Where the Wild Things REALLY Are

Maurice Sendak had it all wrong.

Forget Max. Forget Max sailing to where the wild things are.

If you want to find the real wild things this summer, you need to come to our backyard and look at the plots of land that once upon a time were gardens.

They're easy enough to find. There's the big, green, tangled mess up by the house, and the bigger, greener, more tangled mess down in the back.

I went out early this morning to weed and assess. I have not lavished the same care and attention on my gardens as I did last year. My summer has been too squirrelly, my time too fragmented. The gardens have largely gotten what might be called "a lick and a promise," only I never followed through on the promise.

But even if I had, I would still be in trouble this summer because I planted everything just too…darn…thick.

Down in the sod garden, there are pumpkin vines here, pumpkin vines there, pumpkin vines everywhere. I have pumpkins setting already, some of them three feet up in the air, because the plants are so strong (and close) that the vines cannot reach the ground. I tried to reroute where I could, cutting away leaves and extraneous vines to bring the pumpkinettes back down to earth.
While working in the pumpkins, I kept looking for zucchini. My dad is already bringing us armloads out of his garden. His aren't fighting with pumpkins for space like mine are. Warren, wandering down, finally spied one - not in the zucchini patch, but in the pumpkin patch.

And forget the broccoli. I moved it into the sod garden so it wouldn't bully the peppers and eggplants this year. The peppers and eggplants are going great guns this summer. The broccoli? It turns out there isn't enough constant sun in the lower garden. After being the biggest kids in the class last summer, this year they remind you of the kindergartener who just barely made the birthday cut off and is standing on tiptoes at the drinking fountain - the little drinking fountain.

Up in the kitchen garden, which is where I headed next, things are hardly better. The eggplants and peppers seem to be doing well, if a bit crowded. But it is after those first few rows that everything falls apart.

If you look closely (in the garden, not in any photos), you might, might, see some onions. I planted five rows of Walla Walla onions.

F-I-V-E. Cinco. Cinq. 5

I can find two rows. T-W-O. Dos. Deux. 2

I think I would find more but the tomatoes have so taken over everything that I can't see the ground, let alone any onions.

"Girls Gone Wild" has nothing on my version of "Tomatoes Gone Wild."

For a while this morning, I pruned the tomatoes relentlessly. Because of my inattention earlier this season, most of them are neither staked nor caged. The result is mayhem. And because the bushes are so thick, no matter how I carefully I picked my way through them, there was the continual crunch of broken vines underneath my feet.

It was not a pretty sight.

Did I mention the Lazy Housewife beans against the back wall? Their wall of green is the only thing that tops the tomatoes. The beans are starting to come on and I can only imagine how many more tomato vines I will break while wading in to pick them.

Sigh.

After I finished hacking my way through the tomatoes, I came in, showered off the mud, and turned my attention to indoor chores. Unbeknownst to me, Warren, who is spending the morning stripping xylophone bars on the back deck, took a stab at caging one of the tomato plants.

I just discovered his attempts a half hour ago.

"I thought it would help," he said, somewhat deflated by the result.

It didn't. Now, in addition to the tangled green mess of tomatoes, I have one caged, tangled green mess as well.

In Sendak's marvelous book, Max tames the wild things by shouting "BE STILL!" and staring at all of them "without blinking once." For that, they made him king of all wild things.

Stare as I might, my tomatoes are unmoved. They are holding their own wild rumpus this summer, as are the pumpkins.

King of the wild things? Not this year, not this garden.

Behold the Broccoli!

July is winding down and our garden is gearing up. Gardens, plural.

After months of lollygagging around, the peppers have finally decided to grow. They are like the boy who was always the smallest one in class but suddenly puts on seven or eight inches over the summer. There are blossoms on most of them and maybe, just maybe, I might reap one Purple Beauty or Sweet Chocolate yet this year.

Maybe.

I may get a lone eggplant from the one plant that did not get overshadowed by the broccoli. The artichokes have also had to joust with the broccoli for sunlight. Everything I have read about artichokes says "180 days" and it will be nip and tuck with the calendar to see if they can produce a choke before the first frost.

