State of the Place on Mother’s Day 2023

Well well well! After more than a year of waiting impatiently (which morphed, necessarily, into patiently) while the 12-foot yurt languished in its original wrappings on the Overhill house front porch (thus pretty much negating the porch for any other use), the backyard platform upon which it is to be built is finally finished. (Thank you son Colin, whose back and knee were, at long last, well enough to take the strain.) So now, its as if the long-awaited finale to this delayed yurt project is like this morning’s tiny iris bud, about to bloom!

Meanwhile, strawberries are peeking out, yukon gold potatoes (planted in early March) are doing well, and the Sagittarius plants (see bottom photo in collage) are once again, growing in the holding pond’s gunk. (These plants were gifted to us about five years ago, by Maynard, a friend of then-resident Dan, who brought them, he said, for Ann and Rebecca (who was here for ten years, until two years ago).  Little did he know that both Rebecca and I are Sagittarians!

The teensy weensy lettuce seeds of various types that Camden patiently planted eight days ago, assuming we’d get maybe a 90% germination rate, started to peek up green in only 48 hours. As of this morning, only four  have not (or not yet) germinated – out of 156 total!

For the past three years, we’ve been graced by the voluntary presence of purple perilla (also known as shizo) (upper right, montage ab0ve). This spring it’s coming up again. We discovered what we had here when an Asian woman came to her first Community Dinner and was excited to find perilla growing in our gardens. Says it’s extremely valued in Asian countries, as both food and medicine. 

Middle photo right: We have lots of allium growing this year, for the first time. Did we plant it last year? I don’t remember. Oh, and notice the tiny star shapes . . .

 Remind you of star anise (one of my very favorite herbs)? 

How about this. Nearly identical shape!

Nature is our Designer, our Teacher, and our Mother.

Happy Mother’s Day!

SPRING IS SPRUNG! Thank you Mother Earth!

I’m amazed that I used to think flowers superfluous. That if we can’t eat ’em, why have ’em? I look back on this former, merely, sheerly, “practical” self with stunned awareness. How far I’ve come! And: how did I get so far away from Beauty?

My gladiolas, planted three weeks ago? — are starting to shoot up. Yay! See em (inside the wild strawberries and tiny jewel weed sprouts).

And, right next to them, a flourishing little greens and kale plot in the back yard.

One more word about flowers . . . I used to only plant annuals. Now I only plant perennials. I view this as a good sign that I have moved away from my lifelong apocalyptic self: i.e., I newly assume they will come up year after year (and how I love seeing them again and again!); yes, I newly assume there will be a next year — despite current worse-than-usual apocalyptic rumors. Is this assumption my unconscious way of shifting the direction of the future into a timeline of human and earthly flourishing?

Here’s a close-up on the front porch kiwi vines; notice the dead leaves (from the freeze we had for two nights a couple of weeks ago) are now being pushed aside by new leaves.

Motherwort trying to take over in back, as usual . . .

Lots of other herbs in that garden. Hope they get a chance to come up . . .

Then there’s horsetail (very ancient), and some type of sedum (I learned these names just now, on a plant ID site), both around the pond (which, was taken over by some kind of bamboo a few years ago).

Yesterday, we planted basil, tomatoes, peppers, more potatoes and sweet potatoes.

We’re still early, but willing to cover the plants if necessary. So far, only the outside beans haven’t survived. Here’s the potatoes we planted a month ago, obviously recovering from frost! The one at bottom right still looks burned, but sports tiny new leaves.

Here we are, prior to planting yesterday. Marita, Joseph, Ben.

Yes, that weirdness in front of the above photo is this pile from the past few months . . . About time to borrow neighbor Dave’s truck again and haul it all off to Good Earth.

And here’s Joseph, with the sweet potatoes. We have 12 slips, and he’s planting them in two rows, down the center. After May 15th, we’ll plant bush beans around the edges.

Believe it or not, most of the beds in view here have been planted. Just wait a few weeks! 

We still have a number beds in back yards and one front yard to plant, but, the stock in the greenhouse is reducing rapidly, and we’re going to give some tomato plants away.

I’ll end with a montage of Joseph’s newly renamed fairy garden, in front of the house where he lives.

Hmmm . . . did we start seeds too early?

I don’t remember having this problem in other years.  (Should have kept better records . . .)

Seems to me we always started in late January, in the greenhouse. That’s what we did this year. And the more we planted from seed, the more that grew . . . Did we plant too much? Too many tomatoes, that’s for sure. Maybe give some seedlings away, especially those that are obviously groaning under the weight of their crowded roots. We can’t sell them, because we got mixed up this year, in naming trays of seedlings. Which kind of tomatoes are in this tray? Or that one? It’s anybody’s guess.

This is the first year we haven’t had a person directing the entire operation. Rebecca was here for ten years, and then Daniel last year. This year we’re on our own.

And I confess: the original mix-up in naming was mine. I was so involved in planting little seeds that I forgot which tray was which! 

We’ve decided that this is to be a year for experimentation. I’m sure there will be lots of other gaffes, as we transition into a truly group process, where everybody involved is taking responsibility for the whole. 

But it’s rough, getting started. For example, I want to watch a video called ElectroCulture Gardening. But have yet to take the time to do it. Will it be worth recommending to the group? I don’t know yet.

Okay back to what we’re doing here. Gaffes #1 (too many plants) and #2 (too many without names). Re: #2: it wasn’t just me; we have several trays we call “mystery trays,” because who knows what’s coming up there?

Okay, in order to tell the following tale, of gaffe #3,  want to do it in pictures. And to do so, I want to experiment with something I should have learned a long time ago, making collages out of photos. Camden pointed me to canva.com, a free site, that does this. So today was my first attempt. And what will take me, likely, ten minutes, once I get the hang of it, took over two hours . . . Oh well! My first stab at canva.com. Here goes.

TOO MANY SEEDLINGS!

And some of them, especially tomatoes, need to get out now! And kale will do fine in the ground, and we’re planting other greens, plus yesterday, we seeded a giant hugelculture bed that no has deep soil with root vegetables: carrots, beets, parsnips. We’d already put in some potato slips, about a month ago. 

Official planting time in south central Indiana: Mother’s Day, or May 15th. We’re way too early on some of them, though root seeds go in 4-6 weeks prior to the last frost, so we’re okay there. And I doubt the baby kale will be hurt. 

PLANT SOME OF THE SEEDLINGS!

But then, of course, the weather turned from wonderfully warm to cold, damn cold. And so shrouds were in order.  Six beds planted so far, and we’ve covered all of them — last night through tomorrow.

I’m very grateful to finally get going on a more creative use of photos. But it will take me awhile to get up to speed.