A Bumper Crop With Plenty To Share

"Poke had never shared out so many raisins,

because she had never had so many to share."

-- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

Bumper crop of garden-variety Barbies 9-13-14

"The little I have, I share with you;

the little you have, you also share with me.

Together we all have a full share of everything."

-- Israelmore Ayivor

"Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now."

-- Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Give it Away"

I can still remember my grandpa filling my sister's little flowered bicycle basket with tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, then sending her teetering off down the street to sell his overage to the neighbors for a nickel apiece.

He had extra, so why not share?

I like the idea, but not so much the approach.

I'd rather just share, without the middle-man, or the hefty price tag.

Right now I have more tomatoes, peppers and broccoli than I can possibly use, popping up and ripening in my garden every day.

After yesterday's picking I walked over to my neighbor, Vera's, and held out the colander full of peppers and tomatoes like a big, plentiful basket of Halloween candy and let her choose the biggest, prettiest ones.

I've been sending Leo's girlfriend, Mackenna, home with bunches of broccoli. Broccoli is her favorite. She calls it her "go-to" vegetable. Tomatoes too -- her grandma makes tomato sandwiches, like me.

This weekend, I'm cooking a big pile of tomatoes into a third batch of sauce to share with Sam so he can still eat a home-cooked supper when he's away from home. Granted, he's a good cook himself. He keeps texting me pictures of things he makes -- steak au poivre sandwiches, grilled salmon with asparagus, and Greek salad stuffed pitas. It's impressive. But I know damned well that the little shit ain't making his own pasta sauce. I can still do some things that he can't.

Anyway, part of the joy of having my garden is sharing what comes out of it. And not just sharing because I have too much. But sharing because I have any at all.

I even like to share the harvesting duties. Sometimes I wait on purpose to pick stuff until Mackenna is here to help me, because she enjoys it too. And I enjoy her company. (She was also a very helpful assistant in setting up the bumper crop of garden-variety Barbies for today's photo).

My garden will be winding down soon. But while it keeps on producing an abundance of goodness, I'll keep on giving it away.

Because the only thing sweeter than finding good things, is sharing all the good things that I find.

Beneficial Pests

"Hey farmer, farmer

Put away that DDT now

Give me spots on my apples

But leave me the birds and the bees, please."

-- Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi"

Spider and web in an apple tree 8-16-14

"Fortunately, every pest has a predator,

and we can use that natural food chain to our advantage."

-- Debbie Hadley, 

"How to Attract Beneficial Insects 

to Control Garden Pests," About.com

"Spiders -- so needed and yet so misunderstood."

-- Donna Lynn Hope, Willow

I practice all natural, organic pest control in my garden.

I hand-pull the weeds. 

I rely on a small fence to keep out the rabbits.

I use natural remedies -- like milk to combat the weird fungus on my zucchini leaves -- whenever I can.

I let the bees and butterflies pollinate and do whatever else bees and butterflies do.

When the baby praying Mantises hatched in the shrubbery out front, I hand-delivered five of them to the garden and rested them on my tomato plants so they could grow up strong and fat eating the aphids and broccoli bugs.

I let Mother Nature handle the rest of the insects.

She's doing a good job. The garden plants are thriving and so far nothing is nibbling at them before we get the chance.

Yesterday I found this spider hanging out on her web in the branches of one of my apple trees. 

I don't love spiders, in my house anyway. But I have no problem at all with them loitering in my garden or in "Two Tree Orchard" (i.e. my tiny two dwarf apple trees).

After I checked out the spider, I checked on the apples. They looked pretty good. Red. Ripening. Plentiful.

A few apples had a few spots, but I'm not worried about it. I can cut those out with a paring knife.  

No pests is a good thing, whether I'm making tomato sandwiches, zucchini bread, basil pesto or homemade applesauce.

That's why Mother Nature heads up my garden staff.

She works hard.

I try not to be a pest.

My Garden Is In

"We spend our lives hurrying away from the real,

as though it were deadly to us,

'It must be up there somewhere on the horizon,' we think.

And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet."

-- William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

Pepper plant 5-19-14

"Seeds have the power to preserve species, 

to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity,

to counter economic monopoly 

and to check the advance of conformity

on all its many fronts."

-- Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

Cauliflower plant 5-19-14

"Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes."

-- Unknown

My little vegetable garden is finally planted.

