It's Alive!

I've been gardening a lot this year and thinking that I should blog about it, if only to have a record of the slow transformation of our backyard. I decided to resurrect this blog rather than start a new one. So here goes:

My Zen teacher, Linc Rhodes, was here last weekend to lead a retreat. We had some free time and spent part of it in the garden. Linc staked up my two healthy tomato heirloom tomato plants ( a Lemon Drop & a Speckled Roman, both from Seed Savers Exchange) and reminded me to pinch the new growth that appears exactly in the joint between two stems. This is to encourage the plants to produce fruit rather than leaves. He also reminded me to give the peppers some sulfur by burying match sticks upside down in the ground near them. Yesterday morning, I gave him the first of the tomato harvest, a single hybrid cherry tomato. This is the smallest possible token of my gratitude to him for all his teaching and help.

This morning I watered everything except the tomatoes, which had two good soaks over the weekend, one due to a storm, the other due to my efforts. I also gave two of the tomato plants a little extra support (the Lemon Drop & one of the hybrids), pinched some unwelcome growth, pulled grasses out of the summer squash / cucumber / winter squash bed, and planted a little 1' x 2' patch of Miner's Lettuce (Bountiful Gardens) and a nearly four foot row of Painted Pony Beans (Seedsavers) along side the most pathetic tomato plant in my garden, a hybrid Margaret picked up at the TCF's spring plant sale. I plan to put in two more rows over the next few weeks. These beans can be eaten green; left on the plant they'll dry into cooking beans. Sixty and eighty days to harvest, respectively.

I did a bit more rigorous work, moving a barrowful of compost into the tomato / bean bed and weeding out some tall grasses that were a) encroaching on a path and b) harboring chiggers. It is hard for me to want to save those sentient beings. Perhaps they too are my great teachers? If so, I must admit that I am a reluctant, even hostile student!