::: the incredible sweet corn massacre :::

Yes, there were some tears. Yes, my back and feet are aching. But now we have twenty-two quarts of corn and five quarts of basil in the freezer. There's still a ton (Okay, maybe not a ton. Maybe a few gallons.) more basil to harvest, but some will be pesto and some will go into sauce and bruschetta. Most of it, though, will be put into more freezer bags and pulled out in the middle of winter when heating up the oven to make pizza is more fun than it is during this hot, humid August.

Good Day, Sunshine!

Remember those gorgeous Spring days when the sun was shining, and you'd drag the record player to the other room and stick the speakers in the windows, find your favorite Beatles record, and play "Good Day, Sunshine" while your mom pulled weeds and you raked the crass clippings into a wheelbarrow that would be hauled up to the vegetable garden and thrown down between the rows of onions, carrots, peas and lettuce?

Remember how the wind would blow ever so gently, just enough to cool the sweat on your brow, but not so wild as to toss around the piles of clippings you'd worked so hard to rake? If you did a good job, there might be a trip to the ice cream shop in your future, or a few dollars in your pocket to use at that summer's festival. Every once in a while, you'd stop for a drink of ice water or fresh mint tea, and you'd linger a bit too long, and your mom would shout out a reminder to get back to work, and you'd haul yourself back in from the roof to go back to the sunshine and grass and dandelion fluff and bickering with your sisters or brothers. And if no one was looking, you could lay back in the cool grass under the tree or stretch out in the hammock until someone noticed and cried "no fair!" And then you'd grudgingly pick up a rake and get back to work. At least until you could sneak away long enough to take a peek into the bluebird box and see that there's a mama bird sitting on her tiny sky blue eggs.

Yeah.

That's what my kids' day is like today, right down to the record player in the window. Since their sister sent her Beatles vinyls home from college yesterday, they've been spinnin' the tunes, and it's a soundtrack custom-made for a day like today. "Here Comes the Sun" and "Good Day, Sunshine" are in rotation.

"I need to laugh, and when the sun is out
I've got something I can laugh about
I feel good, in a special way
I'm in love and it's a sunny day."

I'm telling you, there could barely be a better day, unless I had a maid to clean my house and a cook to make dinner while I'm outside digging in the dirt, spreading manure and sowing seeds.

I have work to do inside, filling out forms and finishing video projects, but I just can't tear myself away from the beauty of this day. I absolutely want to soak up every minute of this paradise.

Calling All Organic Gardeners: The Forty-Eight Hour Contest

On Saturday, I will be giving a presentation on organic gardening for the home gardener at our local public library as part of an Everyday Organic program and would be pleased as punch if you would send me your very favorite organic gardening tips. What works for you? What doesn't? What is your favorite home-gardening tool? Book? Website? Mulch? I would love tips on everything from pest control, to soil enhancement/management, to weed control, from veggie gardening, to flower gardening, to natural landscaping. 

I'll choose one name at random from the comments to send a fun gardening care package featuring some of my favorite seeds (including a few from my home garden), a Mary Jane's Farm magazine and some other excellent gardening stuff. 

Offer ends at midnight on Friday, so comment now, and spread the word! 

::: ode to the cherry tree :::

Blow-Up

Our cherry tree
Unfolds whole loads
Of pink-white bloom -
It just explodes.

For three short days
Its petals last.
Oh, what a waste.
But what a blast.

~X. J. Kennedy

When we bought our first piece of property in a rural county eight and a half years ago, one of the first things I did was take seriously author Gene Logsdon's advice to plant fruit trees first. I ordered a selection of bareroot dormant saplings from Schlabach's Nursery and waited. Our good friend Richard, who had sold us the property, came with a tractor and auger attachment and dutifully dug holes where I pointed, which I then filled with organic junk--manure, peat, sawdust--and I was ready for my trees to arrive. 

When they came, life was moving a bit too fast, so I followed the instructions, keeping what looked like dead sticks moist and cool. I couldn't believe, looking at these things, that they would ever actually be trees. And I was right, for some of them. The nectarine and one plum never did grow. One peach tree filled with peaches last summer and then, before they ripened, before the promise of peach jam and peach pie, they all withered and the tree died. It stands there still. I haven't yet had the heart to cut it down. I kept hoping that, this year, in the face of all that is obvious, it would still bloom and produce fruit, but it has not. 

