ves's Journal

Corn is up and growing. So are the weeds. The rototilled bed is considerably weedier than the double-dug bed, but corn also seems to be growing better overall. I need to get a tape measure and actually count and measure individual plants to quantify this…maybe tomorrow. In the meantime…I’m sure you are waiting with bated breath…here’s a photo of both beds side by side. You can go to the individual plantings (4 in all, 2 species, 2 beds) for closer photos of each…just in case you were waiting.

I had a lot of fun tonight with my camera in the garden. I can’t really judge the results….I admit I can’t even really frame shots with this camera….I point it in the right direction, hold it as still as I can, zoom in and out up to 5x, and push the button. The camera always moves when I push the button, though I’m working on it. I try to brace a wrist or hand or elbow, but that’s hard to to when you are trying to frame a shot at knee level.

For the peas, I dragged my plywood planting board over to the path next to them and got right down on the ground at their level.

I had a lot of fun tonight with my camera in the garden. I can’t really judge the results….I admit I can’t even really frame shots with this camera….I point it in the right direction, hold it as still as I can, zoom in and out up to 5x, and push the button. The camera always moves when I push the button, though I’m working on it. I try to brace a wrist or hand or elbow, but that’s hard to to when you are trying to frame a shot at knee level.

For the peas, I dragged my plywood planting board over to the path next to them and got right down on the ground at their level.

All the tomatoes are flowering and the Black Krim is starting to set fruit. This little fruit is actually about as big as my thumbnail.

This is probably the peak of my harvest from these brave little plants, though I do hope to get more….there are still blossoms, and a few little pods I didn’t pick.

I took these home, weighed, microwaved, added a dab of butter and a pinch of salt. I sat down and ate every single one of them.

They were really, really wonderful.

I’m excited — the first food out of this garden (except for a few nibbles off of volunteer mustard plants and volunteer radishes).

5 peas, 0.5 oz. I ate two raw and cooked the other three for 30 seconds in the microwave. Very sweet. DS turned them down.

His loss.

The corn is coming up. We’ve had warm weather….corn that was underground yesterday is 2 or 3 inches tall today. In a few days I’ll get out a ruler and make some formal comparisons between the two beds. I think it’s too early to see much of a difference. But most of it is coming up.

Hooray! It’s corn!

I’m excited. Can you tell? I keep asking my DS15 if he wants to go look at my corn and he keeps saying no, but so far he’s being polite about it.

I’ve been reading and dreaming about having a homestead-sized garden for years. During the few years that I lived in the country, I was working 60 hour weeks for a lab during the peak garden months (and usually laid off for a few weeks in February…February, in theory, is the time to plant peas, but my heavy clay soil there was thoroughly unworkable). I tried a garden, but mostly just came home and collapsed…when I wasn’t collapsed I had a toddler to take care of. And after that I was a single mom with a kindergartner to take care of (still with the 60 hour weeks).

This year I’ve been juggling busy days and lazy days and the weather was so cold and wet that nothing I got into the ground grew. So I only had one bed planted, out of the 10 beds I aimed to have (with 2 of them in a green manure crop for sustainability).

A fellow gardener in the community garden rototilled my plot for me (after it was plowed in May) and that gave me a boot to get moving again. It’s not too late for a lot of the crops I want (at least, not if we have a nice long warm fall).

So one day last week I was standing and looking at two more garden beds that were all ready to have seed put in them. (These are the beds that are now described in my experimental garden).

They were so beautiful that I thought they looked just like the illustrations in John Jeavon’s “How to grow more vegetables….” which has been THE inspirational book on my shelf for all these years of dreaming.

So I got all choked up over how beautiful they were and how much they looked like that dream….

and then I thought….

“It’s so beautiful I don’t deserve it.”

Can you believe that? I DON’T DESERVE IT? I’m not worthy of a garden? What, I don’t deserve anything good?

This is something I’ve wrestled with in the past, but I hadn’t realized how strong – and deeply buried – the feeling was – I think it has been undermining and sabotaging big chunks of my life. All those half-finished projects, all those un-pursued dreams. So now I can deal with it.

Just like a pernicious weed. Whack! Whack! Whack! Take that! I’m digging out every root.

Been talking to God a lot on this subject this week. He’s on my side, not on the Weed’s.

Oh, dear. I started talking to my corn as I planted it….the little sprouted seeds looked so alive!

Now I’m encouraging it along as it comes up!

“What a great day to sprout! Here’s some water for your roots — stretch those leaves up into the sunshine….” We’re having a couple of really hot days in the 90s.

You think that’s not hot? I’m not kidding, a few years ago I was in a Dairy Queen here in Longview. People were crowding in, mopping their brows, complaining about the heat, ordering all kinds of ice creams and shakes. At the bank sign across the street, the big digital thermometer read 69 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit, folks). So at 95 I start detecting the early signs of heat exhaustion in myself, and I take cool showers and go to the movies for the air conditioning.

But it is coming up — the Roy’s Calais in my Hope Garden and the Painted Mountain and Oaxacan Green in my Experimental Garden (all of 3 feet away).

No sign of the replanted Chapalote corn coming up yet, but I know now that it is slow….at least in our climate.

Warm weather. Corn that was underground yesterday is 2 inches tall today! Warm weather in 90s yeserday and today. Soaking both beds daily.