Dilettante Gardener

Dilettante gardener

High mowing organic seed packets spread across the table top, the pictures on the packets shine with anticipation. I think I can hear an insistent whisper “Plant me, plant me, plant me” coming from within. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible waits calmly in the willow magazine rack by our “grandfather” chair, edging its spine out above the other magazines and books – it wants to be noticed, as I pass by it chants “Pull me out, pull me out.” Many of our friends have started seeds already, that’s the April activity here. I still may. My intentions are there, but the flesh is weak. So many other dazzling little distractions. Let’s face it, I’m an inveterate dilettante when it comes to gardening. I balk at the planning it entails, the prep work, and I don’t know if I could ever be one to take the temperature of the soil, keep soil journals, ph level charts, graphs, autographed pictures of Wendell Berry nearby. I say this possibly to get my balking reluctance out of my system and then I’ll go and do it. Maybe that’s the purpose of this particular installment of my blog. I like the idea of gardening. I know I’m a hard worker. I can be very committed. And for the past few years we have had a garden – haphazard, random, but weeded, watched over, watered. And I’ve/we’ve absorbed and put into action good advice from our neighbor Royce, namely to mound rather than burrow our rows. This practice is taken to even greater lengths in the Vegetable Gardener’s Bible. So I feel behind – especially when it comes to things like tomatoes and onions, but – but – but

Enough already, here are my aims and goals for the garden this year:

Raised beds 3’ by 15’ up in the garden area. Approximately 18” high, filled with compost and top soil, built with hemlock, tiered in rows to correct the slope of our garden and cut back on weeding. The rows inbetween the raised beds will have newspaper and straw

There may be square raised beds, mini-towers, among the flower garden just outside the kitchen windows where herbs and other things – lettuces perhaps – may thrive and be in proximity to cooking.

Plant an asparagus bed.

Plant a garlic bed in the fall.

Cover our replanted blueberry bushes with netting.

Get tomatoes and onions in planting trays and pots inside before the end of April.

Plant a whole bunch of thyme on our “bad soil” bank

That’s good. That's a starter.

Okay, some quick embarrassing admissions: Last year we had an excellent green bean crop, but I neglected to pick them, most of them. They dried on the vine. I didn’t think they’d be so bountiful. Silly, silly.

As an experiment, we added very little fertilizer/compost to our garden last year and the yield was pure. Sugar snap peas and pumpkins thrived, as well as some parsnips and carrots and radishes – and those beans I let dry to a crisp – but other than that, no go.

Alright, I'm purging my system. I'm up for a fun challenge. I'm in it for the whole ride.

April

Vermont’s version of Spring calls for patience. It’s part of the whole pattern here. Not to be rushed, all part of the package, it will happen when it happens. Mud season has passed. Sure, there are plenty of potholes and chuck holes (it is “holy week” after all) and there are long washboarded stretches of road that send your teeth to rattling no matter how solid your shocks are. But the deep ruts that gave the Grand Canyon a run for its money have been graded and filled and “smoothed.” There are dandruff patches of snow still hidden under the firs and spruce on the hills and the ice has a tenuously slushy foothold on the pond, to the consternation of the Canada Geese who are itching to lay some eggs. However, this too shall pass, this too is passing as I write. I can’t tell you how grand it is for the spirit to see the white of winter disappearing. I don’t care that what’s underneath is brown and beige. The green speaks to me. The green is coming. All the daffodils we planted with our friend Jean last autumn are shark finning up through the soil, all along the stonewall and around the edge of the pond. The crocus, my very favorite harbingers, are up and cupping - purples and yellows and white and lavender – like colorful robin baby mouths.

The smaller trees have all made it through the snow without any girdling. I surrounded them with hardware cloth in October and it worked like a charm. And good thing too, because the yard is gophered through with squiggly vole burrows. Soon the cats will be out which means Sofia's daily offering of yet another squinty vole baby at our feet. The seasonal vying for territory between our geese and the Canadians has begun. Poor Daphne got separated from the other 3 and was being attacked by the Canada pair back in the swamp area. Lots of dive bombing and wing flapping and outraged squawking. I ran back and scared the Canadians off. Daphne was hunched forward in the water, her back to them, a few feathers askew. After a moment of paralysis, she realized that the coast was clear and slowly, carefully made her way through the swamp sedge and cattails to shore. She wandered about the forest, seeking safety and I lent a hand to get her past a patch of old barbed wire before she was reunited with Shmuel and the rest of the gang who gossiped the air, catching each other up on the dramatic goings on. It was interesting watching the threesome while the attack on Daphne was happening. They just stood there, stoic, listening, not riled, not upset at all, just a detached sense of what will be, will be.

After a stunner of a sun-filled day yesterday, we’ve got a 180 degreer this morning. Grey, drippy, periods of pouring, and then a still, white-grey sky, and a landscape that’s doing a November imitation. That’s April, the cruelest month here in Vermont. Cruel? Well, a big tease. An in between month, a barrier, a buffer, work is being done, spring preparation, but the resurrections don’t come fully until May. Until then we suffice with crocus mouths, maybe daffodils, pussy willows are almost gone, the final bits of thaw, ever warmer temperatures, a bit of a soggy slog. It takes faith and patience and an invitation to enjoy the way, whatever the way may be. Let nature be.