The Phoenix

 "This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning." - St. Augustine

It has been a long time since I've felt like writing much. Well, that's not true. Everything I write has seemed trite and insubstantial. What can I say that is meaningful in the face of what the world around us all has become? My words won't stop school shootings, reverse climate change, fix our dysfunctional political and justice system. What can I say in the face of such large, seemingly intractable problems?

I also haven't wanted to write much since my mom died. Watching someone die, being there for the death vigil, is a profoundly transformative experience, and even though it's been almost two years I'm still processing it. And it's really hard to talk about because how do you describe what it's like to help usher your parent to the end of their existence? There were many wonderful moments, actually, with my brothers and a cousin, who lives nearby and was able to join us for parts of the 3-day vigil. There were also some deeply moving moments while I waited for the family to assemble, when it was just me and my mom. I read out loud to her, just in case any part of her was still there and able to take comfort from my voice. I held her hand when I could. I learned that, even though I'd been reassuring her we would be fine without her and that she could let go, a big part of me would never be okay again. 

Columbine amid strawberries,
bluebells, tulips, and a grape trellis.

I have been forced into learning true acceptance, particularly of the fact that I will never have answers to many questions that I never thought to ask before it became too late.

I had to forgive, all at once, the ways in which we were imperfect together and to each other. She was not a perfect mom and I am a far from perfect daughter. I apologized to her, mostly for coming too late to an understanding of all the sacrifices she made for us, for me, and the choices she made. It wasn't until becoming a mother myself that I began to really understand my mom, which happened when we were already losing her to Alzheimer's.

I've spent a lot of time over the last two years meditating on death and life, and what is meaningful. One of the ways I think the best is while working in my garden. It's an incredible activity to do while thinking of death, because gardening is an inherently life giving, sustaining, and building activity. It's an act of hope. And I really need those things right now. In the face of all the horrible things I can't control, I can at least make my insignificant patch of earth better. Better for every creature that lives on and around this property, right down to the soil microbes.

All those white things are blueberry flowers.

Last summer's garden was awful. After about three years of only taking from the garden, giving not much back, the soil was pretty spent. I frantically searched for answers on how to make it better and landed on going back to basics: feed the soil. I mulched heavily, and went to convoluted lengths not to use straight tap water on the garden. (It might have helped that my kids broke our big sprinkler that covered the whole garden.) When we ran out of rain water I filled barrels with tap water to let it sit for a few days and get most of the chemicals out of it before putting it on the garden. It did seem to help, and we're working on putting in even more rain water storage.

I also did something that I considered pretty absurd before--I made my own "fertilizer" or weed tea. Grass clippings, dandelion leaves, worm poop from the vermicompost system, egg shells, even shrimp shells when we had some, all went into a bucket with rain water to sit and ferment. I started adding that to the garden and 

and

it worked. I honestly didn't expect it to, but it really did. Just a small amount, about a cup in a 2-gallon watering can, helped struggling plants. Tomatoes stopped getting blossom end rot, and I was able to actually get a decent harvest. Squashes that were almost dead burst back to life and produced. Everywhere I used this magical, horribly smelly weed "tea" life flooded back to the garden. I fed the soil and the soil started feeding us again. I made more weed tea over the winter, and have been watering all my new crops in with it to start them off in the right way. Once again it does appear to be working its magic.

Overview of the main garden.
Looks very mulchy and brown
but underneath is rich,
dark soil.

I'm also seeing even more the benefits of the work I did last year with mulches. At the end of spring I laid down a fair amount of homemade compost, but only on a few rows because that's all I had. Some of the best I saved for seed starting. My garlic/tomato/sunflower row, at the back, got some of the worst, least finished compost. It is honestly mostly unfinished woodchip mulch. I was hoping that, since there was so much time between that mulching (Jan/Feb) and the planting of tomatoes (May) it would break down some more, but it looked like nothing more than a bed of large wood chips when I went to plant. But the garlic is doing well so I crossed my fingers. On tomato planting day I dug down a couple of inches and marveled at how dark, rich, and friable the soil there suddenly was. The wood mulch was all on top, protecting the soil underneath. The mulches from last year are almost entirely broken down into beautiful soil, with a good layer of fresh mulch on top now to protect it. Even after almost a week of hot, sunny days and no rain, the soil under the mulch is beautifully damp.

The homemade compost was just what was in our round yard waste bin, which is not a hot compost system. This means that it had a ton of weed seeds waiting to germinate. But, it also meant that the lettuce seeds I tried to save and accidentally threw in there were perfectly viable. So were a few chard seeds that went through. I have volunteer lettuce popping up among my tomatoes, squashes, peppers, and brassicas. It's an old adage that you shouldn't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. Well, in the garden I don't believe in interrupting food plants that want to grow. Even if they're not where I wanted them to be, who am I to argue with them about where they should grow? If they're easy to separate then I will happily put them where they're "meant" to be, but otherwise they can grow in their chosen place. This especially works with lettuce,

Sugar pie pumpkin with
volunteer lettuce understory.

which is a short-lived crop in summer so it won't take too much root space or nutrients from its companions. (And hopefully this time I'll be able to actually save the seed instead of accidentally dumping it in the compost.) 

