Week Two

Thanks to some helpful readers, we've identified the Mystery Bush (actually, bushes plural, since there are two in the yard) as a Pussy Willow. Most of the blossoms have fallen off at this point, but the leaves were catching the setting sun this evening as I sat on the back porch with Dante.

I haven't got much in terms of a story to tell this week, so I'll pretty much just stick with showing some photos.

I did want to mention an article I read in The New York Times by Michael Pollen called "Why Bother?" The article addresses climate change and whether or not it's even worth trying to make small scale changes in our day-to-day lives. In the end, Pollen suggests that the best thing we can each do, the thing that will have the most impact -- even more than swapping lightbulbs and driving a hybrid car -- is to start a garden of our own. It's a pretty interesting article, actually. Pollen has a number of books in print, several looking at food and gardening. I may have to check them out.

Here's a quick excerpt from the article:

"A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. ... This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it."

So, I guess we're doing our part to help the climate, by trying to grow stuff to make our own pickles, pesto, and pasta sauce. Who knew?

On to the pictures ...

The garden is pretty bare still, since it's still too early to plant most vegetables (and besides, the seedlings aren't available yet), but it still needs weeding and raking. In this photo above you can see the long rows on onions and shallots that go from the bottom left corner to the middle-right side. Above those, the beets and cilantro.

It rained all day yesterday and half of today, so the beets are covered in dirt and muck. They do look like they're growing though, which is exciting.

The chives have blossoms on them already. Like I said last year, supposedly you can use these flowers, once they open, in salads. I've never tried it though. Maybe this year ...

The cilantro's growing, so there's probably some salsa and guacamole in our future.

Can anyone clear up for me whether this is mint, returned for another year, or actually just a weed?

Outside the Garden, Tangent One: Down in the opposite corner of the yard, the blueberry bushes have quite a lot of flowers on them.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Two: On the banking along the garden, the fiddlehead ferns have popped up. These, too, are supposed to be tasty. I think you boil or steam the heads, but I'd have to ask my grandfather for more specifics. He loves them.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Three: These blue flowers have popped up in the yard, which are an indication that it's pretty much time to start mowing. That ought to be a blast.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Four: The flowers on the pear tree in the front yard (which might be the back yard, depending on how you look at things) are in various states of openness.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Five: The lilacs, which run all along the borders of the property, are getting ready to open up.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Six: The hostas on the banking went crazy this week.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Seven: The forsythia are all open.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Eight: The bleeding heart that is tucked in along the house, behind the pussy willow, is opening up.

Garden Blog, Year Three: The Beginning

I wasn't going to have a garden this year.

Last year's efforts had gone pretty well, up to a point, before the garden grew completely out of control and we got discouraged and overwhelmed. The most important lesson learned was: "Don't try to do more than you can handle."

After the first year of the garden, we felt like we wanted to expand, adding a wider variety of plants and seeing what we could accomplish in our second go-round. The way it turned out, though, is that we got busier and busier as summer marched on and the garden was neglected more and more, especially by me. I blame it on the rain early in the summer throwing off the balance of the softball season and causing games to be rescheduled into the second half, just about exactly the same time as vegetable plants were needing attention. Towards the end of the season, it seemed like we were having games just about every day. With work, then softball, and band practices on the off nights, add the garden to the mix and it was too much for me to handle.

Once mid-July hit, I wasn't spending any time in the garden at all and the more it got overgrown the less I wanted to go out and deal with it. Cucumbers rotted on the plants, or if they got picked they were thrown in a bag in the fridge, until they were eventually thrown out. Tomatoes swelled, cracked, and fell to the ground. Pea plants toppled over. It made me sad and frustrated.

As as result, I wasn't going to have a garden this year.

And then, the weather turned glorious. We worked outside all of this past weekend, tidying up the property -- raking, trimming bushes, rebuilding a gate, moving dirt around. The garden was like the elephant in the yard. It was there, waiting to be tilled and the family tiller was available. On a drive through Hadley, the Garden Center's parking lot was packed with cars. We had to stop and just "see what they have." And what they had were seedlings.

I wasn't going to have a garden this year, but the weekend got the better of me. After much hesitation, we decided to try a significantly scaled down attempt, at least in terms of variety.

Onions, cucumbers, a couple tomato plants, some squash, and a few herbs. That's it.

When I started tilling the soil and saw how rich and healthy it was looking, I admit: I got excited again. So, now it's year three of the garden (and the garden blog) and we're at it again. Though, hopefully, on a much more controllable scale.


The plants we picked out at the Hadley Garden Center were red onion, shallots, cilantro and beets. We also found in the garden a parsley and mint that came back on their own and the chives we planted two years ago are back for more. Also, the garlic I planted last year is growing green, but I dug a couple up to check on them and they were all mushy. So, I think they'll have to go.

Last year, in addition to our own garden we also had a membership at a local farm share. While we were decidedly underwhelmed by the whole experience we did learn that we really love beets. So, when we saw that the Garden Center had seedlings we snatched up a tray. We didn't really know how to plant them, but the Victory Garden book that I own suggested to plant the beet seedlings 3" apart in double rows 6" apart. So we made two sets of double rows and pulled apart all of the seedlings carefully and got them in the ground. They look pretty traumatized, but we bought a new sprinkler ($15.99 at Wal-Mart) to replace the two-year older sprinkler that broke ($7.88 at Wal-Mart) and hopefully they'll perk up with a few days of good watering.

Here's the parsley that came up on it's own, left over from last year.

The onions (shown here) and shallots also look a little bit overwhelmed by their planting. I'm pretty confident that they'll get over it before too long, though. Last year's onions were Walla Walla, a yellow onion. This year we've gone with Red Onion, just to see what happens.

Outside the Garden, Tangent One: Three peony plants are growing quickly. Here's how one of them looked last year: Peony 2007.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Two: I have no idea what this bush is, but it's rapidly growing these crazy, hairy buds and probably will do something even more dramatic before too long.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Three: The lilacs are budding nicely. They're going to look really nice, but after they bloom we need to do some serious cut-back to get rid of all of the old, dead and thick growth and encourage the plants to send up a bunch of new shoots for next year.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Four: The Hostas on the Hill. They'll be opening up before long.

Outside the Garden, Tangent Four: And finally, the lone daffodil in the yard. Last year, he was also the first one to show his colors, although about a week later: Lonely Daffodil 2007.

I'm going to try to stay on top of things better this year, but it's going to be difficult.I know I have a tendency to start things that I never quite finish or follow-through on.

And besides, we have our first softball practices this coming weekend.