Exhumed and Expired

We pulled up two potato plants, or maybe three, hoping for some larger potatoes than the marble-sized tuber we exhumed several days ago. David wanted to wait, but I am impulsive and impatient (and suggested, "We can just plant more!"), so we did it.

Ignorant in most things potato, we were disgusted to find the sloppy, gooey rot on this plant. (I just shivered writing about the memory.) I was sure our crop was ruined and that the four bugs we had noticed a week ago had demolished our stores.

I instantly thought about those poor Irish people who found every one of their potatoes looking like this. How dreadful.

After some panic, we figured out -- at least enough to satisfy ourselves -- that the rotted potatoes are the ones that we began with, the seed potatoes. The rest of the little buggers seem healthy, albeit small, and we'll cook them up tomorrow. How exciting!

Slowly but surely, more and more of our meals include delicacies from our own garden. It began with lettuce and herbs, but now we have beets and potatoes and peas. We should see some edible cucumbers and squash in the next week or so. I have no clue how long our beans will take (and where the SECOND crop I planted has gone -- are birds stealing them??!) , but garlic will be ready mid-July. The tomatoes -- will the day ever come? -- are blooming (so many different sizes and styles of flowers!), and we are planning a Tomato Harvest Festival in August to celebrate.

In less lively [ha] news, Finley killed a bird yesterday and a chipmunk today. If she would eat them, I wouldn't feel so bad, but then I don't want her to eat them. Eating wildlife is probably how she got worms last year. Ugh.

Anyway, I was on my deck, reading in the sun, and heard a robin shrieking. I glanced up to the left, saw a robin in the branches, and thought, "Poor little thing. He sure is upset." Two seconds later, Poochina runs up the steps with a baby robin and plunks it down right next to me! I am not generally freaked out by such things (except for that pigeon Sawyer brought home through the window in Dorchester), but I absolutely lost it. Maybe it was because I didn't have many clothes on or because I was prone on the lounge chair, both situations providing more skin area that Finley could touch with the dead thing.

I screamed and David ran out and Finley ran in and then Sawyer ran out and then in again. Finley left the scene so quickly, she must've forgotten her proud prize. When David went outside to document the scene, the cats returned and inspected the creature.

I imagine the chipmunks and the birds in our yard talking amongst themselves about this Cat Plague of 2007, when they lost quite a few of their number. I hope this baby's mama doesn't have a long memory.

I hope the coyotes out back aren't making their plans on the cats of 2007.

--Camille

Catching Up

Today is David's last day of school, a full eight days after mine, and he is beat. I remember being in his place two weeks ago, when I couldn't muster up excitement that the year was nearly over. I was swamped with 87 final exams and 50-something Huck Finn papers, so the tunnel was long and dark.

Exhausted, I left my classroom a wreck and returned just yesterday to start cleaning it. In the afternoon, I sunbathed on the back porch and read Finn, a new book by Jon Clinch that is a sort of prequel to Twain's classic. (It's deliciously sinister, by the way.)

Ahhhhh...finally, I truly feel On Vacation, my visit to school notwithstanding.

The garden is gloriously in bloom, and David has been diligent about upkeep and documenting it (by photos, not by blogging, obviously). Our Team Bernstein concept was shipwrecked for awhile when I was in my first trimester, scarfing down ginger ale and saltines and acting like a zombie. David was left to make all five raised beds, fill most of them himself, and rototill the soil until it was was sweet and smooth. I did a lot of the planning and planting, but he definitely played first string this year.

We worried that the "organic" compost we bought from a colorful and loquacious character in Franklin was more like mulch -- huge pieces of bark and wood -- but it seems to be doing well, especially after the addition of some good humus, compost, and fertilizer, then mixed together with the de-rocked original soil. We haven't tested the soil, and we did little to vary it for different vegetables (except for the potatoes' spot, to which we added sand). (Those purple flowers are from the purple potato plants.)

