Twisting gardening rules daily
We’re Not Gonna Rake It! No! We’re Not Gonna Rake It!
I mean really…with the number of squirrels we have, you’d think their garden would be top of the line! Instead, I blame most of some of the mayhem and chaos around here to their improper gardening skills. Welcome to my chaotic gardening world where squirrels do most of the planting while I carry on about how it should be in a perfect world. Humor being the greatest coping mechanism known to mankind.
I’ve been sick and slowly recovering for at least two weeks…I think…who counts things when they’re sick? We probably all know at least one person who would…but I digress. The upside…I found out the wonders of probiotics. Once I identified my digestive issues, 35 billion little probiotic buddies came to my rescue. That much I’m happy to count.
Half of my seedlings died (along with me…I swear it felt that way) due to lack of water; the other half were assaulted by little food-seeking birds scratching. Once it started raining, there were the birds. It rained for days. The grass that hasn’t been mowed grew about two feet. The bunnies have awakened. I’m so far behind the critters now.
The bird that was nesting in my husband’s rubber shoes sitting on the shoe shelf next to the front door has hatched out her young and they are gone. It was fun to watch. She started building a nest in each of four shoes on the shelf before she finally decided on the first one. Don’t question the nesting habits of a pregnant female…
Yesterday evening just as it was getting dark…the days are so much longer now, it was around 9pm…a doe showed up with a newborn fawn. The day had been stormy…windy all day, raining off and on, sometimes quite heavily…and the weather was no different as it darkened. Enter a tiny fawn, hardly able to walk, shaky little legs. It was seeking refuge under the seat of our picnic table. Crouched, not lying down, under the seat, not the table itself.
It’s mother was nearby, licking it, obviously trying to coax it to a safer place, but the fawn didn’t want to leave. It finally did, though, wobbling off. Forgetting my own shakiness and weakness after not eating much for a couple weeks, I sent that little one all my love, trying to imagine how it felt to emerge from quiet, warmth and security into a tempestuous world. I wish you, little one, and all those without shelter, a place to lay your head and gather strength.
I hope to see that little one soon, leaping with joy in this green place where deer find solace.
I had my two sons relatively close together. Since I breast fed them both…first one, then the other 17 months later…the nursing years seemed to stretch on forever. I call them “the lost years.” Not because I didn’t love them over the moon and back, but because by the time the younger one was…maybe three?…I realized I started slowly having more than 15 minutes at a time to myself. These mere minutes I like to call “time on my hands.”
What does one do with this time? I don’t have to change a diaper, nurse, bathe them, fix a meal, fix their skinned knees, wash clothes, entertain them (short attention spans means extra work), clean up after them…so then what?
I rediscovered my knitting needles and yarn stash. I’d been knitting since I was a pre-teen but had forgotten that “I used to do this.” I started a small garden…then a bigger one…but it wasn’t until those two babies were in high school that I started writing again. I volunteered in my community, eventually starting up a community center with the help of so many others. I started a farmer’s market. I started freelance writing and a friend and I started a knitting business.
Now I’m 75 and writing, knitting, and gardening still. My sons have had kids of their own, so I don’t need to call them up at 2:30 am to tell them I need to pee (a sort of revenge I thought of but never actually did.) I look at an occasional photo of them growing up and nostalgia creeps in. Their kids are growing up, some are adults. I think about how I loved being pregnant.
And now the wheel is turning. I think about reincarnation. Assuming I don’t reincarnate as a fruit fly or a cucumber…I dream of giving birth all over again. Some idyllic place with a loving partner and a tribe of monkey-children, wild and free, experiencing life with every part of their being.
~~~Adapted from the song “Pass It On” by Bunny Wailer~~~
“Be not selfish in your doings
Pass it on
Help your children in their needs
Pass it on
Live for yourself, you’re gonna live in vain
Live for others, you will live again.”
Bless the Mothers.
This spring, I’m chaos companion planting in a new raised bed. I planted peas, sweet peas, and wildflower seeds in a bed that was ready, hügelkultur-style, with small branches, unfinished compost, and…no watering system except a small watering can and …no protection from rabbits and squirrels. Yes, the area is fenced, but the ground is somewhat uneven and there are gaps…like, under the gate. Even the squirrels don’t need to climb, they scamper easily right under the gate.
Now I am able to keep the soil surface watered, but still I occasionally see signs of digging. Today I go scavenging around and in sheds to see if I can find some way of protecting the bed. A small piece of chicken wire would do the trick, laid on top of the bed. A larger piece, I could make a semblance of a fence…
I’m gardening on no budget and with all the strength a 75-year old woman can muster…
So even if only a few plants survive I will count it as a success.
I’ve already done a “second planting”…mixing all the veggie and flower seeds left over from years of seed purchasing and scattering them over the surface. More chaos!
