Letting It Go

So, remember when I said it was the garden's year? Apparently, it was only the garden's three months. This is what I pulled out of my garden, front and back flower beds today. And guess what? This isn't even all of it! There's still more that I was way too lazy to pull out. It's going to be waiting for me, patiently, until I get some more caffeine in my body and a nice back rub. I have really let my yard go.

And why, you may ask, am I sharing this small bit of embarrassment with you? I could have just as easily gone the whole rest of my life and not shared this information with the world wide web. It's because I wanted you to know the truth. The truth is, gardening starts out easy in the spring. The ground is soft from all the melted snow and spring rains. You baby the seeds you've planted, hoping every day for some bit of growth you can chart. It's pure success, I tell you, this gardening in the spring. But then, things change. Day trips are planned. You go out of town for a weekend. The plants are big enough to skip a day of watering, so you let it go for a day. Then there are a string of 100+ degree days and you think, if I have to go outside for one minute longer than I have to my eyelashes will melt off. You get caught up in the rush of school preparations, and you attempt to potty-train the world's most stubborn toddler. The plants patiently wait for you. They are silently calling, "Hey, could you take care of these weeds? They're really cramping my style. You won't have any pumpkins for Halloween if you keep this up."

Then, when you finally get up the gumption to go out and tackle that yard, you say to yourself, "You know, this garbage can wouldn't be so full if I had weeded last month before the weeds grew as tall as my husband." But there were so many good reasons to put it off. The zoo. The dinosaurs. The pool. The McDonald's. It is a classic lesson we see so many times in life, isn't it? We wish we had done the job when it was small, but we lie to ourselves as to why we didn't do it, like we are important diplomats with uber-important schedules that can't possibly be altered. As I was doing manual labor today, I thought that my head hadn't been this clear in a long time. My head is cluttered with big thoughts and creative yarns strewn on its floor like my messy craft room. Doing something that is simple and easy that still requires effort is sometimes the only cure for a foggy brain. And, my own bit of advice? Make sure you do it the day after the garbage man comes, so you have room for all of your lazy excuses to be thrown away. There are some things its okay to just let go.

The First Crop

So here they are! The first crop of raspberries from my garden. This may seem like a small feat, however, given my giggling and fiendish smile while I was picking them, it's not small potatoes (no pun intended).

The best thing about plants is, they just do what they're supposed to do. No complaining, or whining about that they don't want to grow raspberries, they'd rather grow artichokes. God gave them a job to do and they just do it. They have the tools: sun, dirt, water. That's all they need. Every time I harvest something out of the ground I wonder to myself: am I as obedient as these plants are? How can I be less whiny when God gives me a job to do? I have all the tools: scriptures, faith, family, love. Now I just have to get dirty and do it.

By the way, these were excellent mixed in with some fresh nectarines and a little sugar. Yum!

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.)