My niece Emma asked what other vegetables we grew (I'd sent her a photo of our first potato -- a marble-sized tuber), so I made a list:

garlic

eggplant

zucchini

yellow squash

acorn squash

butternut squash

15 types of tomatoes (34 plants in all)

3 types of potatoes

4 types of beans

peas

onions

8 types of lettuce

parsnips

carrots

swiss chard

celery

beets

paprika peppers

blueberries

catnip
herbs (basil [four types], oregano, marjoram, chives, cilantro, dill, lavender, rosemary,

chamomile, tarragon, parsley, and thyme)

The catnip took some strategizing, because last year, Sawyer and Finley (and several neighborhood cats) lounged all over the human herbs as they munched on their special treat. This time, we got smart, planting two catnip varieties away from the other plants, and spaced about a foot from each other. At the rate Sawyer is currently catnipping, it's a good thing: one plant can recover a few leaves while the other gets devoured. In a seed mix-up, I planted butterfly weed and catnip together and planted them both in the herb bed. The private stash is now blossoming, free from feline marauders, and I hope Sawyer doesn't notice. When he eats down his stores, we'll transplant the secret plants.

David says his favorite garden chore is collecting suckers from tomato plants, and he performs this task every day after school. Hands smelling of tomato leaves (there's nothing like that scent!), he is pleased to control the wayward growth of our favorite crop. It really has made a difference, I think, in the quality and size of our plants. They are the largest and strongest we've had to date, now that their energy is focused on producing a central stem and fruit. The tomatoes have varying lengths of time they need to produce a harvest (the shortest is 68 days, I think, and the longest almost 90!), but we already have a good many little green tomatoes and tons of flowers).

Here is a series of shots, taken approximately one week apart, of the same bed of tomato plants (June 7, 14, and 20th, respectively):

Embarrassing Lapse

If I wait around until I have a good chunk of time to post something worth the wait of a now month-and-a-half of silence, I'll never post.

We have not abandoned the garden. In fact, David has been tremendously busy transforming our backyard into an oasis (and a farm, practically). I have been on the couch, eating saltines and working hard transforming genetic material into a baby. (I am now 13 weeks. I am now feeling human again. The baby is now looking human.)

We did plant most everything. This weekend will be the last push, with melons and pumpkins and winter squash (and replanting the pole beans which were eaten, we think, by the birds we enticed to our house all winter). I need to get to school and give a final exam, so I can't list the myriad vegetables and herbs that are now growing, but I will (I will!) in a later post.

Until then (which can't be much longer, as I have only THREE DAYS OF SCHOOL LEFT!), here are some wonderful shots David took. I love the one of Sawyer devouring his second patch of catnip under the watchful eye of a dragonfly.

--Camille

Shades of Spring

We returned from gorgeous Kentucky (blushing spring girl) to our own yard, which had magically transformed itself from a sad grey landscape into this! Welcome, flowers!

Unmovable Objects

When I was in the fifth grade, I learned about the Europeans of the 16th century slogging their way across the Atlantic to settle in the New World. My New England pride made me question why anyone would have settled anywhere but here. The fact that biting winters and less than ideal farming conditions existed could not sway my sympathies.

Now I get it.

As part of the raised bed installation process I have roto-tilled the earth upon which the vegetables will be placed. The idea is to give the plantings as much loose, easy soil to burrow down into as possible. The first three raised beds went into the ground relatively smoothly. The fourth has been a struggle. I have encountered hundreds of pounds of debris below the surface of the earth. I say "debris," because it hasn't just been rock that I have lifted out of the ground. In these thirty-two square feet I have uncovered cement, concrete, and even rusted piping. It makes me think that at least a small part of the hill on which our house sits was filled in by men with machines.

The process for removing the debris is the same every time. If the rototiller hits a rock, it bucks. If the rototiller can, it will grab the rock in its tines and chuck it to the side. If the rototiller cannot discard the rock, it will continue to buck. That's when I will turn the rototiller off and set it to the side. I will then prod the soil with my shovel, feeling for the edge of the rock, then stomp the shovel's head as far down into the ground as my weight will compel it. After rocking back and forth I can usually pry the rock loose and remove it with my hands. But not always.