The cherry tree, however, which was actually planted very first and came not from Schlabach's Nursery but from a greenhouse sale the very first year we were here, was planted in the fall of 2000 and has grown into a fine and beautiful tree. It's called a Hedelfingen Cherry tree and is supposed to produce sweet cherries. Unfortunately, we haven't really had much fruit from it, and the cherries are not large and sweet, but small and light in color. I planted a companion for this tree in hopes of providing a pollinator, but that tree hasn't grown so well and even had to work hard to recover from the damages caused by renegade goats. 

But the blooms on the Hedelfingen tree are beautiful, and when I look out my kitchen window to see the bursts of white inviting the bees to come and feast, my heart knows that it's spring. It asks me if I'd like to stop what I'm doing, pack a picnic lunch, and relax beneath its boughs. 

I'm so glad that I took Mr. Logsdon's advice. I do hope to come up with a good pest prevention program, as my poor trees are constantly attacked by every aphid and curculio there can possibly be, but, still, the benefits of beauty remain. 

Follow Mr. Logsdon's advice. Do yourself and the bees a favor. Plant a fruit tree today! 

SPRING!

In Which God Smiles on My Garden

I'm so amazed by this incredible weather! And what are the chances that I get this weather AND a spot of energy to go along with it? It's, like, amazazing!

And can you believe that I got all of my red onions planted this morning? So, get this. My flower beds are cleaned out, my manure is spread, my asparagus is coming up, I will finally have RHUBARB this year, after years of failed attempts, my garlic is sprouting, the chives are up, my fall bulbs are coming up, the lilac and hydrangea lived, AND I planted three rows of red onions! I'm almost afraid to believe it all. It's like the heavens opened up and God said, "I love you, Thicket Dweller." It's incredible, I tell ya. Just incredible.

I hope to scatter some lettuce seeds today. Maybe some arugula, some romaine, maybe even some parsley and cilantro so I can stop buying it when I make ranch dressing.

I know that it's pitiful that things like this get me so excited, but what can I say? These are the very reasons I moved to the country! And after eight years of struggling with garden and livestock issues, it's incredibly refreshing to actually have something go right.

Hallelujah!

A Day Hijacked

My day was hijacked. I boarded it this morning with a plan, a destination, and before I knew it, it was changing course and there was nothing I could do about it.

It wasn't a bad thing. Actually, it was quite a wonderful day, but it just wasn't what I had planned. I had intended to take Sweetheart for a walk before her piano lesson, but it turned out that I had to hit the pharmacy for my dad's prescriptions instead. That was okay. While we were there, we realized that it was St. Patty's day, and, being woefully without any wearin' of the green, we bought a pair of obnoxious green light-up rings, and Sweetheart bought the fabulous wig you see our lovely models Rejoice, Sweetheart, Bo and me wearing. Sweetheart sported her new do for piano lessons, giving her piano teacher a chuckle.

Rejoice is taking piano lessons, too, for the first time in his life. When I went to pick him up, the thrift store manager told me that the volunteer who was supposed to run the register that morning was sick and asked if I'd be willing to work. While we didn't get to take our walk after the lesson, either, Sweetheart and I enjoyed our time working at our favorite thrift store.

We left there and headed for home where my dad and Monet were waiting to go for a bike ride. Ohioans, can you believe how absolutely GORGEOUS it was today? I spent the rest of the afternoon working in my gardens. It was such a thrill to see little green shoots on the lilac I planted last year, and the hydrangea, and the bulbs that are coming up (my first bulbs, planted in the fall!). I spent a good amount of time clearing the dead stuff out of the perennial garden, where I found columbine leaves, fragrant catmint, the beginnings of lilies and irises, some brave lupine shoots, a tidy line of salvia, and little clumps of lamb's ear. The herb garden so generously cared for my chives, but also a clump of hyssop and some other green piles of something or other. We'll know them when we see them. Bard's garden is so full of good stuff it's almost hard to believe. And when I ventured into my veggie garden to check on the garlic and clear away last year's dead asparagus stalks, I found this year's shoots poking out of the ground. Asparagus! Soon!!! The line of garlic marching along beside the asparagus is reaching up even higher into the upper world than it was last I checked. Houdin spread the manure that was deposited there over the winter by a dear man from church who generously brought me a truckload of the black, strawy gold. I was surprised by how far across the garden the manure reached once it was spread. This garden is going to be the bestest ever yet, I tell you. The very bestest ever yet.

The Baby had ballet class, and I hoofed it over to a church lady's house to deposit Houdin, who spent several hours there raking fallen pine cones. He's trying to earn money to go to Honduras in TWELVE DAYS! It will be his first major trip, and he's very excited about it, but isn't anywhere near his financial goal. He and a group of men from the community are going for a little less than two weeks to build a home for a poor single homeless mom there. The land has been purchased and the money for the home is being donated. These nine or ten guys will go and do the rough work and then locals will finish the interior. Houdin is pretty stoked about the opportunity but still needs to come up with about $1000 to pay the group leader back for the ticket. The passport is in processing. Pray that it gets here in time! His plane ticket is already purchased!

