Having said all that last night, I think it is only fair to add that there is another lesson I learned from yesterday's events: If you end up forcing yourself to do something you've come to hate simply because you think you "ought" to be doing it, you at least owe it to yourself to do some reconsidering.
My current vegetable beds total approximately 130 sq feet. I decided after last year that what I really wanted was to switch to raised beds. But, once I started looking at options and calculating costs only to discover it would cost a minimum of $1000 and would create various other difficulties, I gave up on the idea. When the ground was ready this spring, I reluctantly took up my fork and tried to think positive as I began my yearly dirt work. In the past month I've completed prepping about 90 sq ft, which means I still have about 1/3 left to prep, if I'm going to finish it all. With our short growing season, I need to get everything started outside within the next two weeks. I can only do this kind of work on the weekends, and the weather isn't cooperating, nor is my body, which likes to save up colds and other ailments and hit me with them on my precious days off. It's time to give a little thought to alternatives.
By rearranging where I was going to put things (and still maintaining my mini-crop rotation needs) I can get by with only prepping about 10 more sq ft as long as I'm willing to try carrots in containers. Yes, as much as I prefer ground planting to container growing, there are definite benefits to container planting. Both varieties of carrots I want to plant are miniature varieties, so I don't need super-deep containers. Carrots like very loose soil, and with containers I don't have to worry about roots or rocks. I already have two containers that should be deep enough for these carrots, so we're not looking at a major investment in materials. I shouldn't have to worry about weeds interfering with their growth. This also means that part of the garden gets a break this year, although I might try to throw some sort of annual cover crop on to see if I can build the soil up that way while I'm not using it. And most of all, it means I can relax a little and replace my anxiety and dread with excitement over trying something new and less labor-intensive.
Because it's not like I don't have enough left to do without the bed prepping. I still have to transplant most of my indoor seed starts: 32 agastaches, 12 gomphrena, about 20 basils, one lonely pansy, a couple dozen zinnias and cosmos, plus tomatoes, peppers, and cukes. Plus start more cukes directly outside as well as both bush and pole beans. Plus make the pole bean teepee. PLUS plant 18 more groundcover plants I ordered to help fill in the half-dead front slope. Plus the hydrangea coming next month. And all of that planting is on top of the yard and maintenance work that becomes more important as summer moves in. I've got to get as much done as I can before the heat starts to be a problem and my interest in working outside all but disappears.
Yes, all things considered, I think it is all for the best to try carrots in containers this year.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Vegetable Gardening
After today, I need to remind myself why I plant vegetables. I'm about this close to giving up on prepping the beds.
Much of the work I have to do in the spring involves prepping the vegetable beds, and that basically involves hand “tilling” the ground with a gardening fork. It’s hard, dirty, strenuous work, and it takes hours and hours and hours and hours. I usually end up with dirt embedded in my fingernails despite wearing gloves and often manage to get dirt (or worse) in my teeth. Even after doing this for the past two years, I'm still having to remove dozens upon dozens of rocks of all sizes; and worst of all, I have to try to remove never-ending dense networks of roots --with marginal success. Considering that a vegetable garden does not produce meat, brownies, doughnuts, or iced coffee, I’m not 100% sure why I do it at all. But, I think it has something to do with a Better Self struggling inside me to gain dominance. In recent years I have felt like this is too often a losing battle, but she/we/I occasionally win. And growing veggies is one of those times.
Organic gardening, especially vegetable gardening without the use of powered tools, is truly honest work. Prepping those vegetable beds by hand offers the virtues of all practical manual labor. It requires strength, stamina, and persistence. It also builds muscles, burns calories, and doesn't require the use of any petrochemicals. The extra health benefits are especially important for me. I usually find that working outside alleviates bouts of both depression and sinus problems (both of which are chronic problems for me). Today is a perfect example. I had been feeling sluggish and sickly almost all day, and I had reached a point where all I wanted to do was lay down. But my frustration and concern over the increasingly desperate need to work the beds suddenly peaked and I realized I was on my way outside instead of going to bed. I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do because I was angry and resentful that I "had" to do it --which is something about me I don't claim to truly understand (or control). I am angry in some form a great deal of the time, but if I can somehow trick myself into using that energy to do something productive, I can accomplish worthwhile things. In this case, not doing it would mean more or less giving up on my vegetable gardening, and that was admitting defeat. That would be letting my lazy, useless inner Princess take over. It would be a couple of kicks in the stomach to my Better Self. So instead, actually fighting back tears because I dread "tilling" that much, I went out and did it anyway.
