs.  I picked one japanese eggplant and two cucumbers with a scattering of carrots.  And there were the two cabbages that grew ever so slowly over the Fall and Winter and finally were harvested a few weeks ago.   And, I picked... um, oh yeah.  Nada.  I mean I probably have broken some kind of gardening record.  A zucchini plant that grew NO zucchini.  Stop the presses!

But, if you happen to have had a much better growing season and find yourself sneaking around in the middle of the night dropping produce off on your neighbor's front porch.  Here's an idea:  Give it to the hungry.  I follow a lovely blog called GREEN FRIEDA.  And Audrey has posted HERE about a wonderful organization called Ample Harvest   So, if you find yourself with an embarrassment of riches in the form of garden produce, maybe this is the solution! 

Sometimes a Garden is Just a Garden

Last year's cucumbers.... sigh. 

Sometimes it's just about actually gardening:

- picked a dozen or so San Marzano tomatoes
- lamented over the second plant that seems to have fruit that is rotting from the bottom **
- picked two dozen or so yellow tear drop tomatoes
- planted lettuce seedlings in the plot under the peach tree (thank Leigh for leaving extras)
- planted snap pea seedlings (why not try for the third time this year!) Planted them closer together than last batch.  Maybe it will help.  ***
 
** Note to self.  Google this and figure out what you've done wrong.
*** Doubtful!  Mostly just get to the garden more to water, damn it!

Meditation...

I'm behind schedule today.  As usual.  I can't ever seem to find enough time to work, exercise, play, explore my photography, sleep, rest, organize, clean, and connect with friends and loved ones.

My garden keeps coming last these days, so true to my post yesterday I chose to spend the time I needed there this morning.  Bright and early at 8am I did the following:

****  Cut down most of my basil which I was finding too bitter to make pesto out of and "green manured" it to break down for a few months in my lettuce bed.
****  Green manured my japanese eggplant that just wasn't producing and truthfully looked like an abuse case.  Someone should call to report me to the plant equivalent of Child Services.
****  Replanted my cilantro to a shadier spot after googling that it can't be in soil that heats up to 75 Degrees.  um yeah.  Given my watering schedule the past few months it's like its been growing in the Sahara. All bolt, no leaves.  I have very little hope for its survival, but have learned for the next round.
****  Moved my zucchini plant to try to give it space and hopefully grow.  So far this summer there have been few flowers and absolutely no fruit.  How neglectful of a gardener must you be in order to not have zucchini grow.  Barbara Kingsolver talks in her book ANIMAL, MINERAL, MIRACLE about making sure in the summer that your house and car doors are locked so as to not find yourself with your neighbor's excess zucchini (usually while you are out trying to unload yours!)  That's how neglectful!
****  Pulled up runners for my Chinese Lantern.
****  Harvested:  tomatoes: san marzano and yellow teardrop, basil, rosemary, parsley, a leaf or two of non-bolted cilantro, thyme.  So, basically nothing is growing in my garden this year!
****  Pulled dead leaves off of the teardrop tomato plant.
****  Moved a pepper plant to a sunnier space.
****  Tied up tomato plants.
****  Picked off bolting bits from the one basil plant I left standing as a companion plant for the tomato plants.  I used the massive amounts of those flowering bolted bits as more green manure.
****  Mulched with the new straw that the garden manager brought in.
****  Weeded nut grass.
****  Composted one sage plant and prayed for the health of the other.
****  And watered.  Long slow watering for the entire time I worked in the garden.  And still I know it wasn't enough to get down deep - my plants were so deprived....

And so at 11am, a full three hours - and according to my iphone app 823 calories later - I headed home;  late enough, dirty enough, and hungry enough that I could not make the "Introduction to Meditation" class I'd wanted to attend today.  "You failed at your list of things to do again," I thought.

But, then I realized that I'd spent three hours meditating.  No thoughts - good or bad - had entered my mind while snipping, digging, pruning, picking.  No fears.  No worries.  No lists of all that awaited me at home yet to do today.  No heartbreak.  Nothing.  Just silence.  Me and God in the garden with only empty mind space of meditative work in front of me.  And I know I still need to get to the class and learn to empty my mind and center my body and soul for when I'm not at the garden.  But, at least for today, I will check it off my 'to do' list:  Meditate: CHECK

And yes,  as predicted in yesterday's post, my manicure is ruined. 

My Grandmother's Hands...

This is not a picture of my grandmother's hands.  It is, in fact, a photo of my hand today taken with my iphone after a manicure because holding my "big girl" camera up with a heavy lens by just one hand seemed more challenging than I was up for today.