I had no idea that broccoli grew so fiercely and could so completely dominate a garden. If my peppers are the smallest kid in the class, the broccoli is the boy whose parents start him a year late so he will be "good at sports." (Why was that always the reason given? Why didn't anyone ever say "I held my kid back so she could kick butt reading?")

The tomatoes have not been intimidated one whit by the broccoli. Thanks to my helter-skelter, post-planting transplanting, there are tomatoes everywhere. Pig is gone. Oh, it's still there, but hidden under the tomatoes vines that now cascade down over it.

The tomatoes are still green. Drat. I just know the first ones will ripen when we are out of town in early August. I know it, I know it.

Down in the sod garden, the pumpkins and zucchini are in full and beautiful bloom. Whatever has been nipping the zucchini blossoms seems to have slacked off. Maybe it didn't like the taste of zucchini stem that much. As for the pumpkins, after quickly taking over three-quarters of the garden, they have gotten down to the business at hand.

I recently learned that pumpkin vines have male and female flowers. What I did not know was whether we have enough bees and other pollinators around to make the necessary introductions. I am pleased to report that when I walked down to the patch this morning, I saw not one but several bees landing on and lifting off from the pumpkin blossom flight decks.

The bees know their stuff. We already have a baby pumpkin.

I cut the first broccoli last weekend. After I washed it and put it in a bag for later, I turned to Warren and said "let's stop at mom and dad's because I want to give dad some of the broccoli."

Mom and dad live about a mile (as the crow flies) from here, just outside of town on a rural road. When we pulled into the driveway, dad was out in his garden. It had been dry, so he had pulled the hose out to the garden, then ran it up a stepladder to a rotating jet sprinkler. Given the height of the ladder, dad figured the water could reach the whole garden. That is a typical "dad" solution: it may not be pretty, but it is practical and immediate. And it worked.

Dad came up to the truck as we got out. I handed him the broccoli and he grinned. My dad is not an easy man to get presents for, but certain things go right to his heart. The first broccoli from our gardens is one of those things.

Warren stood and chatted with mom (he is a favorite of hers, so much so that I have no question about where I stand on that scale) while dad and I looked at his garden. His tomatoes were dying off one by one; he thinks it is because he planted them at the end closest to the walnut tree at the lot line. Could be; walnut trees are brutal on gardens. The beans looked good though. (In fact, his beans are good. As I write this, I have a sack of green beans from him waiting to be blanched and frozen.) We talked about how next year he may move the garden further south and reseed to grass the section nearest the walnut tree.

I haven't thought too much about next year. Getting through this year is such an adventure. Oh, at times I look at the broccoli and wonder if I should expand the garden to give those bad boys more room next year. But for the most part, except for some occasional notes in my gardening notebook, I am too consumed with this year's crop to look ahead to next.

Our friend Kermit stopped over yesterday to give us some fresh peaches from South Carolina, where they had been on vacation. Kermit is gardening using the "square foot" method that seems to be all the rage this year. While we shared some zucchini bread at the kitchen table, Kermit and I compared garden notes. He likes the square foot method and is getting good results. Kermit is already planning ahead as this year was just a trial run.

I understand the principles of square foot gardening and can appreciate its appeal. I don't see myself turning to that method. I like the confusion and the mess of a traditional garden. I even like the weeding. My sprawling, higgledy-piggledy garden has brought me joy and contemplation and sweat all at the same time.

And maybe I am not tempted by square foot gardening because I remember the size and abundance of my grandparents' farm garden when I was little. The farm is long gone but my memories are not. Even if I could fit the right plants into the grids of the square foot garden, I am not sure I could fit my heart.

What Would Pa Have Done?

I am a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series. Ever since reading Little House in the Big Woods when I was a third grader, I have read Laura's books countless times. Even now, if I am "between books" and want something to read while eating lunch, I am more likely to grab a Little House book off the shelf than anything else.

