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May the Circle be Unbroken

In one of her first posts, 20MinuteJan mentioned her hope about how our backyard could be a little bit of the garden of Eden. Maybe so. Recently we experienced something more akin to the Expulsion from Eden.

A couple weeks ago, Jan attempted to finish the edging on the circular bed which would allow us to put the final plants in the ground. I thought I had several good reasons not to help, some of which were actually agriculturally sound–but beside the point. While she toiled, I stood on the back porch and offered my constructive criticism. Heck, I basically explained how she was going about the whole task incorrectly. I’m sure she worked longer than her 20 minutes because I had more than enough material for a good hour long lecture. It ended with Jan throwing down her tools in disgust and storming past me into the house. In retrospect, I’m fortunate that it didn’t end in her planting that spade squarely in my chest.

Jan and I are equally intelligent, equally opinionated and we’re a matched set when it comes to stubbornness as well — even if I think I know more about gardening. For days now, the edging has sat out back like a reticulated, black snake lolling on the straw. There was a pile of bricks knocked over and abandoned like the Tower of Babel. And most galling, in the garden wedge where our eggplant and kale should be, there were weeds a foot tall.

Today, we were given a miracle. Somehow, Jan and I worked together to get the edging on the circle bed finished. The hot bright sun made it seem much longer than 20 minutes but I think the edging only took 20 minutes while the bricks and preparing the soil maybe took another 20. The technical details aren’t as important as the miracle. The circle of our garden was broken and something even more miraculous than apology and forgiveness — in my case, mostly forgiveness — was needed to make the circle whole again. And that miracle happened. The bed feels fuller than before. The eggplant are there. The kale too. Planting them was nearly no effort whatsoever despite the sun.

I usually bristle when folks try to apply religious images too directly to everyday life; I never would have compared our backyard to Eden. But when I look out the back window at the garden’s perfection — temporary, partial — I can think of no other word to describe it except “miracle.”

Posted in • Sitting Still.

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By 20 Minute Jim – June 9, 2007

Volunteers, Again

I no sooner finished writing the post on the volunteer “sunflowers” then they reveal themselves to be something far less desirable. I should known better than to attempt to guess the species at the two-leaf stage, but I got a little carried away. My supposed-sunflowers grew freely for a couple more days before they turned out to be what Jim calls pokeweed.

So I spent my 20 minutes in the garden today pulling it up.

On my knees sorting foliage, I did have the good fortune to discover another one of my favorite volunteers mixed in with the pokeweed in the asparagus bed. I carefully worked around that, pulling the weeds and laying them down for a mulch layer. I found 10 or 12 datura plants.

We’ve never planted datura or moonflower in our yard, but we’ve had some growing for the last four or five years. They are a really pretty plant available at gardening centers. The large dark green, roughly heart-shaped leaves grow profusely in a bush-like shape and the flowers are lovely white trumpets that open in the evening. They have a pretty reliable chance of re-seeding themselves too. Once again, the spot where they have come up in the past has been greatly disturbed by the construction so I am happy and thoroughly surprised to find the moonflowers returning to our backyard.

Posted in • Growing.

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By 20 Minute Jan – June 6, 2007

Volunteers

One of my special garden delights are the volunteers, the plants you don’t plant but that you find growing there anyway. I’m not sure that volunteers are something that everyone loves, but I do nonetheless. Because we use a lot of homemade compost, perhaps we get more than the average amount of volunteer plants in our garden.

Cherry tomatoes have been one of our traditional volunteer plants. We haven’t planted a cherry tomato plant in probably 5 years, but we’ve enjoyed a small harvest of cherry tomatoes each summer. These come up later in the season and usually in the same back area of our garden, although given the construction of the last year, I’ll be really surprised if they return.

For me, one of the coolest volunteers was stinging nettles. They grew up on their own accord behind our old barn where they thrived in several small clumps for the last 10 years. Nettles can be used in homemade remedies that I’ve pondered making, although I haven’t made them yet. They also make an good stir-fried dish when they are young and tender in the spring; when they are cooked, they completely loose their sting. Jim is a happy tester for the weird things I come up with.

Volunteers provide mystery. Why do they decide to grow where they do? And, occasionally, what are they? Several years ago, when our garden reached the late-summer unruly stage, I moved some huge yellow squash leaf to discover something already quite big and round and green. My heart leapt and I decided on the spot that we were going to have a watermelon– a volunteer watermelon! I couldn’t wait! The plant got bigger and rounder as late summer came. Then the ribs sunk in more and the plant obtained its true form: a pumpkin, still green, but slowly becoming orange. I was admittedly disappointed when it wasn’t the watermelon I so desired, but we did get a jolly jack o’ lantern out of it at Halloween.

This year we have a massive patch of volunteer sunflowers emerging next to the new asparagus bed. I’m trying to decide if I can leave them there or how many; I don’t want the asparagus bed disturbed. Sunflowers have rather shallow but good-sized roots. I’ll need to decide in the next couple of weeks how much I want to thin out this sunflower volunteer army.

Posted in • Growing.

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By 20 Minute Jan – June 1, 2007

Gardening with Neighbors

In the suburban world of my youth, all yards were clearly demarcated by fences. Not only were all backyards fenced in, they almost all had exactly the same style chainlinked fence. Oh, there were a few holdouts who still had wooden posts from an earlier era, but not very many of them. Even in that case, property lines were made very clear.

The lack of standardized fencing between properties in the little hippie enclave we call home has always been one of its charms for me. On one side, a drive way separates our land from the neighbor’s, more or less. On the other, the saddest of gappy little wire fences barely slows the squirrels down as they pass from our yard to theirs.

This year things went a step further when we talked with an elderly neighbor who still likes to garden despite the limitations of age. She moved into the house a few years ago and the backyard overflows with the mature flower garden put in by the man three owners back. No one since has succeeded in keeping up with it. Our neighbor has had a few vegetable beds cleared over the last couple years. She usually gets some help putting in a dozen or so plants in her yard.

This year we’ve come up with what I hope will be an ingenious exchange: we’ll help look after her vegetable garden in exchange for the use of some of her space. Seeing as we frequent the Farmers’ Market for seedlings, we’re going to pick up whatever else she needs. We said we’ll assist with the planting and the weeding. In July, when she goes away for her vacation, we’ll look after her garden.

I’m most excited about being able to grow some of the items my partner has in the past insisted take up too much room, like squash and melon, perhaps. One often wishes for just a little more space. This year, we have it. I’m looking forward to what we might do.

Posted in • Growing.

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By 20 Minute Jan – May 30, 2007

Solar Cooking: The Best Brownies

After a week of disappointingly cloudy and rainy and/or cold days, today was absolutely glorious. The sky was clear and blue; the sun shone brightly all day long.

It was an inspiring day for working in the garden and for solar cooking. Since my cupboard was bare of easy short-cut baking mixes, I had a look around a great site for solar cooking, specifically the recipe wiki part of the site. The desserts, as usual, caught my eye and I decided to try the recipe for solar baked brownies. The recipe called for ingredients I had in my kitchen– another sign. I adjusted the baking time from “one hour”, surely California standards, to my usual Michigan “as long as it’s sunny” period. Again, you can’t burn food when solar cooking so go for it.

These solar baked brownies were a hit. They were utterly delicious and close to my ideal of chewy brownies. The ease of preparation was another big plus. We’ll be making them again soon.

Posted in • Cooking.

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By 20 Minute Jan – May 28, 2007