I work in a business where "coiffed" is a write off on your taxes. Yet, I've never managed to get the time (or inclination) to make weekly appointments at the nail salon.  I scramble before a big event, occasionally.  Or I go more often when I'm being urged by friends or therapists or loved ones to "take more time" for myself, wincing at the $12 bucks (yes, Vietnamese salon is the fanciest I enter!).  I think, "what a waste".  I'll end up washing or cleaning or buttoning my jeans in an hour and the polish will be ruined.  I'll wash my hair once or twice (there is a lot of it) and the manicure will be a brief memory and I'll be back to hiding my hands under the table at meetings. 

But, really, as I sit there being pampered I think:  here's what has to happen in the garden tomorrow:

- the coriander needs to be moved to a shadier spot because it's bolting
- the japanese eggplant needs to just be turned over - it ain't happening this summer
- the zucchini needs to have the leaves cut back
- the tomatoes need to be tied
- the nutgrass needs to be weeded
- the blue stone pavers need to be lifted up and the ground graded....

You get the picture.  I berate myself for not planning the manicure better.  But, honestly, there is never a good time when you are a gardener.  Maybe if you just grow roses.  I don't know.  Inform me, Dear Readers.  But, when you are generally just eager to get your hands in the dirt, a manicure is not long for the world.  

I'm generally of the mind that my hands, by today's beauty standards, leave much to be desired.  They aren't elegant or feminine.  I struggle to keep long nails.  And they certainly don't have the appearance as to be some extension of a beautiful sculpture made flesh.  In fact, I doubt any artist in his right mind would ever WANT to sculpt them or paint them or, truthfully, photograph them (see Exhibit A above).  They are for a lack of a more poetic description:  chubby, short, sausage fingered hands.  They are "peasant" hands.  The are gardener's hands.

And, as I have begun to recognize as I'm aging, they are also my grandmother's hands.  They are the hands of my Italian grandmother:  Mary.  Maria.  Nana.  She was worker that one.  Worked from the time she was 16 until the day she died.  She cleaned, cooked, raised children, cut wood, and buffed that kitchen floor every night of her adult life and - while most of the gardening fell to her brother - yes, she gardened, too. 

So, there it is.  Love me.  Love my hands.  They are worker hands.  They are gardener's hands.  They are Mary's hands.

Daisies for Simon

I have grieved a child.  Really, I have grieved children.  Ones I did not have.  I know the depth of loss "that never was".   It's impossible to explain this kind of grief to someone who has not felt the deep, deep desire for motherhood - to feel the stir of a child within - but has been denied it.  The children I did not have were dreamed of and prayed for and deftly tried to be made manifest with science and money.   They were named in the secret places of my mother heart and kept from everyone - even from the man who was mysteriously and simultaneously winning my lover heart.  Telling him there were no names for these babies of which I dreamed was the only lie I ever told him.   But, as time marched on and no children arrived to claim these names, I reluctantly or graciously or excitedly pulled them out of my heart's secret compartment for others to use for their children and even, secretly, a tiny ginger colored cat that I love.

Arriving at crossroads,  I chose to let go of that dream and give my heart over to another dream of equal desire - to share a life with someone I loved.   So, at the crossroads, I chose a partnership of adventure and desire and companionship.   But, as with every loss - even with such wonderful other things on the horizon and a partner I believed loved me - it needed to be grieved.  And this loss was and is profound.  It rumbles the depths of my soul some days.  And even more so now that the other dream has also washed ashore and I'm left alone....

But, no matter how deep that grief for the children that did not come to me,  I can't imagine the loss of a child actually placed in your arms by God.  A child who laughs and plays and cries and loves you as only a child can love a parent.  A child you committed to be the protector of even when, in the dark truth of reality, that is impossible by any measure.  I can't imagine what that would be each day of ones life to grieve ones child.

What does this have to do with gardening you ask?

Well, a garden is about birth and death and renewal.  It was for me the place I poured my grief into when it had become the elephant in the room and I could not grieve openly at home.  But, how that revelation came to me is for another time.  Now is about a post by my friend Ilaria which can be read here.  She has written beautifully about the loss of a friend's 10 year old son.   A boy who claimed the name Simon.

I did not know him, but my heart sunk for his parents and then lifted again when Ilaria wrote that his parents and his sister would be traveling to places around the world that he had delighted in - even in his short time on earth.  And in each of these ten places, they would plant one tree.  Ten trees for Simon.  One for each year he gave them joy and happiness.  One for each year he was uniquely him on this earth. 

They will be pouring their grief into a garden.  They will plant something that will grow and grow and grow as their son will no longer be able to do.   What courage they have.

And while I can't know their deepest of deepest grief, I know enough from my own desires and loss to know they will water these trees with their own tears.

I can't plant a tree in my 5x12 plot.  I signed a paper saying so.  But, I have already planted Violets for my Nana and Hyacinth for my Poppop.  And tomorrow I will plant orange Gerber Daisies for a boy I did not know named Simon.  I'll do this because my heart breaks for his mother and father and sister.   And for my friend Ilaria who must be holding her own sons that much tighter today.