For the moment, it looks all neat and tidy and organized standing at attention in orderly, labeled rows in the dark, fertile, weed-free soil.

I know it's just a matter of time before the zucchini are sprawling lasciviously all over the cauliflower and I won't be able to tell where the tomatoes end and the peppers begin. Soon, weeds will sprout up and try to wreck all my hard work and I'll be back out there, ripping them out by the roots. 

But for now, everyone is behaving.

I love looking at my garden. Several times a day I find myself at the back patio door staring out at how promising and hopeful it looks. It makes me feel good. And also a little bad ass.

Pretty soon, I'll have all the free, fresh veggies I can eat. And stocking the freezer with homemade tomato sauce made with tomatoes and peppers and basil that I grew myself may sound super domestic and homey and old-timey. But it's not.

It's non-conformist. It's insurrection. It's revolution.

I feel like a little rebel every time I pick a zucchini, or a head of broccoli, and bring those little fuckers straight into the kitchen and cook that delicious, fresh shit up for my family. It's like a "fuck you" to the overpriced grocery store chains and retailers and pollution-belching trucks and canned vegetable makers. 

Fresh veggies are good for you.

Be a bad ass.

Grow some.

Cultivating My Soil

"We have the power to craft our growth 

the way a landscaper crafts a majestic garden,

or we can leave it to chance, 

allowing it to unfold wild as the weeds 

that spread across a vacant lot."

-- Scott Edmund Miller

Garden soil before and after 4-7-14

"In nature we never see anything isolated,
but everything in connection with something else
which is before it, beside it, under it and over it."

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"We must cultivate our own garden."

-- Voltaire

I have a ragged little patch of ground that I call a garden, which I tend to in the Spring and Summertime. And in spite of my horticultural shortcomings, the soil still manages somehow to squeeze up some pretty delicious vegetables all season long.

I got the process started yesterday by raking up the scruffy debris and getting down to the soft, fragrant dirt underneath. It was a sunny, brisk, Sunday afternoon. The Cleveland Indians were on the radio. The air smelled fresh and clean and the work limbered up my Winter-stiffened back and shoulders.

The atmosphere made me more than a little nostalgic for my Dad. He and I spent countless Sundays just like this, working together in the yard, listening to the Detroit Tigers. It made me miss him. But I could also feel him in the chill breeze against my face.

It was sweet and lovely.

Garden 4-7-14

By the time I finished, my hands (and jacket) were good and dirty. My jeans had slid progressively further and further off my hips until they sagged halfway down my ass, just like my Dad's always did. My boots were caked with damp soil and so were my fingernails.

It's not a huge garden -- just big enough for me to handle without being overwhelmed. It doesn't look like much. It's pretty ordinary -- a rectangular box of landscape timbers filled with topsoil surrounded by a warped wire fence.

It was originally my son, Sam's. He wanted a garden and plants for his birthday one year, and so we all made it together and he took care of it for several growing seasons until the demands of school and work and  the busy life of being a young man pulled him away. He bequeathed it to me and I promised to tend it with care.

Maybe that's what makes it so special. Maybe by taking care of Sam's garden I still feel a little bit like I am taking care of Sam -- a seriously independent, self-sufficient, highly capable 19-year-old who doesn't seem to need me much for anything anymore.

I can do this for him. He needs me to do this for him. Without me, Sam's garden would disappear into an unwieldy tangle of overgrowth, get swallowed up by briers and brambles and leaves and weeds gone wild.

I admit, I'm not the best gardener in the world.

My thumb is not so much green as it is a multi-colored, random-patterned tie-dyed swirl. But as long as I feed and water stuff, it seems to grow. Healthy stuff. Good stuff.

So I guess I'm gardener enough.

Lord knows I am not the best mother in the world, either.

My parenting skills are pretty colorful and random, too. But in spite of my parental shortcomings, as long as I feed and water them, my boys seem to grow. Healthy boys. Good boys.

So I guess I'm mother enough.

In a few months my garden will be choked with an over-abundance of zucchini and tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, all fighting each other in the confines of the overcrowded space for room to spread out. Everything will grow until it's too big to stay and I'll have to harvest it for it's final destiny -- sauce, or soup, or salad.

Dads and boys do the same. They stay until they're called away to something beyond the confines of where they came from, until they chafe against the boundaries and it's time to move on. It's the daughter's and the mother's role to not only let them go, but to help them go, before they spoil on the vine.