In the Nursery

I thought we were done with the nursery.

No, not that kind of nursery. Until and unless there are grandchildren, Warren and I are both done on the baby front.

No, I mean the plant nursery. Ever since March 21, a large folding table has dominated the space in front on the patio door. To get to the back deck, you had to go through the percussion room, into the garage, then out to the patio and up to the deck.

All that was coming to an end this weekend. We spent part of Mother's Day tilling the two gardens. They and I were ready to go this weekend.

The table would finally, blessedly, be empty.

Yesterday I put in peppers, eggplants, and broccoli. We took some tomato plants out to dad. Today, I heeled in our tomatoes, planted onions, and seeded cilantro, basil, greasy beans, pumpkins, and zucchini.

In addition to being the weekend I planted the garden, this weekend is the Delaware Arts Festival, a two-day downtown street fair. The Symphony always has a booth there, which Warren and I helped set up early Saturday. I wanted to buy Ben and Alise's wedding present at the fair, so later on (before the first round of gardening), we spent a good hour or more wandering up and down the blocks looking at the wares.

One of the booths was a gourd artist, the kind who paint and carve gourds into decorative art - penguins, jolly Santas, dogs (no, Ben and Alise, I did not buy you gourd art). Warren is always interested in gourds - not to decorate our house with, but to turn into percussion instruments such as shakeres or güiros.

While he eyed the gourds, judging size and dimensions, I realized there were trays of brown paper packets underneath the lowest shelf.

Seed packets.

Gourd seed packets.

Warren and I engaged the proprietor in some gourd talk. What's this gourd here? How about this one?

Gourds have descriptive names: kettle, pear, apple, basketball. That's a big pear. That one? A penguin (painted like, you guessed it, a penguin).

I treated my husband: one pack of kettle seeds, one pack of large pear seeds. The seed owner and I talked planting and germination. He suggested starting them inside, under heat. They have a tough coating, so they'll take awhile to germinate. Just stay at it.

If I started now, I asked, would I still have enough growing season to get gourds this year?

Oh heavens, yes.

I spent all morning today gardening. The kitchen garden is fluffy and easy to work. The sod garden, even after last week's compost and roto-tilling, is still rough and still has a long ways to go. Pa Ingalls flashed across my mind.

The broccoli is down in the sod garden this year, where it can grow to the size of fifth graders if so desires. I have two rows of pie pumpkins and two rows of zucchini seeded. A fifth row will hold the gourds when their time comes. The kitchen garden will have eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, basil, cilantro, and pole beans this year. It is not as crowded as last year and this year I know where every single tomato is planted. I also planted six containers: two with artichokes (trying yet once again) and four with sugar lump cherry tomatoes.

By the time I finished, I was tired. But not too tired to make ten newspaper seed pots, fill them with wet potting soil, and poke a gourd seed down into each one. The big table came down as planned, but one of the small deck tables holds a tray of seeds and a lamp just fine. The babes-in-waiting spent a hour or two in the sun before I carried them inside and tucked them in for a nap.

The nursery is humming one last time this garden season.

The Week That Was

This has been a busy, busy week. I am so glad it is Friday.

I have already written about my United Way week. But United Way was not the only thing that happened this week.

This week I filled, seeded, and watered 66 pots. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, some ornamental gourds (seeds from another, so they may be crossbred) because Warren wants to experiment with gourd instruments some more. After doing that Sunday I was tired, tired, tired.

While I was in United Way meetings all day Tuesday, Warren and the Symphony were launching the big event of the year: the Symphony participating in the Ford Made in America program. The kickoff event was a luncheon of community leaders to introduce the program, explain the related community events, centered around a four day residency with composer Joseph Schwantner, and seek community imput.

And at home in the evenings, Warren was building a vibraphone. Except for Tuesday night, when we went to hear Liz's band concert.

When I wasn't at United Way this week, I was in court meetings. I am the lead writer of a grant due April 8 and those days are ticking fast.

When I wasn't at United Way or in court meetings this week, I was on the road. Sam started work on Monday and I am driving him to and from the job each day. That has required us to set the alarms earlier and run the days a little later.

Today is the first day all week that, after driving Sam to work, I have not had to turn around and prepare for a meeting outside of the home. Maybe I can catch up on a lot of laundry, paperwork, writing.

As I said, this has been a busy week full of hard work, accomplishments, proud moments, news from Montana (there's a wedding in the works!), and Sam's new job. Whew.

Mother Nature apparently felt left out of the whirl, so she added her piece to the week as well. This morning, the last Friday in March, we all woke up to this sight outdoors:

And this one indoors:

The broccoli is up! Now that's the way to end a busy, busy week!

Last Year's Gardens, This Year's Gardens

I tramped out into the backyard this morning. It is a rainy, gray March day, but, un- deniably,  spring is on its way.

I walked down to the back garden for the first time since December. Until last weekend, the back garden was still under snow. It has emerged now: rough, grass-grown. I will need to rototill it again this spring and inch it that much more along the "real garden" continuum. It is just past being considered a raw sod garden, but not by much.

The garden by the house - the one I call the kitchen garden - is in much better shape. That makes sense as it was already established. It is too wet and muddy to begin spading the soil, let alone adding the compost, but that time will come.

Work lies ahead, starting with the seedlings. Actually, starting with the pots for the seedlings. I made them from newspaper last year, which allowed me to plant them directly into the ground. That method worked really well and I will do it again this year.

What better way to spend a gray, rainy, chill March Saturday than making seedling pots?

