I’m a Happy Gardener right now.
This spring, I have not been able to visit Smith as much as I’d like. I often don’t get home from work until 6:30 and by then it’s too late, or I’m too bushed from a long day and a long commute to get ready, drive the three miles to the garden and have a decent amount of time to tend it, before having to return home and get cleaned up in time for supper, by that time not any earlier than eight or eight-thirty. So far, I’ve mostly spent a few hours each week-end tending Smith. Driving to that garden a week or more after I last was there, I am usually a little concerned, a little anxious about what I will find when I get there. A week is too long to be away from a garden, especially in spring.
This past Sunday, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Smith looked great. To be sure, I needed to pull weeds, mostly what I hadn’t gotten the last two weekends. I only needed to pull a few Pernicious Weeds; maybe I’m finally getting them under control. Tomato plants: healthy and vigorous. Pepper plants: some look great (a few even have blooms!), others look okay, none looked bad. Corn: about three inches tall and 80% or what I planted, growing. Spinach and lettuce: good. Garlic: gangbusters. We even snacked on fresh-picked peas, so sweet and tasty they’re like the candy of the garden.
Smith: Lookin' Good!
Since Smith is too large for me to be able to reach everything from the edge, I made two paths through it a couple years ago when I first started gardening here. Instead of making them straight I made them gently rounded. The middle section is an hour-glass sort of shape and the two corners have graceful, curved edges. I set stones down the paths for a place to walk and to give it a finished look. The soil I removed to make the path I used to raise the garden beds, a good way to improve drainage, make cultivating easier and allow for earlier warming in spring. Yesterday, I pulled weeds from and dug out the paths, sort of like giving ole Smith a haircut and a shave. Looks much neater, now.
Please Ooo and Aah over the Very Vigorous Garlic in the back.
Even the sunflower seeds I planted have sprouted and look healthy. I’m hoping for a border of one to two feet tall sunflowers. After a lifetime of gardening, I’m growing corn for the first time. I was glad to see its willowy first leaves, like wide blades of grass, happily growing. I planted a second batch on Sunday so it doesn’t all get ripe at the same time. (I’ll plant a third wave in a week or so.) Winter squash, enough to overrun the whole garden if I’m not careful, is up. I, of course, planted a little more. A line of cucumbers I planted on a whim, are also up. I added a few more seeds of this, too, filling in for a few that’s didn’t sprout. So thrilling to see everything doing well. I watered Smith’s residents deeply and mulched some plants I hadn’t before. Mulching is one strategy for keeping moisture in the ground longer, allowing me to “neglect” the garden a bit. I excavated five volunteer marigolds and three castor bean stalks to plant back home in the Lorelei where we will appreciate them more.
Castor Beans (I made sure to drop seeds last fall from last year's plants)
After two hours of satisfying, hard work, I toasted Smith, not with wine or champagne, but with a long, refreshing drink from the garden hose. This is a ritual I enact whenever I can after working in the garden. The cool water on my lips, the gushing force of it on my face, the drinking, drinking, drinking until I’m satisfied, all take me back to when I was a small boy. Even the faint hose flavor is sweet to me, a remembrance of happy times outside in the yard when I was young. On many a summer evening, hot and sweaty from playing with friends, I’d quench my thirst at the outdoor hose. In the garden on Sunday I didn’t propose this toast, but, turning on the water and holding the hose high like a wineglass, I could have looked at Smith and said, “Here’s to you, dear garden. You’re off to a good start. Between the two of us, let’s see how many vegetables we can grow this year. Cheers!”
After the work, after the toast!