And now I feel better than I think I have all weekend. My head is clearer, breathing-wise and cognitively/emotionally. I feel physically tired but in a good way. I hurt one finger enough to make me dizzy for a minute and then nauseous like I get when I have almost passed out. I was so frustrated with the !$$%#$*@ roots I almost screamed and/or broke something more than once. I was still struggling not to cry by the time I got done for the day and came in. But now that I've had a shower, am clean and relaxed, I feel great.
The benefits of hard work in the preparation phase pretty much come to an end once everything is planted, and then I think what sustains my interest in vegetable gardening is the variety of ways that I experience accomplishment. (The fruits of my labors certainly haven't justified what I go through to get them. Most of my harvests over the past two years have been disappointments. The dragon carrots were spicy, and I like sweet. The patty pan squash were adorable, but tasteless. The lemon cucumbers were interesting, but they were bland and burpy. The onions have been uncooperative. And the list goes on. Tomatoes are my one reliable vegetable friend, and I almost cried with joy last year when I had the first taste of my first Brandywine tomato. But even there I found disappointment, because I only got 2 or 3 Brandywines in the end.) By the end of the growing season, it isn't a delicious and/or healthy harvest that keeps me planning to do it again. It's a combination of: the enjoyment of watching the vegetables emerge and develop, the fact that I was able to produce anything at all through my efforts, and a somehow-resilient hope that I can do better next time.
Because ultimately, real gardening --vegetables or permanent ornamentals-- is about hope and faith. When you plant a seed or put a plant in the ground that is supposed to produce food, you have to believe that you and Mama Nature working together can make something good grow. When you plant a small perennial or a shrub or a tree, you have to believe in the future, because you probably aren't going to see it really come into its own for at least 2 or 3 years. When you plan your garden beds or design your landscape in your mind's eye, you have to believe in the future. And for someone like me --who is overwhelmed with doubts and anxiety about the future of everyone and everything, who too often can only see the world as a lost cause and a cesspool of evils great and small-- every act of hope and faith is a triumph for my Better Self. Gardening is one of the few ways I have, at this point in my life, to redeem my less-than-perfect soul.
Much of the work I have to do in the spring involves prepping the vegetable beds, and that basically involves hand “tilling” the ground with a gardening fork. It’s hard, dirty, strenuous work, and it takes hours and hours and hours and hours. I usually end up with dirt embedded in my fingernails despite wearing gloves and often manage to get dirt (or worse) in my teeth. Even after doing this for the past two years, I'm still having to remove dozens upon dozens of rocks of all sizes; and worst of all, I have to try to remove never-ending dense networks of roots --with marginal success. Considering that a vegetable garden does not produce meat, brownies, doughnuts, or iced coffee, I’m not 100% sure why I do it at all. But, I think it has something to do with a Better Self struggling inside me to gain dominance. In recent years I have felt like this is too often a losing battle, but she/we/I occasionally win. And growing veggies is one of those times.
Organic gardening, especially vegetable gardening without the use of powered tools, is truly honest work. Prepping those vegetable beds by hand offers the virtues of all practical manual labor. It requires strength, stamina, and persistence. It also builds muscles, burns calories, and doesn't require the use of any petrochemicals. The extra health benefits are especially important for me. I usually find that working outside alleviates bouts of both depression and sinus problems (both of which are chronic problems for me). Today is a perfect example. I had been feeling sluggish and sickly almost all day, and I had reached a point where all I wanted to do was lay down. But my frustration and concern over the increasingly desperate need to work the beds suddenly peaked and I realized I was on my way outside instead of going to bed. I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do because I was angry and resentful that I "had" to do it --which is something about me I don't claim to truly understand (or control). I am angry in some form a great deal of the time, but if I can somehow trick myself into using that energy to do something productive, I can accomplish worthwhile things. In this case, not doing it would mean more or less giving up on my vegetable gardening, and that was admitting defeat. That would be letting my lazy, useless inner Princess take over. It would be a couple of kicks in the stomach to my Better Self. So instead, actually fighting back tears because I dread "tilling" that much, I went out and did it anyway.
And now I feel better than I think I have all weekend. My head is clearer, breathing-wise and cognitively/emotionally. I feel physically tired but in a good way. I hurt one finger enough to make me dizzy for a minute and then nauseous like I get when I have almost passed out. I was so frustrated with the !$$%#$*@ roots I almost screamed and/or broke something more than once. I was still struggling not to cry by the time I got done for the day and came in. But now that I've had a shower, am clean and relaxed, I feel great.
