“I …try to live a life that’s …five hundred feet as a hawk looking at the world below and trying to understand what is going on. But it’s quite difficult because there’s so much going on down there.” –Alastair Crooke in an interview on The Cradle.
Yes, quite a bit going on down here in the weeds. Much more than meets the eye. Spring is here. The daffodils opened yesterday. The weather is swinging wildly, from the 20’s to the 80’s and back down but maybe not into the 20’s again. We’ve been downgraded from a severe drought to a plain old moderate drought. As weird as the new normal is, I’ll say this is normal but that doesn’t mean it’s good.
I took advantage of the warm weather to actually get out in my garden and do stuff. Then before I knew it, as happens every year I became entangled in raspberry canes and wire fencing. Now my arms are scratched and I’m lucky to have both eyes. I feel like what a squirrel must feel as it obsessively breaks off twigs and gathers leaves to make a nest. Only instead of making a house, my goals are as follows:
- To support my ecosystem.
- To grow food for myself.
- To maintain what people might call a “garden”.
I have my dependable tools. The shears, the long handled pruner, the short handled pruner, the pitch fork, the shovel, the garden rake and sometimes my hands. With them I crack off the dried plant stems, clip back branches, shear the meadow like a sheep, lift up the soil, spread the compost, move plants around, among other things. After I cut, slash and break stems with wild abandon, I make piles. Piles for the prickly, piles for the not so prickly, piles for the woodies.
And, twist ties! The extra long kind that you get when you buy kale at the market. What would I do without twist ties?
One thing I have to admit that I hate about gardening in a city is I’m stuck buying compost in plastic which leaves me with lots of plastic. Then, being the pack rat I am, I end up stashing it away with all my other past plastic I can’t find a use for. But plastic is so great right?
Every year, my garden is a clean slate full of promise and every year by fall, it just becomes a jungle. And, I’ve discovered it’s very dangerous to plan a garden in the spring before the green comes out. What’s sunny now will most likely not be sunny in a month.
Growing food for me seems important these days as gas prices are predicted to rise drastically due to all that stuff “going on down there”. This year, I bought 6 bags of Leafgro and actually turned it into the soil instead of just raking it over the top. I’ve been sloppy. My dad told me ashes were what made his tomatoes grow so well so I dumped our wood ashes in the beds. This might not have been good because wood ashes can change your pH levels. I’ve also been sloppy with my seed purchases, picking up some packets at our grocery store instead of making a plan and buying them online where I could probably get a better deal. I’ll probably run back and get more of something, I don’t know what. Then I’ll probably sprinkle some left over blood meal, bone meal and alfalfa meal from those huge bags I bought down in south west Virginia way back when after reading that gardening book by Steve Solomon. And, then I’ll plant the seeds in no particular order and wait and see. The hardest part.
I love these first warm days of spring before the mosquitoes come out and the world is bursting with potential but this year, the usual excitement is a little bit muted probably because of all that stuff “going on down there.”
Yet, just being in the garden brings me back down to earth. A robin splashes in the bird baths happily chirping. A flicker calls from somewhere. The tiny bees are making their tiny sand nests in the dirt under the gravel next to the shop door. Thousands of tiny insects circle around the elm which will soon be full of squirrels and birds enjoying the seeds, insects and sap from its branches.
Yes, there’s a lot going on down there, but it’s not all bad. Peace.
The Dirty Sneaker 
