I went ahead and shared my garden with you, ugly orange plastic fence and all, and then…surprise! I got me a shiny new fence! Well. The Handsome Fixer Man got it for me. He and the girls spent several hours measuring out the stakes and lining everything up. We don’t have a post driver (yet), so he started by hammering in rough wooden pickets, but each stake will be replaced by a cedar post eventually. It’s wrapped in welded turkey wire, and currently has a makeshift gate that closes with a D-clip – but it keeps the chickens out, everything is in one space, AND it looks so much better!

How do you keep the critters out of your garden space?

We spent close to 18 hours in the car last week, driving from Maine to Pennsylvania and back again just three days later. My grandfather passed away on the 3rd, quietly and peacefully, and so we joined my family in my hometown to celebrate him and say good-bye. I’m beyond thankful we were able to visit back in February, and that my girls had the chance to be with him and love him.

All of that travel time allowed for far more quiet time and reflection than I’m usually afforded, particularly on the way home. I didn’t have the chance to pack any handwork before we left, and reading too much makes me carsick, so I was left to watch the scenery and simmer in my own thoughts – some of which are really too private to share here, and some of which bewildered me so completely in their randomness and simplicity.

It’s sort of an odd experience to be back among most of your family as an adult, and as a parent. To be in a house where you were a child, with all of the people who knew you as a child, and be treated as an adult. It’s not that I was expecting to be considered badly, but in reviewing the trip, it does stand out as a new experience. And to watch my children explore and come to know a home I explored and knew as a child – as familiar to me as my own home – was not exactly surreal, but notable. My daughters sat on the front porch with their second cousins and played with a marble machine their parents had clustered around close to thirty years before. I snuggled my girls on the glider and told them about the bee tree, and how you could lean on the trunk of the tree next to it and look up to watch the bees moving in and out. I showed them where the swimming pool was before the land was sold and houses were built, the pool where I learned to swim. I laughed with my brother and cousins when the little ones rang the doorbell over and over, and we reminisced about the way we’d run around and around the house, ringing the doorbells, over and over. Remarkable.

Also. My own house feels really sparse. I know my grandparents had 60 years to build a home, but I think it’s time to hang some curtains in our place, at the very least. 

Also. I really enjoyed being clean. That seems like such a shallow takeaway from a life-changing event like this. But suburbia doesn’t have the ever-present dust of living in the country, and I certainly wasn’t stepping in chicken poop at my Nana’s. I didn’t need to scrub my feet at night, because I wasn’t walking through mud or gravel to get to the car. I wasn’t cooking or cleaning, and my clothes weren’t spotted and stained. In fact, it was nice to get dressed – to wear heels and do my hair, to feel put together. I don’t usually bother here at home because it doesn’t seem worth the effort (who am I trying to impress?), and I don’t often have backup around so that I can take the time – but perhaps it is something I should explore more often. Perhaps that’s just the kind of self-care I need to invest in.

 

Welcome to the new garden!

I realized tonight that I never got around to sharing photos of the new plot, so after the girls were asleep and everything had been watered, I took a walk around to see how things are growing. It all still looks very small to me. Except the tomatoes. I have a tomato forest – I planted them far too close together, and didn’t stake them when I put them in, so now they’re growing in a tangled mess. More of a jungle than a forest, really. A tomato jungle.

Most everything inside that lovely orange fencing was planted as a seedling. I went a little wild at the greenhouse on Mother’s Day, and had to get things in the ground before we had a plan in place to create a barrier around the space. The chickens all but decimated the brassicas, and so J rolled out the temporary plastic stuff to prevent any future destruction (they’ve all bounced back). We’ve been given cedar posts, sourced some free slabs to rip into cross beams, and did some price comparing on turkey wire – but we haven’t found the extra hours to make it all happen. So for now, we glow in the dark.

We did plant the beans from seed – Scarlet Runner, Kentucky Wonder, Rattlesnake (from my Nana). All pole beans, I’m really hoping they grow quickly enough to fill in the teepee sides and make a cool place to play. I’ve never grown beans before and feel a little out of my element with these. They’re doing well so far though, and have even begun to climb their posts, tendrils reaching and wrapping of their own accord.

I participated in a seed swap through Instagram, and the loot I received in exchange for my marigold seeds included bottle gourd seeds. Another first for me. They’re planted on the trellis, under the watchful eye of our goosey friend. I’m looking forward to harvesting these with the girls – they should be a fun project to turn into birdhouses.

Also beginning to climb are the cucumbers planted along my trash-picked crib spring trellis. I’m quite proud of this one. I’ve had the idea knocking around in my head for a couple of years, but didn’t have the materials at hand. However, on the last bulk trash day, we scored a set of spotless crib springs someone had put out for collection. J attached pickets for legs, and my trellis was born. The idea is that the vines will climb up and the cukes will hang down for easy picking. We’ll see how well it works.

The other half of the garden – the not-fenced patch of dirt – is not doing as well. I started everything on this side from seed, and quite a bit later than planting the first section. It shows, and I’m beginning to wonder if it will catch up. The kale is tiny, the calabazas are weak, the beets nonexistent. The pumpkins are doing well, however, as are the butternuts. Every seed sprouted, so hopefully we will be swimming in squash come fall.

Overall, it’s not a bad start for the first year in a new spot. The weeds are getting the best of me and I’m spending a lot of time watering (we really need the rain), but we’ve started bringing in cucumbers and Swee and I found quite a few Sun Gold tomatoes beginning to ripen. The list of changes for next year is already quite long, beginning with how we’ll prep the beds this fall, so I guess that means I’ll try again, no matter the outcome this season. After all, hope springs eternal in the garden.