Water In The Urban Garden

Empty rain barrel.

Rain. It's probably the one thing that gardeners worry about the most. Not enough and your plants wither. Too much, and you fight fungus and no sunshine. There was a chance of rain Saturday night and then Sunday. Now they're saying there's a 60 percent chance of rain tonight. We'll see. Sixty percent isn't a guarantee by any stretch, and we do need the rain. The soil in our garden is made up of a high percentage of vegetable matter, but yesterday when I was planting I was noticing that it was kind of dusty. Even organic soil isn't going to hold moisture forever. So, while it's a beautiful day to hang the laundry outside, I'm looking at the sky expectantly. There's a mackerel sky and weather.com says the barometer is dropping, so that means the weather will change. 

Right now we have two barrels under downspouts, but we'll need more than that. Last year was a hot dry summer, and a couple of times we ran out of water. This summer is predicted to be hot, too. I try to just use rainwater in the garden, simply because I try to keep the cost of our yield as low as I can. Remember the promise I made to our landlord: If his water bill picks up, I may lose a garden. If you're going to collect rainwater, pick a downspout that comes off a big section of roof to ensure that enough water comes down to fill the barrel.

Just think of how much of our modern world is paved over, from streets and parking lots, to building roofs. Water that falls on a city is almost virtually sealed off from entering as groundwater until sewers dump it somewhere far from where it fell. As civilization moves forward (God willing) I've wondered why urban planners don't incorporate cisterns, along with solar energy, in both developments and individual homes. Public water systems were a boon to public health, but why can't homes collect rainwater (it comes out of the sky for free, like the sunlight and air that's drying our clothes right now!) It doesn't have to be used for potable water, but could be used for things like watering gardens and flushing toilets. There's no reason to pay for water that's been purified for those reasons.

I did take advantage of yesterday's dry weather, though, to plant the zucchini and acorn squash. I noticed that something had already eaten one of the brussel sprouts and my neighbor, Tom, gave me an entire bucket of coffee grounds to spread around the plants, saying that squirrels don't like the smell. He goes to the local coffee shop and gets buckets of grounds (yesterday he had three bucketful) so we'll see if squirrels/rabbits/insects stay away. I figured it couldn't hurt. I know one animal that loves coffee grounds is the earthworm.

The paving stone at the bottom of the barrel anchors it in case of high winds.

A gorgeous day to dry clothes. We dry our clothes outside almost all year long. Why use a machine and energy when there's a perfectly good dryer that comes up in the east every morning?

Mackerel sky. Hope it brings a little rain.

Yellow squash seedlings.

Thirsty yellow squash seedlings.That's mint and Jerusalem artichokes in the background.

Coffee grounds spread around plants to deter squirrels. I'll let you know how it works.

An urban garden takes shape

Planting lettuce in the spring between onions that were planted last fall.

I don't think there is anything more optimistic than a gardener. Every year we plant our babies with so much hope and vision. And then, it's all pretty much out of our hands. Oh, we can bring in water if it doesn't fall out of the sky. We can weed. But there isn't much we can do if Mother Nature decides to invoke her wrath in the form of insects, scorching heat, or even some other kind of voodoo. For a couple of years now, I haven't been able to grow peppers in the little plot I garden. I've talked to my neighbors who seem to have the same problem I have. Everything is lush, except for their peppers. This year I'm trying to grow them in a box on my porch. If that doesn't work, I'll try something else. Like most things, there's always so much to learn. Today at the garden center a woman and her young grandson were picking out plants, and I said to the woman, That's how I learned, from my grandmother in Indiana. I've been gardening since my parents started sending me to work on relatives farms during the summer, and it's something I've loved to do ever since. I think just about every place I've lived, I've left a garden behind. 

For a number of years, we've been working a backyard urban garden in Quincy, Massachusetts, just south of Boston, where we rent an apartment. It now takes up more than three-fourths of the backyard, but it started with the landlord letting us take a small corner for a couple of tomato plants. A few fresh tomatoes hung in a bag on his doorknob, and the corner grew to a little square. More tomatoes and zucchini and a handful of strawberries, and a couple of years ago Steve said to take the whole backyard. I sealed the deal when I persuaded him to let me put barrels under the downspouts, telling him he wouldn't even have to pay for water since in comes out of the sky for free. Herbs and smaller vegetables we grow in packing crates I found alongside the road and turned into garden boxes.