I start most of my plants in old plastic tubs and containers that I've saved--from small yogurt cups to large Costco-sized sour cream containers for the squashes. Tomatoes are mostly in papery milk jugs with the tops cut off, because tomatoes have roots that grow deep but not particularly wide. There was plenty of space on top for the accidental lettuce seeds, but also to purposefully double-plant with companion herbs or flowers for some crops. Last year I accidentally dropped a couple of carrot seeds in with some tomatoes and they not only germinated but those were the two best carrots I grew all summer. This year I companion planted carrots with tomatoes in a more purposeful way. It's not a ton of carrots, I have more in a separate row, but since there's the space and it's worked well before, why not? Basil (Genovese, tulsi, and Thai) were companion planted with other tomatoes and with peppers. One pepper got a nasturtium, which is growing beautifully and will help draw pollinators to the garden when it starts to bloom. Not all crops came up in every container--a few squashes never germinated for example--so it's nice to have not wasted the soil/compost and my time/effort. That zucchini might not have come up in that pot but there are some beautiful lettuces and a basil there instead, so it wasn't at all a loss.

Leaf on the right is severely slug damaged,
leaf on the left is after I started
picking slugs out of the garden.

Feeding the soil has helped in many ways, but it can't help with all the pests. Slugs have been absolutely wrecking my garden, having mowed down my first two successions of brassicas in their entirety. I've been going out pretty much every evening and every early morning to pick slugs off my crops and drop them into a jar of soapy water to drown. My goal is, in fact, total slug eradication. In my garden. They're welcome to live elsewhere. Of course this will never happen, and every day I find dozens more slugs. But I've also got brassicas and peas that will actually live to produce food, so I'm content with my efforts.

The one crop that I won't put in the garden anymore is my Napa cabbage. I've started so. many. of them over the past couple of years and have yet to harvest a single one because of the damn slugs. Apparently Napa cabbage is like slug heroin, and even a larger plant will get eaten to death in one night. This year I'm growing it in food safe buckets in the

Napa cabbage in the greenhouse

 greenhouse. I get the buckets by asking for old frosting buckets from the grocery store bakeries when I'm there. (These are also what I'm making my weed "tea" in.)

The next major change we had to do was to put a fence around my garden. Between us and my siblings we've had four puppies regularly running around the yard over the last three years, and for not insignificant stretches (weeks) we've had FIVE DOGS in our house due to dogsitting for friends and family. Yelling at dogs to get out of the damn garden! and chasing after them was clearly not working, nor was having me plant something and then cry because the dogs ran through again and dug it all up. That's why I didn't have any kind of a winter garden recently, because it got run over and dug up until I gave up. So, a fence was a necessity. My wonderful brother made it for me out of materials we already had. I resisted a fence for a long time because I worried about the shade it would cast, but now I've fully embraced it as the opportunity it is. I can grow vertically, and use its support for tall things like my sunflowers. My peas, sugar pie pumpkins (with extra support), zucchini, beans, and acorn squash (with

Troublemakers!

support) can all grow up the fence, instead of requiring complicated or secondary trellising. I'm also adding more flowers to the vegetable garden this year, instead of keeping them segregated, and nasturtiums will grow beautifully up the fence. My brother put a decorative wooden trellis over the gate, and I've got a nasturtium planted there. Hopefully by late summer it will all be as beautiful as it is productive.

The final big change this year is that we got chickens. For so, so many reasons, not least of which was my younger daughter asking when we could go back to visit my aunt in Maine because "I want to feed the chickens again". The kids didn't know we were getting chickens until the day it happened, and it's made them so happy. They have spent hours staring into the box where the chicks are being kept until we get the coop set up. They'll pop up at random times and declare, "I'm going to go check on the chickens!" and run over there. We haven't officially named the chicks yet--we were going to wait until they get their adult feathers, in part because we didn't want one of them to die and then have to deal with a child whose baby chick that they named had died. Thankfully no chicks have died, and unofficially the kids have claimed the two Easter Eggers as theirs and named them. (Hot Dog and Sunny.) As we have six chicks and six people in the house (with my brother and brother-in-law), we each get to name one.

They're so cute!

The chickens, in addition to weed control and eggs, will be an excellent source of compost. They'll feed the humans and the soil, and the good soil will feed us humans even more. I'm very excited for all of it. Wondering where to put the chicken shit is, in this case, a very good problem to have.

My garden is imperfect, as all gardens are. The mint and bindweed have found their way back in and despite thoroughly going through to dig out mint in the worst rows, it's everywhere. But that's okay. The corn is starting to pop up between the mint anyway, so it's going to be fine.

I'm still working my way out of the soil deficit I built for myself but it's rewarding to see my hard work paying off, and to know that I'm helping to create even more life around me. After all my meditations on death, I've come to the conclusion that my purpose, at any rate, is to foster as much life as I can, no matter how tiny that life may be. I think that's a pretty good purpose, and one my parents would be very proud of.