Seeds are buried

On Sunday morning the sun poked out here and there between puffy clouds, so I made the most of it and was at the garden at 7:30am with a few seed packs and a thermos of tea. Lately, the sun is making very brief appearances, and so it is best to move without haste. Here is what I planted: 

• Sparkler Radish (A block of it in a vacant spot in the NW corner of the garlic bed.)
  
• Sugar Snap Peas (To climb the pvc-pipe hoops over the square raised beds.)
  
• Purple Top White Globe Turnips (Under the snap peas.)
  
• Beets (From the community seed supply in the shed—a donation from Ed Hume himself. Planted in the bed next to the blueberries and white currants.)
  
• Mustard Greens (Again, from Ed. Planted next to the beets.)
  
• Arugula (Seed I saved from last year. Planted under the snap peas.)
  

I also weeded the garlic bed and pounded stakes into the ground to secure the raised beds (Instead of nails or screws. The lazy way.). I poached subtly fragrant apple blossoms, bi-colored daffodils, and three true-pink camellias. It was a great start to the day. Later, it hailed. 

The first steps of the season

Today I officially started cultivating my community garden plot at Colonel Summers Park. Earlier this week, when it was dry and somewhat sunny and warm, Sarah and I made plans to go to Mt. Scott Fuel for a load of compost to split between our plots. Today, we woke to a perfectly soggy Portland morning. The kind of morning that makes you question most of the day’s commitments and which often results in a day devoted to endless pots of tea and high carbohydrate snacks. Somehow, Sarah and I coaxed ourselves into the adventure. We fetched the Zip truck Sarah had reserved, picked up the compost and headed to the garden, where we were immediately covered from head to toe in muddy water and chunks of compost. The wheelbarrows in the community tool shed were a nice gesture, but in practice were as effective as moving a truck load of compost with a small bucket. In the pouring rain we moved load after load in these wheelbarrows and with each trip I considered the possible consequences of breaking a community garden wheelbarrow. Do they kick you out? We’d gotten a 1/2 yard of the three-way compost blend for $17, so we each spent a mere $8.50 to dress our beds with about three inches of nutrient rich food for our coming seedlings.

It is incredibly satisfying to see the garden in this bare-bones, tidy state. The lines of the raised beds are clear, walking paths are visible, the soil is dark, rich and waiting. Right now it is just a bunch of potential. I know that the coming season will be complete with harvests, disappointments, surprises and specific events. In just a few months this clean slate will be a beautiful mess of lush green growth in all directions. A mess that has an order to it that you can’t quite pin down. An order which prevails even within the most chaotic growth. An order which exists because of the smart infrastructure you’ve put in place at the get go, and because that is what nature does.

I came home muddy and chilled, but happier than in months, my spirit and body restored and excited about the process I am beginning.

A brief explanation

MFK Fisher, in How To Cook A Wolf, suggests that it is perfectly acceptable to eat a pile of toast for breakfast. This notion has stuck with me since I first read it. Food is one of the focal points of my life. Growing it, putting it up, eating it, studying it, talking about it, painting it. Sometimes my obsession gets tedious. When I find myself getting worked up about what the perfectly local, nutritionally appropriate, aesthetically pleasing meal might be, I remember MFK’s permission to eat a pile of toast.

Over the years, in my mind, the pile has become exactly 13 pieces of toast. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is because I have a terrible memory, and I sometimes make things up to compensate. Perhaps I like imagining MFK Fisher at the table with exactly 13 pieces of toast, slathering them one by one with a generous layer of jam over a thick slab of butter.

This blog will serve as my garden and pantry journal for the coming year. I’ll record what I’ve grown, put up and eaten. It will help me next year when I can’t remember when I planted peas, what the weather was like in March or if I overdid it with zucchini again. And, hopefully it will help me remember that while food does matter, a lot, sometimes it is okay to just eat toast, if that is all you’ve got, all you can muster the energy for, or is simply just what pleases you.