What if nothing much grows? Well, the volunteer potato plant will thrive…and the four pea plants seem to be surviving! …so that’s something! I will cover the bare spots with grass clippings. In the fall I will add more compost, maybe some bagged soil, purchase a NW wildflower seed mix and scatter that…
I’ll just keep making the soil better and trying again.
Meanwhile, I’ve written another book about a more deliberate, scientific method of companion planting and am offering it as a free ebook through this Sunday, May 11th. Help yourself to a free copy!
I like to think of this as hügelkultur but if I’m wrong, well, it won’t be the first time. I will never claim perfection, since I lean into chaos. Then again, maybe that is perfection? After all, nature leans into entropy, the definition of which is the natural tendency of things to lose order…a loose definition, not the scientific one…
And my mind wanders back to nature’s way of regenerating, even when we humans have tried our best to kill something. This is where hügelkultur and regenerative gardening melt into each other. Let’s start with cutting down a tree. In my own yard, this art of killing living things perfected by humans since they were created/evolved has not stopped the tree stump from nurturing new life. Perhaps a bird ate some berries and then stood on this stump while defecating, depositing some undigested seeds along with its poop.
Elsewhere, a tree fell in the forest – or maybe was cut – and this happened, eventually…
This picture, also in my yard, shows the ultimate regeneration: a fir tree growing on a very old tree trunk. It’s hard to see, because the fallen tree has almost become soil over many years, but this is a fir tree, a fruit bush, ferns, and other plants growing out of what was once a fir tree.
What I marked is actually the decayed tree trunk that now is a low mound of what I call almost-soil.
My yard looks messy; weedy; “lumpy” because it was never “landscaped” after being logged back in the 90’s and before, leading up to this house being built, and then added on to about 5 years ago. Heavy machinery takes a wicked toll on the earth.
So we mow less and less each year. It’s a compromise between my husband and I. He likes a mowed lawn, I would rather toss out native seeds each fall and see what grows. The compromise is that he mows less and less each year, making sure the street view is mowed so that the HOA stays happy. He leaves plants around the singular trees in the yard. And he has fenced 3 areas that were meant to be gardens but now two are left to nature (keeping the deer out so a few things we planted can grow tall enough to not be impacted so heavily by the deer.)
I planted some herbs and flowers in the third area, which is the only area that gets at least 6 hours of sun a day, and that is where I have one raised bed and a few apple and filbert trees. The raised bed is still accessible to squirrels so I’m not expecting much to grow there. Fingers crossed. So far, one potato plant volunteer from the “compost” I added and a few peas are surviving. Since I can now water it sufficiently with ease (a sprinkler), I’m hoping something will grow.
There’s always another season, another chance. Meanwhile, I’m basking in sporadically warm sunshine and the intensity of spring green. Green blessings to you all.
I’m all over the place this spring, but my madness makes sense to me.
I’m a mashup of chaos, raised bed, hügelkulture, and regenerative gardening. I started my raised bed with a base of small branches and unfinished compost, then topped it off with planting soil. I put all the seed I had (leftovers from past growing seasons) in a small bowl, mixed it up, and scattered it across the bed. Before I turned on my rainforest mist sprinkler, I walked over the bed so as to compress the seeds into the soil a bit. Then I added water.
Regenerative agriculture is my current fascination. The idea is to never leave the soil uncovered, never tilling, and never using fertilizers or chemical pesticides, herbicides, etc. I think you get the picture – organic no-till gardening.
But I highly recommend two documentaries: “Kiss the Ground” on Netflix and “Common Ground” on Prime. I watched the first many months ago, but just recently watched Common Ground. What most impressed me was the story of turning a part of the Chihuahuan Desert (which stretches from northern Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico) into a verdant grassland simply with carefully managed cattle herding.
This just blows my mind. You have to see it to believe it. I guess I’ve been prejudiced against cows, but grassfed and with enough pasture to rotate them out frequently, they are an incredible asset. And I can attest to the amazing flavor of grassfed beef.
The cows are mimicking the role of the buffalo before the colonizers all but wiped them out.
If enough of my seeds germinate despite the omnipresent squirrels, I’ll post some pictures in coming weeks.
I love ya, bro but really?
Seattle is the red star. I’m a little NW of that. Being in a somewhat clear area is encouraging but obviously the optimism is only temporary. And “cold unstable air”? At least in the present moment everything is stable, just the tiniest wisp of a breeze. But it’s 45 degrees, man. Not sticking my hands into cold wet soil today.
There are weeds to be pulled, chaos to be pushed back, oregano to be pulled/harvested/burned, and a seedbed to be watered (that I can do) because this is the second day of no rain. Just the seedbed today, just the seedbed…then go back inside to another cup of coffee and a day of writing.