The garden has been a big part of our journey as we move, as best we can, to a more organic way of living. The garden is 100% organic; we compost all of our organic food scraps including coffee grounds and eggshells. As we like to say, we use even the smallest part of the buffalo. I am, though, worried about the quality of the runoff that comes down the downspouts, and I've put off having the soil checked for lead and other heavy metals the same way I put off a colonoscopy for ten years: I'm just afraid of what I'll find out. Our backyard garden has become a big source of our food, especially during the summer when we eat a lot of greens. Just last night we used up the last of the pesto made from basil we grew last year, and it was only a few weeks ago we finished the tomato sauce from last year that we froze.

It saves us money, makes up happy; an hour's work in the garden is equal to I don't know how many hours in the gym or with your therapist. I can't explain it but weeding gives me such satisfaction, not only because the end result is so pretty and the physical exercise so cathartic, but the simplicity of being outdoors makes me forget for that little bit of time the inanities of the modern world. Gardening puts me back in touch with nature. I follow the weather and seasons. I can feel myself taking that trip around the sun.

This year is going to be an experiment. A la Barbara Kingsolver and her incredible book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which leapfrogged us into trying to live more healthy lives as we increasingly began to mistrust just about every institution in society, but especially our food delivery system. This little backyard is us pushing back on what we feel is a system that has gone completely out of control.

Part of the backyard urban garden we make every year.

One of my all-time favorite tools for preparing the soil: A small pick mattock.

Swiss chard, brussel sprouts, lettuce, and peppers.

Planting lettuce between rows of onions. Good exercise: the stretching and reaching is worth a gym's membership.

We utilize every inch of the garden. We've learned that from seeing other gardens when we travel.

Compost. We have two bins that cook our yard and kitchen organic waste.

The Dying Garden

10.25.15
11:33 a.m.
Sunday.


There is beauty in death and decay. A vibrant life. Youth. Productive. And now it's at a different stage of its life. It's not just because I just turned 60. I've been thinking about this my entire life. And now, I've reached a stage of my life that when I hear of someone dying, rather than wondering what they died of, the first thing I want to know is, how old were they? An actress that just died this week was 71, and I immediately did the math: 11 years more. When she was my age, she only had 11 years more. That's not very much at all. It's a pffft of a life.

We value youth; so much in this city of Boston, it's like one enormous kindergarten. And in our society, it's all about youth and beauty. If you're not young (and pretty), you're a nobody. A young man who we met this past time in Paris had lived in Miami for awhile, and he suddenly became serious and said, in Miami, it was all about how much money you had and how pretty you were. So, he returned to Paris.

And we compare ourselves to celebrities and people who think and act like they're celebrities. We are as individual as raindrops (notice I didn't use the cliche, snowflakes?) in a rainstorm.

The beauty of a garden in the throes of autumn. Spent. Still trying to push out fruit, but the energy just isn't there anymore. But it still doesn't stop it from trying. This garden didn't produce as much as last year's. So what? This summer was hotter, and it rained less than last year. This year's garden was this year's, and you can't compare it to last year's. Any more than you can compare people.

The Miracle of the Potatoes

I think I blogged about this years ago, but can't find it now. The Miracle of the Potatoes. How at this time of year you can plunge your hands into a mound of dirt, and miracle of miracles, you can pull food right out of the earth. How the potatoes have been hidden underground, each cell dividing and growing and maturing, silent and urgent like babies in their mothers' wombs, ignored by all of the other more flamboyant vegetables--the eye-catching tomatoes, the sophisticated cucumbers, dangling on the vine like circus royalty, or the militaristic lettuce, marching in straight rows, cut down in their prime in the line of duty.

The garden has been a miracle this year. Except for the onions, we had bumper crops of everything. The freezer is packed with containers of pasta sauce. There is a veritable wall of sauce in our freezer right now. This year we moved the tomatoes to the end of the garden where they would get the most sun, and planted some Early Birds, so we've had tomatoes since June. This year we learned about spaghetti made from squash and zucchini. We're going to blanch some zucchini for vegetable soup this winter. Maybe homemade Minestrone. And we've been able to share quite a bit of our bounty with our neighbors. The boys downstairs especially love my zucchini bread. I don't want to tell them how much sugar the recipe calls for, which is what probably makes their mouths water.

The garden, though, has been on its slow decline since about August. It is almost imperceptible, but if you're out there every day you can see it. Gardening, even in a small backyard plot like ours, puts you in tune with and makes you aware of the natural world around you. Even in the most simplistic way, you note the amount of rainfall, too much or too little. But as the earth beats its way around the sun, if you leave yourself open, you can sense not only the change in temperature or the dulling of leaves, but also the intensity of light as the earth moves further from the sun in its orbit. You can tune into the same subtle cues the birds use to begin migrating, or the animals to steel themselves for the winter. It's what our modern life numbs us to, what it steals from us, our place in nature, which, by the way, still won't be denied even if we're not paying attention.