The benefits of hard work in the preparation phase pretty much come to an end once everything is planted, and then I think what sustains my interest in vegetable gardening is the variety of ways that I experience accomplishment. (The fruits of my labors certainly haven't justified what I go through to get them. Most of my harvests over the past two years have been disappointments. The dragon carrots were spicy, and I like sweet. The patty pan squash were adorable, but tasteless. The lemon cucumbers were interesting, but they were bland and burpy. The onions have been uncooperative. And the list goes on. Tomatoes are my one reliable vegetable friend, and I almost cried with joy last year when I had the first taste of my first Brandywine tomato. But even there I found disappointment, because I only got 2 or 3 Brandywines in the end.) By the end of the growing season, it isn't a delicious and/or healthy harvest that keeps me planning to do it again. It's a combination of: the enjoyment of watching the vegetables emerge and develop, the fact that I was able to produce anything at all through my efforts, and a somehow-resilient hope that I can do better next time.
Because ultimately, real gardening --vegetables or permanent ornamentals-- is about hope and faith. When you plant a seed or put a plant in the ground that is supposed to produce food, you have to believe that you and Mama Nature working together can make something good grow. When you plant a small perennial or a shrub or a tree, you have to believe in the future, because you probably aren't going to see it really come into its own for at least 2 or 3 years. When you plan your garden beds or design your landscape in your mind's eye, you have to believe in the future. And for someone like me --who is overwhelmed with doubts and anxiety about the future of everyone and everything, who too often can only see the world as a lost cause and a cesspool of evils great and small-- every act of hope and faith is a triumph for my Better Self. Gardening is one of the few ways I have, at this point in my life, to redeem my less-than-perfect soul.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The Impossible
I suppose it would be appropriate to start with an explanation of the name of my new blog. (And my old one, actually, since it's the same as my LiveJournal page.)
NH is a land of heavy traffic, plentiful intersections, and an inadequate number of traffic lights. As a transplant from Illinois, one of the first things I noticed was that trying to turn left at a stop sign onto a frequently-traveled road is often next to impossible. Since you need either infinite patience or the willingness to attempt risky, and usually rude, maneuvers, and since I have neither, I've learned to avoid having to turn left. If I'll go miles out of my way to avoid the interstates, why not a few blocks to avoid watching people do things that will piss me off?
The near-impossibility of left turns relates to a theme underlying multiple issues I hope to work through via writing: How can I deal with challenges that seem impossible? For that matter, how can I get back to even seeing things as "challenges" rather than repeated blows from a cruel Universe? What can I do to start embracing more possibilities? I intend to use this venue for exploring psychological, philosophical, and other -ical subjects I need to think through.
That and spouting off about anything else I feel like writing about. Because ultimately, I just love writing. I've had a need to write since I learned how. I started keeping poetry journals, diaries, and lists of every kind by the time I was probably about six. It was never really about being read by other people; it was a relationship between me and words and between me and thoughts. Of course, I do like being heard and/or read; but, ultimately it's about having an overflow of brain activity paired with an addiction to language.
NH is a land of heavy traffic, plentiful intersections, and an inadequate number of traffic lights. As a transplant from Illinois, one of the first things I noticed was that trying to turn left at a stop sign onto a frequently-traveled road is often next to impossible. Since you need either infinite patience or the willingness to attempt risky, and usually rude, maneuvers, and since I have neither, I've learned to avoid having to turn left. If I'll go miles out of my way to avoid the interstates, why not a few blocks to avoid watching people do things that will piss me off?
The near-impossibility of left turns relates to a theme underlying multiple issues I hope to work through via writing: How can I deal with challenges that seem impossible? For that matter, how can I get back to even seeing things as "challenges" rather than repeated blows from a cruel Universe? What can I do to start embracing more possibilities? I intend to use this venue for exploring psychological, philosophical, and other -ical subjects I need to think through.
That and spouting off about anything else I feel like writing about. Because ultimately, I just love writing. I've had a need to write since I learned how. I started keeping poetry journals, diaries, and lists of every kind by the time I was probably about six. It was never really about being read by other people; it was a relationship between me and words and between me and thoughts. Of course, I do like being heard and/or read; but, ultimately it's about having an overflow of brain activity paired with an addiction to language.
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