I never watched the television show, so my mental images of Laura and her family are those by Garth Williams, the original illustrator. That's a good thing as lately I have been dogged by Pa Ingalls, and I'd rather not have Michael Landon popping into my head as I struggle with starting the second garden.

I knew I wanted and needed a second garden bed for all the vegetables I planned on sowing directly. Zucchini, yellow squash, Swiss chard, spinach, Lazy Housewife beans, pie pumpkins. I even toyed with the idea of having a separate pumpkin patch, as pumpkins sprawl so.

The lawn where I wanted the garden has been undisturbed for decades, and the grass is well established. My dad brought over his old front-tine rotor-tiller, but I couldn't begin to handle "the beast," as my dad calls it, let alone till with it. After several futile attempts, I gave up. I couldn't break through the grass even after dad sharpened the tine blades.

Fortunately, a neighborhood friend has a rear-tine tiller that he was glad to lend me. Last Friday night, Warren and I walked around the corner, walked the contraption back, and then I set to tilling the garden.

This is the point where Pa Ingalls first came to mind.

As already noted, the grass is well established. Warren's house was built in 1964 on a parcel split off from the imposing brick 1869 home directly to the east. A rear driveway from the large residence to our street was removed for this house, but other than that, my guess is that most of the backyard has been lawn for a long, long, time.

Long enough for the grass to grow roots to China.

The borrowed rotor-tiller was a "dirt-eating machine," per another friend. It did not balk once as, inch by inch, it cut through the grass roots and turned the soil.

But it was really, really hard work. And as I sweated and grunted and clung to the tiller, I thought about Pa Ingalls. Specifically, how did he do it? We all know from reading the Little House series that Pa was always breaking the sod of the Great Plains, whether it was in Indian Territory or out in the Dakotas.

We also all know from reading these wonderful books the two basic rules about breaking sod. First, it is very hard work, even if you have horses to help pull the plow. I didn't have horses to help me till, although I did have horsepower. I know the root stems on these lawn grasses don't begin to measure as deep as prairie grass roots, which can reach 15 feet or more. And I'm only digging a garden measuring about 20 x 15 feet, not breaking 160 acres.

All the same, it was hard work. Warren offered to help, but I figured I needed to do the bulk of it since it was my idea to have a second garden. Besides, Warren had a shed to build and a storage unit to move. So most of the tilling fell to me and as I cut through the grass, I thought of how many times and in how many places Pa put the plow to the prairie.

The second lesson about breaking sod is that you don't get very good garden results the first year. As Pa noted after that first harvest in the Dakotas, "we can't get much from a first year on sod-ground, but the sods will rot this winter. We'll do better next year." I hope so because my results dismay me. After three passes through the plot, I didn't have the strength or the daylight left to do a fourth. It was clear from everything I saw that, whatever I did, the results this first year would likely be meager at best.

My dream garden, put together on paper back in February, has zucchini, yellow squash, Swiss chard, spinach, Lazy Housewife beans, and pie pumpkins growing in it. Uh huh. I've got a sod garden that looks like a dirt-eating something or other barfed in the backyard. The garden will take time and hard work, and I am particularly short on any capacity to do a lot of hard physical work, having used up a huge chunk of my reserves in tilling the garden and helping with the storage unit move (one phrase: a ton of rosewood).

Something has to give, and what has to give is my dream garden.

When the Ingalls had to sell a heifer calf to send Mary to college, Mary was dismayed, but Ma was ready with a response. "We must cut our coat to fit the cloth." As I walked the tiller back to its owner, I already had my scissors out and was taking measure of the cloth I was about to cut.

This year, the second garden will be zucchini and pie pumpkins only. I am planting those because I believe that zucchini will grow almost anywhere and that pumpkins are known for their ability to break up soil. (Let me hold onto those beliefs, no matter how deluded I may be.) I never saw a zucchini mentioned in the Little House series, but I know there were always pumpkins, even in that first poor Dakota harvest.

I'll sow the garden tonight if the rain holds off. I've cut my cloth. With luck, come the harvest, my coat will be orange.