What a day, what a wonderfully bright, pungent with spring, beautiful,
sunny day!
But we sleep in. At night, Isis was restless, Ed was tired after his
bike ride and so I was the cat care person, down the stairs, up the stairs,
coming Isis! Okay Isis! Ed was so deeply asleep that he almost didn’t wake to
the loud crash of Isis being knocked off the bed by an overly generous sweep of
a limb. Ed's limb. Isis knows to sleep on that side of the bed. I complain loudly when he wanders over.
But last night the cat fell off the bed and I felt sorry for him
so I was a good caregiver. Coming Isis!
We ate a hurried breakfast. It’s a packed day for us.
Tomorrow I pick up exams, but today I have a different agenda!
Start putting in the
tomatoes! (Two dozen today, many dozen more at another time)
...and plant the newly arrived variation on pink daylilies
(goal: 24) and lavenders (goal: the entire 6).
The noon hour passes, the sun grows stronger.
Lee, our resident farmer, comes over to assess
the land she’ll be planting. How is it? I ask her.
Lots of grass. She has a point. It will be several years
before all the quack grass is tilled out of there.
What are you planting? - I ask.
Cucumbers! Big ones. Pickle cucumbers!
Ah.
She walks past our veggie plot. Her friend is
with her and they have a rapid exchange in Hmong and there are small giggles
mixed in as well and it doesn’t take much to understand that she is amused at
our efforts. She looks up at the sky and shakes her head.
I know! Not enough sun.
You come pick my peas. No need to plant.
Too late. We're invested in our beds.
Revised count: planted today: 28 tomatoes, 20 daylilies, 6 lavenders and various
miscellaneous cheapies acquired at a Shopko sale – not so much because the
plants themselves were tempting, but because these commercially grown
perennials look so bedraggled and listless that it’s like going to an animal
shelter and saving a cat or dog from a fate far worse than coming home with
you.
The sun has set, the birds have settled. We eat our summer
supper, which so often is accompanied by a baguette from the Thursday market...
La Baguette
Ed asks me – do you ever finish planting?
And I answer truthfully – yes. When we stumble into summer I am
done. For me, there is a time for work and a time for reaping the benefits of
work. My interest in digging the land diminishes as the soil gets harder,
dryer, less forgiving, when the failed plants can’t be revived, not this year
anyway, when the bugs drive us nuts, when there are other ways to enjoy the
heat of the day.
But for now, we work. Everyone who cares about what the earth produces works now. Late into the evening, until the sun sets.
I used to be like you...out there in the spring planting things like mad. Then summer and heat would set in and I never went out. Picking the fruits of my labors was even hard, and all those tomatoes, I worked full time and didn't have the time to put them up... I gave all that up. Paul wants to put some tomato plants out back but I warned him - they will be "his" babies... to tend all summer long... we'll see.
ReplyDeleteI admire your energy so much. And your capabilities.
Wow, 28 tomato plants! Better buy a big freezer! Maybe you can prune the trees to give the garden a bit more sun, if it is too shady. I hope you manage to get the plants all in before the exam grading starts.
ReplyDeleteI love how you've woven Lee into your lives.
ReplyDelete