Last year I grew broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, onions, eggplant, pumpkins, zucchini, artichoke, and some potatoes. Plus herbs. All but the zucchini, pumpkins, and potatoes were in the kitchen garden.

Yeah, it was kinda crowded.

The artichoke never made it to the flower/choke stage; eggplants and peppers didn't do so hot either. That is because the broccoli overshadowed everything. I had no idea broccoli got so big and broad. So they are going down to the back garden this year.

I'm going to try the artichoke again in a large (very large) planter. The cherry tomatoes will probably go in planters this year as well, as they got lost in the uproar in last year's garden.

I will probably cut back on the herbs. I liked them for the smells they released whenever you brushed against them, but I never really used most of them other than the basil and the chives. The chives wintered over; I transplanted some of the ones that remained from Ellen's gardens from 30 years ago. A good friend recently rhapsodized about fresh cilantro and I promised I would plant some for her.

My biggest problem is knowing when to stop. Last year I wanted to grow so many things that the kitchen garden was way too crowded. Even after I ripped the broccoli out, the eggplants, onions, tomatoes, and peppers were constantly elbowing one another. Moving the broccoli from the kitchen garden to the back garden should help free up some space.

Maybe I can put some into my dad's garden. Yeah, that should work. Dad is here working on the house with Warren this morning, and I asked him casually if he would like me to start some plants for him. I'll slip in some of my own as well.

As I plan this year's garden, we continue to eat the bounty of last year's garden. As I type, peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini are thawing in the sink for tonight's meal. When I wrote about our grocery bill being less than $200 a month, last year's garden is a huge part of that.

Following up on the great food discussion, I tracked all of our grocery costs in February. We finished the month at $158.46 for groceries, with an additional $11.26 for household items such as dish soap and toilet paper. Our eating out bill for the month was $66.88, which we both consider higher than average but included the tail end of the New York trip as well as Warren taking his daughter out for her 16th birthday. During the month of February, we had friends over for dinner on three separate occasions and I was also the hostess for a quarterly potluck with girlfriends. (Being the hostess means preparing an entrée for five.) So our February grocery costs included four social occasions. (Okay, I'm bragging.)

I'm tracking our expenses for March as well. Halfway through the month, our grocery bill is at $73.59 and our eating out is at $7.90. I figure we will once again come in under the $200 mark. We couldn't begin to do that without our freezers and the gardens.

Besides the pleasure of eating food I grew last summer, our low grocery costs help on the money front.

Money is an issue because medical bills are an issue. I am still dealing with the economic fallout from Dr. Bully riding roughshod through my life. Even with the hefty discount I get from OhioHealth for being both uninsured and not financially flush, I am still paying off his charges to my account back in July and October, the bulk of which could have been avoided if Dr. Bully had just asked me the simplest of questions regarding my medical treatment. When all is said and done, Dr. Bully will have cost me almost $1000 in unnecessary and unwanted testing and OhioHealth almost $700 in write-offs. I see my oncologist next week and will ask him if we can push my next visit after that 180 days out, rather than 90, so I can get caught up on the medical bills.

So the low monthly grocery bill feeds more than just our satisfaction in eating healthily and economically. It helps me thwack away at the medical bills as well, and allows me to feel a little less like Sisyphus toiling away eternally with his boulder. I am grateful for the bounty of last year's gardens in so many ways.

Except for the food we continue to cook and savor, last year's gardens are now a memory. This year's gardens are still a dream.

William Rainey Harper, on establishing the University of Chicago, said "now the dreaming is over and the real work begins."

I know just what he meant.

Down on the Farm

According to the USDA, this part of Ohio is in Zone 5, which means that vegetable gardens should be planted in May, mid-month or later, after the danger of frost is passed.

I’m wondering if I can hold off my plants that long.

At the beginning of this month, I started seedlings—tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, broccoli, and artichokes—in homemade paper pots. Despite my worrying and fussing over them, the seeds knew what they were supposed to do, which is germinate.

Everything came up except two plantings of peppers. Those seeds came from a well-meaning friend who didn’t know how to save them and handed them over moist and almost moldy late last fall. I dried them out before putting them away, but clearly something didn’t kick back in this spring.

Otherwise—holy moly!—I’ve got a forest of seedlings out in the family room. It’s too soon to be counting my August tomatoes, but the eggs have definitely hatched.

Over the last two weekends, with the considerable help of my husband, I have prepared the first of three vegetable beds in the back yard. Bed #1, which is for the seedlings, has been the top priority. Although used in the past as a garden, it was in sorry shape and the soil was heavily compacted. Starting a week ago last Saturday and finishing this one just past, we shoveled and spaded it, worked in a half cubic yard of compost by hand, let it rest, then worked in another half yard of compost. All of this was by hand: spade, shovel, and lots of back muscles. The bed is now soft and fluffy, which is a good thing as I have broccoli (which is able to go outside early) ready to graduate from the seed pot to the outside bed, not unlike a toddler making the leap from crib to a Big Bed.

The compost is purchased locally from Price Farms Organics, which bills itself as a “recycling facility for organics using composting technology.” (We like to keep as many of our dollars as we can in the local economy.) My compost of choice is Barnyard Café, which indeed smells like a barnyard (horse or cow, I'd say), mixed with coffee grounds. Very enchanting. It reminds me of my grandparents’ farm when I was little.

I loved watching the compost steam in the bed of the truck as we shoveled it out. My new entertainment when not at symphony events or watching my husband perform? Watching compost steam. With two more vegetable beds yet to come, spring should be a hoot.