garden update

The pole beans are sending out the feelers, the little curly thing that isn't a leaf.  They're still short, but soon they will be thigh high.  The tomatoes are making blossoms and have made at least two more tiers of leaves since we put them into the ground.  The Speckled Bayou Beans are crashing through the crust of soil, breaking free with their pale green bent necks.  Today many of them unfurled two pleated leaves.  Morning Glorys (Glories?) popped out yesterday, having been put in their bed on Thursday, and their friends, the sunflowers are up today.  Apparently some body is in a hurry.  But where are those Scarlet Runner Beans?

I am the type of gardner that cannot stand a bare inch.  Today more Morning Glories went in with the tomatoes because of the fabulous fence for them all to clamber upon.  Then some Nastursums (oh, sorry about the spelling) went in with the zucchini.  Moon Flowers with the Neighbor Beans, and Flying Saucers with the Cleomes and marigolds all over the place, cheering on the potatoes and yellow squash and eggplants and peppers.  Of course at some point I will post a photo, when it is a glorious tangle of produce and color.  My object is to fool the bugs and choke out the weeds.  Actually, I am serious.  Have you ever read the little book published back in the Dark Ages (1971) by Organic Gardening called "Easy Gardening?"  The author tells us to mulch heavily so the weeds are easy to pull out, plant closely to confuse the bugs, and to let the "pests" be.  I had that book, a gift from Organic Gardening for my subscription.

The garden has been my refuge, my healing, my returning to physical activity.  I cry when I am tangled in the damn hose and when I find those horrible yellow and black not-ladybugs chowing on my beans and when I am exhausted.  I stop and watch the nesting birds, the black birds took over the woodpecker condo and have a batch of hungy ones in there.  I sweat buckets.  Most of all I am deeply grateful for this patch of dirt, for the desire in the seeds to sprout, and for my internal clock that wakes me up and shouts, "Plant tomatoes today!  Call N2 for help!  Do it now!"  I am grateful for Wayne's willingness to pound in posts and put up the wire for the tomatoes and beans, for rototilling and digging beds and reminding me that I used up all the time for taking the dogs to the lake (oops).  I am grateful for this time to do my internal work, my prayers, my meditation, more prayers and to be in the warm, budding, vital buzz of late spring.

Maybe tomorrow I will start that painting.

Maybe.

LPC17Mai08