And with luck and love these playful bright daisies will come up again every year.  And, maybe, in some secret way known only to the Universe, this will help comfort a grieving family who are planting trees around the world in the name of their son.

I'm not a vegan, but I photograph ones that will be on TV

My portrait of Master Gardener Adriana Martinez is in this months VegNews Magazine which focuses on a vegan lifestyle.  So, while this post isn't about my garden per se,  I met Adriana through her blog when I was starting to plant my little 5x12 plot of dirt.  She's creating an empire through her Anarchy In The Garden  -  "keeping it punk by growing her own" (and helping others to do the same).  Mark my words:  You'll see her in a bookstore and on a cable channel near you soon.  In the meantime, look for my portrait of Adriana (and my microscopic credit!) in the July/August issue of VegNews Magazine at a Borders, Albertson's, or Whole Foods.  Here's a low res preview for you:

For every season....

I was at a birthday party in Portland on Saturday.  The first person I met happened to be a really great woman who grew up in Long Beach.  Immediately she asked me what had brought me to my adopted town.  I hesitated, as I am apt to do lately, and said, "I followed love".   And then quickly,  "Silly, I know".  After reassuring me it wasn't and telling her own tale of love followed, she asked if I was still with my Love.  Choking back emotion, I had to admit that, "No, he left me".  She waxed poetic about opportunities and new beginnings and what's bad can be good again.  And maybe she's right, but I'm not there yet.   So, she turned instead to asking me what I've been doing to help soldier on.  Canning I told her.  "I've been canning".

And I have.  I started in February, right after my Squeeze left.  I began with Blood Orange Marmalade.  It was my first attempt and it went okay, although the blood orange caramels I found on another Long Beach resident and photographer's site Matt Bites were an even bigger hit.  But, when Blood Oranges moved out of season I searched for what to do with the abundance of organic pears at Trader Joes and fell into a Ginger Pear Preserve courtesy of Emeril.  And for me, given my current ginger obsession, these little jars of ginger colored goodness were spoonfuls of happiness and a delight to give away.  But then with Spring deeply sprung and summer waiting anxiously around the corner,  you couldn't walk two feet at the farmers' market without being knocked down by sweet, sweet strawberries.  So, I turned to my new canning crush's website: Kevin West's Saving The Season.  There I was challenged to make Strawberry Preserves with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper.  And, I did - gel testing with my antique plates and spoons which made it all the more sacred somehow.

Truthfully, other than a lick of the bowl at clean up, I haven't even tried it.  With the battle of my adrenals, thyroid, and sinus raging this summer,  I'm supposed to be off sugar.  So, there it sits in my pantry.   One jar got sent to Portland as a hostess gift along with a jar of each of the others and some zucchini bread with crystallized ginger and curry.   But, eating it isn't why I'm doing it.  Canning keeps me busy at night or on a weekend.  It forces me to focus on something that quite frankly requires, well, focus.  One mind-drift to days of old and you are looking at burnt sugar or shattered jars.  It requires me to be present.  Not thinking about a past that I miss or the future I fear or the fact that I'm alone in a big loft with only a new kitten to keep me company.   It keeps me productive and challenged and connected somehow because these jars of beautiful preserves and jams (and maybe as the summer creeps along veggies and tomatoes) are meant to be shared and gifted.  And they will be. 

Until then I'll mark the healing of my heart by the contents of the jars I've put up.  Time and seasons and heartache all move along.  And good will come of bad.  And maybe by Blood Orange Marmalade season next year I'll have more joy and surprises in my life than I can ever imagine.

Garden Work

R

Recently someone accused me of wasting time in my garden.  They said it wasn't hard work, that it was a place to hide out from problems and didn't have any component of exercising, this gardening stuff.  Essentially,  this person was saying that it wasn't a "productive" endeavor.  And I've been thinking about this statement a lot recently.

I have lifted heavy stones, dug trenches, laid bricks, carried 25 pound bags of dirt, after 25 pound bags of dirt blocks from a parking space to the garden, pounded trellises into the ground, dug deep holes, walked the length of the garden 10 times to get the water pressure right, graded a plot, built boxes and cubby holes, bent, twisted, and sweated all the while doing a crazy dance to shoo away bees and shake off ants.  A silly little app on my iphone says that 2 hours in the garden can burn almost 600 calories;   Two hundred less than moderate hiking and half as much as bicycling at a moderate rate. But more than 2 hours of golfing or guitar playing.  Or so says the app. 

And yes, I have lost four hours at a time there working, watering, and talking to gardeners and wanna be gardeners who stroll through the gates asking questions.  And sometimes being there gives me the space away from others and sometimes it gives people I love space away from me.  Sometimes the four hours spent there is on purpose for just that reason.  And sometimes it is because I am gloriously covered in dirt and sweat and lost in the work....

And maybe this isn't exactly a "productive" result - a small pitcher of violets, for instance.  But, it pleases me and that should be reason enough to support the gardener in your life.