After a great St. Patty's day dinner of reubens and potato chips, I read aloud at the dinner table from Sailing Acts, a book by Linford Stutzman about taking his sabbatical to sail the routes of the Apostle Paul. The kids don't know it yet, but Stutzman is going to be a guest speaker at our church soon. When I was finished with the chapter, Rejoice and I had a very good discussion about his family's history, the difficulty he had in making the decision and arrangements to come to the United States for this learning opportunity, his hopes for the future, and his plans for the remainder of his stay. He shared with me how difficult it is to get books in Swaziland, how the library is hot and inadequate, and how getting a library card is not an easy task, and I started cooking up a plan for him to be able to start his own personal library that he'll be able to share with others in his community. So many of the young men are having a struggle with depression due to idleness that comes from the very high unemployment rate and so many other battles. Rejoice really wants to be a leader, wants to make a difference in these young men's lives. I so wish I could do much more. Rejoice is such a giving and tender person, and I can see that he could truly make a difference in his community. Please pray for him as he thinks about his return to his home in just a few short months that he can be the change he really hopes to be.

And now, here I am, practically falling asleep at the keyboard, but I wanted to write about today, even if it was in snippets. While it didn't help my laundry situation, or my cluttered bedroom, I'm glad that today didn't go according to plan.

Not my plan, anyway.

Would ya take a look at that!

When that March wind blows strong, and the temperature climbs out of the winter depths, and the buds of the silver maples appear, I pull on my mud boots and venture out into the gardens for a peek on their progress. I don't dare even breath the word "Spring" until I see this:

That, my friends, is the reality of Spring. That is the promise of baked potatoes, fresh summer salads, creamy soups and sour-cream scrambled eggs. There is a truth in chives that's unarguable, unmistakable, and when I see them thrusting their green lives into the first sign of warmth, I know that what they're saying is a fact; winter is almost over, my love. Asparagus, arugula, romaine and sweet peas are not far behind. And then comes nasturtiums, hollyhocks, marigolds and leeks. And THEN, you KNOW it's not long before eggplants and summer squash and tomatoes and watermelons!

And this year? Because I chose very deliberately not to be a lazy bum last Fall, I happily discovered a beautiful, neat row of this in my veggie garden today:

Do you know what that is? Do ya? Do ya? It's GARLIC! My very first crop of garlic ever, after several unsuccessful and half-hearted attempts at planting the fabulously delicious and absolutely necessary bulbs, I've finally got garlic!

How could life possibly get any better than that?

Feeling Like Fall...

The leaves are changing. The bag of apples is sitting in the cellar waiting to be pummeled into applesauce. The echinacea flowers have paled and become ragged...


The garden has almost stopped producing, save an abundance of nasturtiums, a patch of leeks, a handful of tomatoes, and some stubbornly persistent Brussels sprouts.


I'm feeling at once inspired and a bit depressed. I so love the process of growing things and things growing that I'm often tempted to move to a more temperate climate, somewhere I might be able to grow things year-round, or at least know that I'm able, should I want to, should I have the energy. A greenhouse, I think, would come in handy, but the cost is prohibitive, and the learning curve is steep, I fear. And maybe I'm also intimidated by the thought of performance anxiety. If I have a greenhouse, I confess, I may not be as productive with it as I should be. Not a failure I care to venture into. And yet, I know that I'm getting no younger. My knees and stomach and bladder and all else are aging so quickly that my mind can barely catch up with the fact.

A venture into the garden, however, proves that I should choose inspiration. Yes, there is an abundance of death and endings...

...withered tomato vines, faded scarecrow clothing...

...brown marigold heads hanging low, rotting apples lying all over the ground--and yet there is so much life, too. Honeybees hover lazily from one sanvitalia flower to the next.

A closer inspection of the prolifically blooming nasturtiums...

...uncovers another watermelon ripe on the vine, as well as a half-dozen volunteer mammoth sweet pea tendrils winding up their fence...

...a testament to the laziness that prevented me from pulling up the wire-coated supports or cleaning every last one of the spent pea pods in the spring. The climbing black-eyed susan vine that refused to climb all summer long has now taken flight, grabbing onto the nearby spikes of Victoria Blue salvia, lending their color to a lovely contrast.

Four O'Clock seeds sown and quickly forgotten have grown, thrived and bloomed.