A couple of days ago I came across a rock that I just couldn't move. I dug and I poked and I prodded with the shovel for nearly twenty minutes until I'd finally cleared the soil from around the rocks edges. The rock (pictured left) was huge. I tried lifting it, rocking it, prying it, and smashing it with the side of my shovel, but the rock refused to budge.

The rock now lives in harmony beneath our fourth raised bed. Amen.

Special Appearance

Finley never appears on our blog, because she is so hard to photograph. Sawyer is more thoughtful; she is more interactive. She never sits still long enough for a portrait. She's (half-)sleeping here, prime-time for rolling around and cudling her substantial pooch.

The Ever Expanding, Perfectly Contained Garden

And the parade of raised beds continues.

I spent another two hours outside on Saturday with our fourth raised bed, and the work still isn't done. Two more hours of hammering and drilling and roto-tilling and shoveling and wheelbarrowing. Phew. I've calculated that from start to finish each raised bed takes approximately 10-12 man hours. Considering that I work full time, that the mess inside the house is deteriorating, that I'm applying for jobs in eighteen different school districts, and that the weather's been nasty it's been tough to squeeze in all those gardening hours.

Fortunately, this is the type of work that I thrive on. It's not quite mindless, but it does allow for me to step into a well-worn grove and to stay there for a while. My thoughts can wander about, play in the dirt, or enjoy a picnic lunch, thoroughly free from my meddling. Building these raised beds has provided my brain with the perfect opportunity to take a break from itself, to expand and contract in any way that it pleases.

Not to mention, the garden is progressing, and there is beauty in its order. I have loved (LOVED) our garden the past two years, with its wild, sprawling energy, but what's emerging from this new space on Lincoln Street is equally vivacious...yet perfectly controlled. Ahhhhhhh. As wide as Camille's fancy-free aspirations and the vegetables' mid-summer exuberance might be there will be order in the garden. Sweet, sweet order in the garden.

Onwards raised beds!

Case in Point

It hailed, sleeted, snowed, and then rained today.

Sorry, flowers. I heard your tiny pink voices shriek.

-- Camille

A Study in Green

I've been terribly negligent in posting, which suggests we haven't been working in the garden. Then, I harangue David about posting more, and I slack off. What a hypocrit.

We have been working, and hard (especially David the Strong Wielder of Power Tools, and non-hypocrit), and spring is officially here. Well..."spring" in the Northeast. Spring in the South is a sublime experience; here it's fraught with anxiety. In Kentucky, the flowers are free to emerge steadily and breathlessly, stretching their stems and leaves, seeming to hum in a chorus of tiny sweet pink voices. Here, an occasional warm stretch will coax the daffodils and crocus from their grey beds -- and then suddenly a freak nor'easter will punish them for impertinence. They endure the rest of the season hunched nervously in the soil, never sure if they can bloom just yet.

The three-season porch has been an excellent home for our seedlings. Even though it's uninsulated (and the wind seeps in through the floor), the morning sun is brilliant through the wraparound windows and the seedlings are quite cozy on their table with a portable heater underneath. (Don't worry, Mom, it's a safety model.)

I'm continually delighted by the variety of shapes and colors of the seedlings, from spiky salvia to plump tom thumb lettuce to baby coleus with mini multi-variegated leaves. The shades of green defy nomenclature.

Ah...a miniature Southern Spring on our porch.

-- Camille

This Post Brought to You by Sawyer and His Big Teeth on a Fine Spring Day When He Can Finally Go Outside and Enjoy Himself as a Cat Should

Into the Ground

Well, that was not as easy as we'd supposed. Today was the day that Camille and I sunk our first raised bed into the sandy backyard...and filled it with compost. So much compost. So much heavy compost, the majority of which will rest unused by the side of our driveway, and will one day come to be known as "Compost Hill" or "Mt. Compost" or "That Place Where Camille Buried Her First Husband (and Smiled More Than She Should Have Even Though the Sun Was Intermittently Yet Directly in Her Eyes."

Ah, but before the compost went into the raised bed, the raised bed was treated with thirty-two feet of polymer lining. One of the men at the discount lumber yard suggested the idea, predicting that the sides of the raised beds would rot considerably slower if they weren't directly in contact with the dirt. An excellent idea. Better still, Camille and I had a landmark moment: we were able to work together hammering the lining to the inside of the raised bed without (me) giving helpful suggestions on the best way to hammer a nail into wood or (Camille) rushing through the job, quality be damned. Hurray for us.

