Garden in early June.

Posted On June 3, 2009

I am still sore! The other day Jeff and I just went to work all day on the garden, then later I took a long walk with my sister and the babies. I ended up falling asleep on the couch about 20 minutes into our movie. It’s how my days keep panning out lately, I start strong and reach a tired point in the afternoon, then keep pushing through, then pass out at around 10pm whether I want to or not. I’m having fun. I’m learning a lot. I’m feeling alive. Now Vera and I have a cold, which feels bizarre considering that it’s JUNE now. I’m rarely sick, but in June I catch a bug. Figures. A June-bug. I can’t be too sad because it’s been all rainy, so it feels good to snuggle up with a book, a blanket, and some tea. Sometimes that’s all I want to do, and this cold is a perfect excuse. Although I did just spend a bunch of time outside in the dirt…

This past Saturday I went to an all-day WAPF conference. It was great. Much of it I already knew, but it was one of those things where it all kind of clicked once I heard it from an expert and they could put it all together for me. There were also new things that I learned that kind of blew me away. Basically our diets are crap and most people are suffering from it whether they know it or not. We have to fix this, and I’m so so grateful that I’m young and able to feed my family good food, ethically, right from the start. I’ll probably write much more about this in the near future, but for now I’m still absorbing and organizing it, 3 days later.

Here’s the progress that we’ve made so far. Well, actually it’s different now. I went out there this evening and built a square bed by the tip there, where that little plop of compost is at the edge and planted my zucchini. I also built up a teepee trellis thing around it. So far I have my tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, some lettuce, acorn and butternut squash, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage planted. I still have much more to do. I think Jeff and I are slowing down our minds a little, as this half of the garden is really plenty for this year, and we’ll work on expanding it to the other side of the yard this fall and prepping it for next spring. As it is, this is the biggest garden I’ve ever had… I can’t help but crack a smile thinking of all the tomatoes I’m gonna get. I might actually be able to store a good amount of food this year. This is truly becoming one of the great joys of my life. I love gardening!

We planted a dwarf cherry tree on the north side of the yard. We also planted a blackberry bush, and what we thought was a raspberry plant but is actually some kind of rosebush, so this weekend I’m off to hunt for a real raspberry. I think it’s kind of a good thing, though, because I realized that I want to plant Vera’s placenta somewhere, and I’ve planted most of the big stuff for the year. It seems appropriate to plant it under a raspberry bush- I drank so much red raspberry leaf tea when I was pregnant, it just seems right. Next year I plan to plant a blueberry plant and a dwarf plum, and hopefully erect some kind of greenhouse.

Yay garden! I feel like I’m running really late on everything, but I have to push those thoughts to the back of my head and just get stuff in the ground. Each year there have been failures and successes, and this year will be no different. I feel an excitement this year, though, that I didn’t in years past. This year it’s MY garden. It’s my house, my family, my ambition.

I hope you all are gardening away and having fun.