It’s not even May yet…May is usually iffy, June is sometimes iffy, the NW joke is that July 5th is the first day of summer…
My spring gardening gets along well with my procrastination. I have no heat pads nor do I have space for starting anything indoors, so instead I occasionally water my one raised bed in the garden area where I’ve planted peas, chives, and wildflowers and my one container outside that has more wildflower seeds in it. Last night it rained some, so no watering necessary today.
Instead I read other garden blogs. I’m gathering a list of things I can do indoors that are kind of garden-ish. I’ve learned how to make seedling pots out of newspaper –https://youtu.be/7dlGQP81yfo?si=H2OzgO4jqOlmVczt ; I only made one and am thinking of it as garden origami. It’s on my desk full of odds and ends. Now I have reduced the constant clutter. Maybe if I make 999 more, my garden will do well this year…meanwhile, I’ve done a tiny bit of recycling and housekeeping…
I sprouted some scarlet runner beans to test viability and potted one sprout because I couldn’t stand sending them all to the compost. And I found a few inches of space on a table by a window…
I read about a rookie gardener, gardening with a friend for support. I choose to garden with a plastic lawn chair that I can drag along with me, useful when getting up after kneeling or the ultimate support – break time.
To those of you who have space to force bulbs indoors…I salute you! Now is the time most of those babies are blooming. I did this once, years ago. I may bring in a daffodil this year.
Outside, I’m starting to wrangle with my worst decision ever…oregano plants that have spread everywhere. A few plants many years ago have appeared everywhere, threatening to take over the world. I love oregano; how was I to know there were two kinds, the kind that stays in one place and the kind that rivals the squirrels in ultimate real estate takeovers. I think I must have planted Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare), which propagates by seed and by underground runners.
I should have planted it in pots. However, my time machine is currently in the shop, so I am slowly cutting it to the ground, and pruning again later in the season before it flowers. Anything not containing seeds will be composted, seeds will be burned. I will only be able to partially contain it, but this will have to do. It is even growing between the pavers on the driveway…
“Dealing with Oregano” replaces my sporadic indoor exercise program, weather permitting. I leave those decisions to the Department of Procrastination.
Indeed…
My best friend brings out the child in me. He who shall not be named brings out my inner Terminator. Online friends reveal my inner comedian. My sons draw the love and patience from my heart and soul.
The outdoors reveals my true self. Getting older and slower, weaker. More inclined to sit and listen, smell, feel, taste and imagine. More apt to let the wind plant for me than to bend or kneel.
NO, never kneel. One day I may not be able to get up; meanwhile, those knees hurt so bad.
The world is so beautiful just as it is; anything I can add is frosting on the cake.
Future wildflowers…
Or maybe a little bit of cleanup after the winter winds dropped things on the ground…
Have you noticed how pink spring can be?
Raucous red gets my blood moving again. I become a one-woman riot!
Speak up, speak out, be all sides of yourself. With graceful honesty.
Love, your garden.
Far be it from me to tell you what you can and can’t do in your garden…go for it, whatever your “it” is…
But for me, there are lines in the sand.
Garden gnomes are a hard no. Ok maybe one cute little guy peeking out from behind a bunch of plants. A gazebo would be nice. Maybe a scarecrow. But this? Maybe I got lost at Disneyland as a child, or was locked in a closet…this gives me PTSD and claustrophobia.
And this…maybe in a palace garden somewhere…
But not in my garden. I like more green, less sesame street. And spaces…
Overwatering. I will never do this because my husband turns off sprinklers when he thinks my garden has had enough. Even if the sprinkler is emitting a mist (which I try to leave on overnight once a week during August and whenever it’s dry).
As you can see, less is more in my garden when it comes to garden decorations, masses of neon colors, and floods. When is less, more in your yard and garden?
If I get my timing right…the unexpected showers can be a definite blessing. For example, it’s spring and I finally read the back of the seed packs of some native wildflowers. Oh great…”best if planted in the fall.”
Since I am planting in the spring, I kept on reading. “Plant on the surface of the soil and water daily.” Sigh…I am already feeling like a slave to my garden. Not really. A watering can does the job – easier for me than dragging a hose…
Lines from a poem written by a friend:
“we are what we are not; we are what we want to be…we are both”
This cartoon and this poem reminded me why I love C & H so much. Because I am both.
Like the weather…like my garden…like Calvin…I can be obstinate, sarcastic, hot-headed, imaginative, and egotistical.
Hobbes is rational and aware of consequences. playful, loyal, kind, and objective. So am I.
Spring weather can be both the lion and the lamb. My gardens always start with somewhat of a design but quickly lean toward chaos. The squirrels and small birds help with that.
If you’re into astrology…I, born in March, have a sun in Pisces and my rising sign is Virgo…where Saturn also resides. My astrologer friend used to say, I’m a Pisces (deep down inside) who thinks she’s a Virgo.
“If I only could bring logic and order to the world…if everything and everybody just did things my way…oh forget it, that’s too much work. Back to daydreaming…”