The Garden's Year

The lucky one this year is...the yard! For the last six years I have ignored the yard at all three of my houses for very noble reasons. I was either: pregnant, nursing, or caring for someone under 2 who could not be trusted in the out of doors. This year the baby (not really a baby anymore) is almost three and I have much more time and brain power at my disposal to direct to the poor plants entrusted in my care.

Last week I was weeding (!) in the vegetable patch and the husband said, "Wow, it looks like a Norwegian garden." Which technically may not be true, but still, it's the thought that counts. This is the first year I have planted the beans early enough that they have actually needed a way to go up because they are growing! Thanks to my dad for teaching me how to do this simple and easy trellis.

These are some of the fifty or so raspberry bushes I have this year. Almost every one of them has berries all over it. I am so excited for this year's jam crop. I think last year the birds ate what few we had and since I didn't do any pruning or maintenance on them they really suffered. Good thing I can parent them this year.

The tomatoes are about one foot taller since the fifty-year rain we had a few weeks back. I think I need a great spaghetti sauce recipe to use these up. And by the way, square foot gardening really is the easiest way to get great vegetables. Check out http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ if you want to learn more.

If you plant two rows of corn one week, and two rows of corn the next week, and so on, you will have corn all summer. Just make sure you get a variety that is about 62 days to maturity so you aren't waiting until August 23 to get the first ears of corn to your table.

This is the flower basket I have managed to remember to water every day so far. Usually they are dead and brown by now.

The point is, whatever you focus your time on will yield results. My dad always tells me that the success of any garden is measured by the number of times the gardener's shadow crosses it. Every time I work in the yard it seems that I am reminded of universal truths about life. If you pull a weed when it's small, it won't go to seed and spread somewhere else. (Like a bad habit?) If you keep the dirt watered and loose, it's easier to get the weeds out. (Like our hearts?) If you don't prune a tree and the branches grow over each other, it rubs the bark off and allows the tree to be open to disease. (Like a wrong choice leading to more wrong choices?) And keeping the soil free of weeds allows the desired plants to grow to maturity and produce good fruit. (Internet, anyone?).

There is so much to learn from the Good Earth. (Also one of my favorite books. Read it if you haven't.)

Garden Gnomes need homes

When I was a little girl, my mother bought a book called "Gnomes." Apparently it was some sort of publishing joke. People thought it would never sell, and the publisher (Martha Stewart's ex-husband) was ridiculed in snotty circles of people. Well, it ended up being a best seller and became a classic in our house. If you haven't seen it, it's a mock encyclopedia of Gnomes of the World. Woodland Gnomes, Arctic Gnomes, City Gnomes, all here with magical illustrations of their secret world. I would look at the pictures and read the stories of the little men and women in this woodland story book, and I have to admit, I was totally happy when I would do my "research."

Now that I am a big grown up, I have my own gnomes, or tomtes. I don't know if you are aware of this, but gnomes are protectors of your property. They look after the animals on your land and scare away any threatening predators, which where I live is, like, yellow jackets. It is said that every home and farm in Sweden has its own tomte. He is believed to live under the floor boards of the house or in the barn. The tomte looks after and helps the family and their animals. In return, the family puts out food for him. At Christmas, he must have a bowl of rice porridge with a pat of butter on top.

Mine just live in the garden.

Some of my gnomes are new.

Some are older and getting faded.

Some are dollar store buys, some are fabric store buys, some are from friends. Lots are from my husband who loves to spoil me. Whenever we go out, he will stop and look for gnomes with me.

Some are with me where you wouldn't expect to see them. When I get bored of trying to keep my kids quiet at church (a futile attempt in any language) I look down and giggle, because I know I'm the only grown woman in my church who has a gnome bag.

This was by far my most expensive gnome, and he stays in the house all the time. He guards the TV, I guess. When I am out walking in my yard I love seeing these little helpers. It brings me back to being a little girl, lost in a book, totally happy and knowing secrets only book readers learn. Someone once commented that they were too granny-fied for someone like me, that I shouldn't have them out where people would see or they would look tacky. I just smiled. Once you know how great it is to have a tomte, you never go back. So when you are out and about, and you come across that lone garden gnome on the clearance shelf waiting to go to someone's yard, pick him up and take him home. You'll be glad you did.

What secrets have you learned from books? Who are your gnomes?

This is the Place

My family is my greatest blessing, and my greatest source of jobs. I have five children and one man-child husband, who is really great with fourteen-year-old boys because he secretly is still a fourteen-year-old boy with a checkbook. I love them all dearly and appreciate all of their funny little quirks and annoying habits. We all have them, don't we?

Secretly when I was in high school, taking all of my important classes and trying to be a smarty-pants, I had a talk with myself. What do you really want to be in this life? I asked myself. The answer surprised me. I just wanted to be a mom. I just wanted to raise beautiful, happy children and be the one responsible for that success. Not a captain of industry, not a noted author, and certainly not a salesman. Just a mom. It's been the best job ever.
One of my favorite things to do is take my kids out to see the fabulous sights around our city. Every city has a zoo, but does your city have a fully-functioning authentic pioneer village? Ours does. It's called This is the Place State Park and its one of my favorites.

I love pioneers. I always have. I'm sure it comes from hearing all the stories about my ancestors coming to America from Norway and Sweden my whole childhood. I would always ask my great Aunt Aurora to tell me the stories of her grandparents, who came and settled in a small dusty town in the middle of nowhere long ago.

Every time I take my children somewhere, especially somewhere historical, I always try to help them understand how people had to live way back when. And how they would have to change their lives as they are now to be able to survive back then.

I feel the same way about mothering. I wish someone would have taken me to the mother park before I had kids and explained to me that this was something that would change my life, and how that change would affect every cell of my body, every thought I would have, and every choice I would make. Sometimes I feel like I have settled down into a dusty little town in the middle of nowhere with little strangers surrounding me. I have had to scratch out a living with my bare hands, learning how to farm and harvest for the small ones who depend on me for so many things. Sometimes I look around and wonder, why would I ever do this to myself? And sometimes I look around, pleasantly surprised at how I love the land I live in, and say, This is the Place.