I have a habit of half writing posts and never publishing them. Today I was out in the garden and I wanted to write about the joys of working with the land. I found this post that I wrote last year and it sums up exactly how I felt today:
On a much brighter note, life has been good. Excellent really. It's been busy and summer style hot around here, just the way I like it. I've got 36 tomato plants, 12 eggplant, six cabbage and cauliflower, a slew of arugula, spinach, broccoli and parsley in the ground. I thought we were going to just go straight into summer but today it got a little cool. I'm wearing pants and it feels nice to have a little respite.
I love planting. I love weeding and watering. I'm sure I'm not the first person to wax and wane on the joys of gardening but I will anyway. It's a great way to relax and just kind of meditate. Even if the bunnies and deer and moles ate all my plants I wouldn't regret all the work I've done. It's just good clean fun. How I lie! It's not clean. I love dirt. Ours is clay and it's so great to play in. Dirt makes excellent hair spray. As hairs get in my face I slab some wet dirt into them and voila! As I was digging the holes for my tomato plants I kept finding what looked to be pieces of brick. But it wasn't. I took my hori hori knife to it and cut off a little slab, as though it was a block of cheese. I mashed the slab into my skin. Orange paint! I assumed that this was exactly what Native Americans used to paint themselves with for parties. So I decorated my face and arms and legs with orange streaks.
The chicks are getting big. I purchased some meal worms from Tractor Supply and they eat them right out of my hands. We're becoming good friends at our meal worm parties. There is one hen, who I've named Punky (as in Brewster) who is the dominatrix. She flaps and flies in the box to get the worms. She'd previously been identified as a pecker, pecking my other chicks. After a little isolation this issue resolved.
Update from today:
It has taken a bit longer to warm up this year. So far I've planted arugala, lettuce, romanesco broccoli, regular broccoli, brocoli rabe, cilantro, sage, chives, pennyroyal, parsley, brussel sprouts and strawberries. I've got more land than I can plant, so I dedicated a whole strip to sunflowers. We also planted 15 blueberry plants. The asparagus I planted last year is thriving.
Inside I have tomatoes and peppers and basil almost ready to go. I'm waiting until it's super warm to put them in. While I started most of my plants from seed last year, this year I planted ALL of my plants from seeds. They're all heirloom seeds from seedsavers.org, so I'll be able to save my own seed this year and maybe never have to buy seed again.
On a whim, I bought three rhode island red chicks today. I'd been wanting some of that breed and they just happened to be in the store when I was buying chicken food, so I had to get them. I'm very excited!
Today was the first full day I spent outside. It felt amazing. All my winter doubts were washed away. Working land, planting, is so therapeutic. I know it's not for everybody, but it's definitely for me. I love all aspects of growing: soil preparation, putting the plants into the ground, weeding and tending the plants. In addition to just enjoying the actual work, my efforts are paid in delicious food that I've created from scratch. I can't think of many things we do in the modern world that provide the same level of satisfaction and pride. Maybe baby making is the last frontier of this sort of practice.
Karl Marx had a theory (or two) about capitalist society. Specifically, he noted that factory workers put together parts on an assembly line, and don't get the joy or satisfaction of creating a project from scratch. He thought this "detachment" of work was bad for the soul. I have to agree. It seems so sad to spend the majority of your productive hours doing something that may be meaningless. I find gardening to be the opposite of this phenomenon. Given that we live in a capitalistic, materialistic society not many people get to enjoy growing things on the scale that I do. I consider myself privileged to have the opportunity that I have. I hope for the sake of humanity and the planet that as a society we can move towards a world in which we all take more stake in what we do and create. Food would be a great place to start as many people are suffering from preventable diseases of horrendous nutrition. I don't know Karl Marx's opinion on gardening, or if he had one, but I think he would've made a great gardening buddy.
I'm expecting a post from a guest blogger from the north. Stay tuned!
On a much brighter note, life has been good. Excellent really. It's been busy and summer style hot around here, just the way I like it. I've got 36 tomato plants, 12 eggplant, six cabbage and cauliflower, a slew of arugula, spinach, broccoli and parsley in the ground. I thought we were going to just go straight into summer but today it got a little cool. I'm wearing pants and it feels nice to have a little respite.
I love planting. I love weeding and watering. I'm sure I'm not the first person to wax and wane on the joys of gardening but I will anyway. It's a great way to relax and just kind of meditate. Even if the bunnies and deer and moles ate all my plants I wouldn't regret all the work I've done. It's just good clean fun. How I lie! It's not clean. I love dirt. Ours is clay and it's so great to play in. Dirt makes excellent hair spray. As hairs get in my face I slab some wet dirt into them and voila! As I was digging the holes for my tomato plants I kept finding what looked to be pieces of brick. But it wasn't. I took my hori hori knife to it and cut off a little slab, as though it was a block of cheese. I mashed the slab into my skin. Orange paint! I assumed that this was exactly what Native Americans used to paint themselves with for parties. So I decorated my face and arms and legs with orange streaks.
The chicks are getting big. I purchased some meal worms from Tractor Supply and they eat them right out of my hands. We're becoming good friends at our meal worm parties. There is one hen, who I've named Punky (as in Brewster) who is the dominatrix. She flaps and flies in the box to get the worms. She'd previously been identified as a pecker, pecking my other chicks. After a little isolation this issue resolved.
Update from today:
It has taken a bit longer to warm up this year. So far I've planted arugala, lettuce, romanesco broccoli, regular broccoli, brocoli rabe, cilantro, sage, chives, pennyroyal, parsley, brussel sprouts and strawberries. I've got more land than I can plant, so I dedicated a whole strip to sunflowers. We also planted 15 blueberry plants. The asparagus I planted last year is thriving.
Inside I have tomatoes and peppers and basil almost ready to go. I'm waiting until it's super warm to put them in. While I started most of my plants from seed last year, this year I planted ALL of my plants from seeds. They're all heirloom seeds from seedsavers.org, so I'll be able to save my own seed this year and maybe never have to buy seed again.
On a whim, I bought three rhode island red chicks today. I'd been wanting some of that breed and they just happened to be in the store when I was buying chicken food, so I had to get them. I'm very excited!
Today was the first full day I spent outside. It felt amazing. All my winter doubts were washed away. Working land, planting, is so therapeutic. I know it's not for everybody, but it's definitely for me. I love all aspects of growing: soil preparation, putting the plants into the ground, weeding and tending the plants. In addition to just enjoying the actual work, my efforts are paid in delicious food that I've created from scratch. I can't think of many things we do in the modern world that provide the same level of satisfaction and pride. Maybe baby making is the last frontier of this sort of practice.
Karl Marx had a theory (or two) about capitalist society. Specifically, he noted that factory workers put together parts on an assembly line, and don't get the joy or satisfaction of creating a project from scratch. He thought this "detachment" of work was bad for the soul. I have to agree. It seems so sad to spend the majority of your productive hours doing something that may be meaningless. I find gardening to be the opposite of this phenomenon. Given that we live in a capitalistic, materialistic society not many people get to enjoy growing things on the scale that I do. I consider myself privileged to have the opportunity that I have. I hope for the sake of humanity and the planet that as a society we can move towards a world in which we all take more stake in what we do and create. Food would be a great place to start as many people are suffering from preventable diseases of horrendous nutrition. I don't know Karl Marx's opinion on gardening, or if he had one, but I think he would've made a great gardening buddy.
I'm expecting a post from a guest blogger from the north. Stay tuned!
I can imagine how gardening can be relaxing, but I think I get too stressed/frazzled/and generally put off/intimindated by overphysical activities. Figures.
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