Once the lining was in, we dug four post-holes in the dirt, and sunk the bed. Then came the compost, four heaping wheelbarrows full. This was around the time when we realized that Mt. Compost (delivered in two hydraulic truck-fulls over the weekend) would become a permanent fixture. It's not that we won't be able to find a use for so much compost, it's that we'll never be able to move it. We just don't have the will.

The first raised bed is in the ground though, and there's something to be said for a good, hard day of work. Only five more to go.









(Note: the photo at the top of this entry of a potential murder/cover-up is actually a photo of the four heaping wheelbarrows full of compost that were used in the raised bed, not Mt. Compost. Mt. Compost is considerably larger, and set twenty-five body-lengths to the right)

--David

It's Official!

"Spring is here!" declared the peas.

Final Resting Place

Farming is manly. Gardening is less so. It is therefore essential that I take every opportunity to prove my worth to Camille as Chief Man on Lincoln Street. Enter the raised beds.

We'd been thinking about building raised beds for over a year, but until two weeks ago, I didn't even own a drill. So when Camille handed me the blueprints for the raised beds of her dreams, I was a little intimidated. Ah, but there's nothing that a trip to the lumber yard won't cure. There's something about a warehouse full of freshly cut nature to get you in the right frame of mind.

(I am ignoring the part where I paid for the wood and nearly fell over--as it turned out, cedar is so expensive that we will only be building one raised cedar bed this year. The rest will be constructed out of less durable wood (or maybe even brick). My God, lumber's expensive.)

Back at the house, I set immediately to work at the foot of our driveway amidst the steadily melting snow. I was somewhat nervous at first, because the lumber was so expensive, but after the first few screws were firmly through the planks my confidence grew. And really, building a raised bed isn't so tough--it's just a big box anchored by a couple of stout posts--and in less than two hours...voila! My first raised bed.

Spring is (Almost) Sprung

It's been hard waiting through these couple of weeks of cold weather. We had single digits with lots of wind, one last blast from Old Winter. Maybe "in like a lion, out like a lamb" will hold true this March.

We've begun seedings -- but later than last year. I think we did fine last year with starting beets on 26 Feb, but we were also lucky with weather. I get itchy to start early because I can't stop thinking about how soon we were able to plant in Washington, DC, and in Kentucky. Up here the common wisdom is to wait until after Memorial Day! Too late. I can't wait that long.

I've heard arguments that starting later just means the soil is warmer and everything catches up to early plantings anyway. Maybe. But I want to take a chance. Raised beds will help. Even last year, without raised beds, I think we had vegetables sooner -- and they were stronger -- than other people's. So we split the difference: hedged a little and waited a little and started this weekend.

The old man at Agway (who always gives me advice, sometimes grouchily -- I love him anyway, and I think he likes the questions) said that if we have raised beds and row covers, we can get away with a late April planting! That makes me excited!

I cleared all the bulbs off of the bay window in the dining room, and David hung a light there. Right now all we have planted are beets (golden and chiogga) and broccoli (small miracle and waltham). Next weekend, we will move these seedlings -- plus scores more -- onto the front porch, which will serve as our makeshift greenhouse.

The cats have already taken up camp there, sleeping alternately in the my grandmother's old chair or in a puddle of sunlight on the floor.

In order to get more soil for the beets (without going out for another Agway run), I pulled up some garlic I'd planted in a small pot as an experiment.


They were tiny, probably much like the ones in our garden right now. The straw covering the ones outside hide the shoots that appeared last fall. We aren't sure if it's a good place to have planted the garlic, but this first year is a test garden. Well, the next twenty years will be test gardens!

I am interested in starting a section called a no-dig garden. Here's a link to some info. It sounds economical and fun. Supposedly, no-dig gardens can be built on top of concrete! I hope it works. If so, by mid-summer we will have some rick nutrients to add to the hungry plants.

David needs to do a post and report on his big project: raised beds!

--Camille