It's not even the official end of summer yet, and the garden is already looking like it's October. Weird weather. If it weren't for the garden, I might not know this subtle change in the climate, and it makes me keep a weather eye out to see if winter might not come a month earlier too. People who work the land and the oceans know about such things. We each are cells in a larger organism; in nature's petri dish. Not only creatures whose lives pass before their eyes in a second, but at the same time keeping in step with the slow, patient drumbeat.

Decay is as much a part of life and birth, and a little garden is a constant reminder of that. I know we don't want to be reminded of our inevitable demise, but personally I've always like to hear the clock ticking, be reminded that my time on this planet is limited. If I have my mother's genes, there's a good chance I'll have only about ten years left on this earth. She, and a good percentage of her siblings, all succumbed to cancer at 68. You can't deny nature, and you can't deny genetics. Time--our lives--is not something we should be wasting. I stand in the middle of our garden and see it's not what it once was, yet still produces some of the most exquisite food one can imagine, and I can't help but draw a parallel to my own life. I can't run as fast or as far as I used to, though I still pass other runners, both young and old, who are also running along the bay.  But, anything physical is taxing for me. A few weeks ago while moving our daughter into her new second-floor apartment, I vainly hauled a too-heavy box up the stairs, only to stop at the landing where no one could see me catch my breath.

I now need less sleep at night, and a nap in the afternoon. This change came as slowly and as undeniably as the change of seasons, until one day there was no other possibility left: You're not sick or depressed, John, you're getting old. Older. But like I said, I like to hear the clock ticking. Like a metronome keeping time, I can pace myself to still live my life the way I want to live it, only at a different pace. I can still produce, I can still create as well as I did in the springtime and early summer of my life. Probably better, because after all, I'm not a plant. This is only an analogy I'm painting here, and I've learned and harvested wisdom through experience. This is me accepting my place in my life, accepting the phase that I'm in, not denying my age as the marketers would have me do, but embracing my life and celebrating it through little act I perform, whether it's a planting a garden or writing a play or simply giving a smile to a stranger on the subway, because through my life I've learned things that I can share, as honestly and cleanly, as unabashedly and openly, as a plant offers its fruit.

Bountiful Gardens

Weekends make it hard to write. The thoughts still swirl around my head, but Sue's not working and we get caught up in weekend chores and events, and just reveling in the time we can spend together. She's my best friend, pure and simple, and I love that I can write those words. Just like I always sign my email to her or to Allison and Kathryn with the word, love, because for me, it's such a gift that I have people who I deeply love and can say that.

Maybe that's what's on my mind this weekend. Gifts, and things that we should be thankful for.

Tomatoes from our garden becoming pasta sauce. 

Kathryn and I were talking about food and cooking yesterday. I was making sauce from the tons of tomatoes our garden has been yielding this summer. Enough for big batches of sauce, while at the same time we can give some more away. Amazing what the earth will give you. But at the same time I thought what a privilege it is that we can talk about food in the way we do, what we like, how we like to cook it, and the intricacies of cooking and eating. Like Eskimos have all those names for snow, which I don't know if that's true or not, but it's like that. That is the privilege of a privileged society, and while I don't have any money, I do have that in my life. I have food and plenty of it; so much of it, in fact, that it is no longer simply sustenance, but it's some higher thing. I was telling Kathryn about a professor I had at Ohio University. The university, when I was there, had a program where the students could vote for their favorite professor, and that professor could teach a course in whatever they wanted. David Hostetler, who probably has no idea the impact he had on me or my growth, taught a course called, Art And Your Life. All it was about was making art everyday in your life. We studied motorcycle gas tanks and bread, and he said that in everything we do we should think about elevating it to art. Yes, if you think I'm crazy, you have David to thank for it. I mentioned how much I love grocery shopping, and that when I do, I consider every food item closely (another extraordinary privilege that we should all be aware of) to the point where I will pick up an onion, look at it, and think, this is going inside Sue or Kathryn, and does it measure up. Trust me, when you view ingredients in this way, you will look at them differently.

I wasn't around much when Kathryn and Allison were little. Their mother and I divorced when they were little, and I wasn't around to pass down things like the wisdom of David Hostetler to them. That happens to a lot of men in our society. Now, when I can sit with Kathryn and talk, talk about making everything in the world a work of art, or talk about our individual paths, comparing and contrasting them, she being gracious and listening to and taking in what I pass along as wisdom, is another great gift in my life. It's a second chance and while I don't have the memories of a traditional family life with them, I have this life with them now, and to me it is as bountiful as any garden.