Long Division

You can still divide carrots. I was talking to someone on Friday who'd been lying in her garden, thinning carrots. She gardens like me: toss out the seed, let the beasties grow until they're pressing in on each other, then thin, transplant, eat, etc. This way you get a lot of plants to work with. See Victory Garden

Yesterday it was lovely again. I thinned my carrots in my dreams and then sat by the water for about a half-hour and watched some kind of duck swim about. My friend said they were buffleheads. I don't know ducks--but I loved how they lifted off them landed again. Their little feet were so cute, sticking them forward like a cartoon character coming in for landing. On the way, we walk the rails to Post Point, trees were full of singing birds. It was lovely. And there were many kayakers out; the water so calm and the kayakers gliding along. Ahhhh, hopefully more sunshine will return today. So nice compared to all that drizzle we had last week.

So back to transplanting. I always transplant the minitures. It works well for me. Although I'm sure there are the planters who dish out the seed along rows in units. These folks have their ways too. Giving garden gifts for Christmas is a good idea. Once a got a little cart that I could pull around on wheels. I could sit on it in the garden and inside were my tools: trowel, pronged thingy, digging thingy, seed, string, knife, iron slug bait.

Always in love with life,
Flower

Mulch Better Now

To keep the soil moist and to discourage the weeds, mulch between the rows. Use newspaper, burlap bags, grocery sacks, your exhusband's favorite silk ties—oops did I say that aloud? No really, mulch is important in the conservation of water and also, so you don't have to work your hoeing muscles too strenuously, it keeps the weeds down. I like to use grass clippings from the unfertilized and pesticided lawn. I have also been known to use heaps of fallen maple leaves between rows, especially in the fall when I cover the row of carrots. They winter over beautifully—did I already tell you this? Well, ignore this if I did. Cover your carrots with leaves and then when the snow comes, you can go to the garden and shovel aside the mound of snow and the leaves, and beneath, rich brown soil full of orange carrots will reveal itself. What a midwinter treat, and what's really amazing, they are sweeter and crisper than ever, almost like apples.

I talked to my neighbor, Paul, and he said when he got his garden spot, it was full of wood and burlap and glass. My spot has chips of glass in it and some small pieces of wood, but no burlap. Burlap will decompose eventually. The train is passing at this very moment, which is part of the ambience of the neighborhood, blasting whistles that scare the bejesus out of everyone, especially at 3 a.m. when I'm soundly asleep.

Where do you get burlap bags these days? I remember as a kid they were easy to come by. Potatoes came in them. Burlap was used for things other than its original purpose—for instance, when the shift—a straight dress--became popular, my mother made a shift out of a burlap bag. She modeled the garment, complete with fake roses attached to the neck and hem, her funny statement as to the frumpiness of the new style. She also hated Capri, which she called pedal-pushers and swore she'd never be caught dead in them.

Well I was told that nothing ever got stolen from the garden plots, but things did walk away. Yesterday my hoe was missing. I will go on a hunt for it tomorrow and when I find it, I'll feel mulch better.

Ciao!

Le Jardin

Happy in my skin—an old post title. This one, not so happy in my skin—and why would that be? I have everything I need. I am abundant and lucky, yet unhappy. Is it all in my head, this loneliness?

Le Jardin—garden of Eden. I was raised Christian, learning of the verdant garden where Adam and Eve first tasted that fruit of knowledge. Is it only our thinking minds that make us miserable? Now that I have decree, I feel more heartbroken than ever. I have grief and my many things: money, a home, but no person to share them with. What is the point? To me, this isn't a lush garden.

Yesterday I went to the garden to water. (We've had several hot days—the gelato store was hopping yesterday, let me tell you.) I hoed and watered and wished for my old life back, a life where I could be sitting on the beach, pondering the meaning of everything. Instead I was nursing a headache, watering in the baking sun, and trying to realize the meaning of being divorced, to not have someone to bicker with about the lack of understanding or the lack of love I'm receiving. Where does this garden of Eden begin? Inside I suppose.

Last night I watched a move, The Contest Winner. In this moving the husband, a raving alcoholic, kept running his family of ten children into the ground by drinking up the resources to purchase food and pay for a roof over their head. The wife kept winning jingle contests: prize money, & stuff. Up until the end the mother/wife kept smiling, for the most part anyway, smiling and loving everyone—including her drunken husband. Perhaps all happiness is is smiling despite of adversity.

Yesterday I set up my garden room. Today I'll fill the pot with soil and plant carrot seed. I'll let you know how well growing carrots in a pot works. Well, I think.

Happy gardening,
Flower

Happy In My Skin

Today I'm embarrassed to say that I have a little headache from drinking a little too much R&R Whiskey last night. I went to a birthday party right after the meeting with the divorce mediator and spontaneously celebrated the final terms of the divorce. Hallelujah and if there are other feelings, they haven't arisen yet. Well, except for the feeling of an achy head. I'm sure the garden doesn't ever hurt. Nor does it wallow in its woes.

Well, what about that? Soil in pain? Even when it is cracked and parched, it doesn't feel pain—or does it? I may be on to something here. Soil as a living thing—which it is—feeling pain? What could we do about that? Couldn't walk on it, could we? Or what about backhoes and other land movers? What about flooded areas or broken areas hit by earthquakes. I believe the pain we feel in regard to disturbances is ours, not the earth's. Although there are some who'd argue this theory. But I think it is worthy of questioning the treatment of the earth. Loving it instead of disregarding it, etc. Huh, well anyway…

Today I was thinking about planting up that big pot that got delivered yesterday. I'm going to try the carrot netting method—lots of carrots growing in a big pot with a growing cloth covering them. The growing cloth is white and airy and lets the sun and water through. It lifts easily with the growing carrot tops and it keeps the little flies out that bore into the orange flesh. Try it if you live in an area, like the Pacific NW, that challenges the carrot lover.

Moi resting now, Ciao!