I've not planted Four O'Clocks before, so a quick search lends a bit of information:

"Plant seeds in early spring or divide tubers any time. If you soak the large black seeds in water overnight before planting they will germinate quicker. If you get one that you like especially, you can dig up the tuber at the end of the season and replant it next spring. Four o'clocks will self seed."

Swiss chard, eggplant, Brussells sprouts and violas are all happily producing.

A pile of squash sits on the picnic table, eager for roasting.

The "Etain" perennial violas I plunged into the fertile soil of the perennial bed last fall performed in the spring and have raised their ruffled violet-rimmed yellow faces for an encore performance.

"Shapely are all till compared with Etain...Dear are all till compared with Etain."

And the Zebrina Althea is growing everywhere, thanks to the seeds it dropped last fall.

Of course, in their dying, the flower heads drop their seeds everywhere, eager to be fruitful and multiply, eager to fill the whole earth with their goodness.




The bronze fennel that flank my front stairs is proof of that, its ferny voluminousness lending a jungle-like quality to the garden, the seeds and leaves always there for snacking, happy to leave a licorice taste on your tongue.


And the beautiful fall bed rests in pastel wonder, soft greens, soft violets, and the oh-so-soft leaves of the lamb's ear blending with the pinkish purple hues of the flowering kale and cabbage.



And so, today, gentle reader, I offer to you the endings and beginnings of this year's garden. Send me a note at triple maple farm AT gmail DOT com, eliminating the spaces and replacing the words with the appropriate symbols, and I'll send you a smattering of my garden seeds, and maybe a bit of this or that as well.

Delight in the season with me.

Things I Love Right Now...

And when I say things I love "right now," I mean things that are particularly close to my heart at this time. The normal things that I love, like my family and life and God, go without saying. These are just things that make me all warm and fuzzy at this time in my life.

My new iPod Touch. This is just love, pure and simple. It's a thing of beauty. How did I live without this for so long?

Podcasts. I mean, wow. I know I'm W-A-Y behind the times, here, but there is just nothing in the world like listening to This American Life or The Splendid Table at my own convenience.

The Library. I go in phases with this one. Sometimes I love my library, and sometimes I leave her in the dust. Usually the latter comes after me misplacing some very expensive book for a great amount of time, or one of my children misplacing some CD for a great amount of time, and me being too embarrassed to pay the fine for it. But then I break down and return to the arms of her comforting shelves once again.

Books on CD. This is part of the loves mentioned above. The Library + Books on CD + iPod = lovelovelove. The problem is that I listen to go to sleep, and then I can't remember where I left off. Currently, I'm listening to Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian, whose book Midwives was my first exposure to him. I even got to do a little interview with him and get some signed copies back when I worked for an independent bookstore. On deck: So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger.

CDs. Another library/ipod combo. There are many CDs that I own but are not playable anymore, or works that I own on cassette, and then there are those things that I've heard smatterings of but would like more, so I find them at the library and pop them onto my iPod. Mmmm.

Interlibrary Loan. Pure genius. Makes all of the above even more fabulous.

iCal. This is a great Mac application that also happens to be on my iPod, so when I plug in my iPod, iCal syncs them both and I always have my calendar updated. Quite nice, really.

Electricity. We were without this for about a week when Ike swirled his coattails across o-HI-o. I was not a happy person while I was without refrigeration, water and computer access. Electricity is my friend.

Free time and The Jar. See my previous post about this one.

This gorgeous weather. I do wish I would get outside and enjoy it more. I love these cool, sunny days and could definitely handle them all year long.

Garden-fresh tomatoes with a sprinkling of kosher salt and feta cheese. This is food-love at its simplest.

Apple season. I can't wait to get to the orchard tomorrow and get some of the bestest apples on the planet.

Clean refrigerators. When we had our power outage, it forced me to clean out our three fridges, so now I have some very nice-looking appliances.

facebook. Yes, I have all but neglected my poor blog because of my new jones, facebook. I say new, but I've really been enjoying it for some time.

Text Twirl. A facebook application that is quite addictive. I find myself making words out of series' of letters wherever I am.

Raw milk. We had gone without it for a couple of months, but now it's back, and, boy, am I happy. That cream that sits on the top after the milk has been stored overnight is pure gold.

I think that's it for now.

What do you love?

::: late summer afternoon :::

::: what summer looks like :::

The view from my kitchen window. Look closely. :-)

Tomatoes, hollyhocks and a little girl.

The Scarecrow.

Petunias in a clay pot. See the lilies in the background?

An old, old, old cooler full of flowers.