The harvest ...

Last weekend, my Niece could hardly stand to finish Her dinner,so eager was She to get out into the backyard and help me, as She had been promised She could, to harvest the ripe Concord grapes.

She quickly dispatched the low-hanging ones, of course popping the purpley-est ones into Her mouth along the way. Then She took care of the ones that She could reach from a chair.

Since I have no ladder, the rest of them hanging from the top of the arbor posed a problem. Ah, but not to an enterprising nine-year-old!I was quickly drafted to put Her upon my shoulders.

"Am I too heavy?" She asked several times. With my face full of grape leaves and with bits of stems and detritus raining down upon me, I answered back, firmly:

"Absolutely not."

It was a bit of a fib. She is nine now, as noted, not five. My back and shoulders started to go numb fairly soon, but I gritted my teeth and said nothing, as She happily plucked and pulled grapes somewhere in the leaves above my head and I kept my grip upon Her ankles to prevent disaster.

Not if every disc in my back screamed at me was I going to give this child, who has been teased about Her weight [which weight, I hasten to add, is absolutely normal for Her age], any notion that She is too heavy.

So we persevered until She had a great big bag stuffed full of ripe, sweet Concord grapes.

"I hope," I told my Beloved later, "that She has a memory to cherish for a lifetime from this."

Garden Dreams

As I consider the lilies today ...

My yard needs so much work. I am rarely there, an absence not by choice.

I dream of colorful beds of flowers, a Thomas Kinkaide sort of fantasy. Reality is stubborn-as-hell wire grass everywhere and the never-ending struggle with Virginia's capricious weather.

I will be giving a clump of some very special daylilies to a relative this week, a unique cultivar that was given to me years ago by a couple who were passionate about hemerocallis.

Good gardeners are givers and thus they live on. In my little 1/4 acre, flowering almonds and apple trees were the gift of an old friend now lost in the fog of dementia. Fragrant thyme came to me from a friend who has now passed away. Honesty plant with its purple blooms and silvery seed disc, evokes the memory of my great Grandmother, who grew it out West -- my Great Grandmother who I have discovered this week was a player for Her turn-of-the-century high school Girls basketball team. Imagine that.

I will make room for lilies this month.

A sure money-maker, rent-a-duck

Intriguing entrepreneurial concept discovered on an Internet gardening forum:

How do you deal with snails in your garden?

"I have heard that a pet duck or chicken cleans out snails quite nicely. But I do not want a pet duck. Must be a nice income situation for a kid with a rent-a-duck."

First of the garden

I practically sprinted out of my last meeting of the afternoon, drove home and headed for the back yard. Carried with me a dish of warm water in which a handful of wrinkly Chicago Red hybrid beet seeds had been soaking.

Time, finally, to plant.

I dug out two furrows in the bed that grew beans and squash last year, layered last fall with shredded leaves and lawn clippings. I plunked the seeds into the warm earth, blended with some crumbly black cow manure and humus.

I retrieved the old, beat-up taped-up garden hose from behind the shed where junk sits until I can make trips to the landfill and sprinkled the ground. Belatedly, I remembered that I had planned to get a new garden hose during the winter and will have to pay premium price this time of year.

Now I've done my work, at least until weeding time arrives. Now it's up to them, these little seeds, to be the vanguard of this year's garden. Should be able to harvest the first two rows April 27.

I'm a little worried about the feral rabbit I've seen bouncing around the neighborhood these past few months. He chewed my pecan seedlings to stubs and finished off the spearmint. My beets would be no match for him. I should perhaps invest in a fence, since Sweetie would change the locks on the doors and hand, no, throw, Her ring back at me if I ventured to make a stew out of him.

Where's old Elmer Fudd when you need him?

Satisfaction

I had today off from work, so I ... worked.

Cut down the dying asparagus stalks in the garden to deter asparagus beetles in the spring. Cut back the grape vines to deter the black rot that claims too much of the fruit every summer. Spread shredded leaves over the garden soil for mulch. Rubbed down the garden tool handles with linseed oil. And plunged my fingers into the cold soil to dig up the last of the carrots, which tonight became a spicy carrot bread for dessert.

Satisfaction. I love working outside.

Of cool evenings and stinky manure

I am going to take Chase’s advice and start preparing blog entries during my lunch break, to be carried home.

Yesterday, we had some relief from the horrible heat that has been trying very hard to kill us all. I spent the evening digging up potatoes, sorrowing at the dried-up pea plants -- so brief in their sweet glory -- and planting string beans, squash, peppers and carrots.

Ah, there’s nothing like man-handling manure to make for a blissful time.
Anywhere in the yard that I haven’t been keeping alive with the sprinkler is baked as hard as cookie crumbs in a blast furnace. There’s a reason why everything in the South is made of brick. Our soil is naturally of a perfect consistency for the stuff.

November daydreams

I have a crappy old deck by my house that needs to go away. I have never been a sit-on-the-deck sort of person so I haven't given it the loving care that it needs.

I think I want to replace it with a little greenhouse, one that I could build myself. That in turn would be perfect for getting an early start on another daydream I had today: clearing out another big square of boring lawn grass and planting rosemary, basil, thyme, oregano, sage, etc -- enough to start a small herb business.

What would I need? Some lumber, sand, glass panes, an electric heater (greenhouses don't stay magically warm at night -- they need help with that).

Man Stuff

There are two things in my life that make me feel like a manly man.

One is of course paying the attention and respect to a Woman that She deserves.

The other is getting covered with dirt and sweat out in my yard.

I dug up about 20 lbs. of potatoes this morning and hauled about 5 wheelbarrow loads of weeds out into the woods.

I felt rough and tough and masculine as I sauntered over to a certain neighbor's house to offer them a sack of the potatoes. I felt as if I had the equivalent of a dragon tatoo on my biceps and a fresh flat-top haircut.

Stupid, perhaps. But such is me.

Woodchuck chutzpah

The US East Coast -- though one of the most ecologically plundered, overpaved and congested pieces of the planet -- is home to a number of creatures which have adapted to mankind and even thrived, in some cases.

Individually, their state appears sad -- the squirrel crushed on a quiet neighborhood street by some idiot who one would hope pays more attention when children are in the roadway; the bird killed by an overfed house cat wandering outside at the behest of an ignorant owner; the deer crumpled by the side of the highway.

But collectively, such species are doing well, even if others such as martins/fishers and porcupines have long since fled from the noise and filth of man and face an uncertain future.

A very large groundhog/woodchuck has made its home beneath my shed and created a conundrum. If I only grew grass in my yard, like some unimaginative or yard-phobic souls, I would welcome him, along with the squirrels, toads, various birds, bees, moles, rabbits and chipmunks who come and go through the seasons.

But you see, I grow a garden. And it is one of the great ironies of the universe that the peaceful, tie-dyed, post-hippie gardener carrying home baskets of bounty for his/her family is a myth. Every shovelful of dirt you turn slaughters a dozen earthworms. Hornworms, asparagus beetles, potato bugs and other insects will find their preferred plant if you try to grow it, and if you ignore them like a nice little nature lover, you will harvest very little if anything at all. You can spray poison, which is stupid; or you can hunt down them and squish or stomp them, but you have to do something. Over and over again until your karma goose is surely cooked.

And then, there are the bigger freeloaders. Like my groundhog/woodchuck. I could tolerate his nibbling if mere nibbling was all he did. But the guy shuffles into my garden and grabs plants with both paws and chows down like a linebacker at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I'm not going to poison, trap or shoot.

I may buy some of that fox-pee crystal stuff they advertise, which supposedly scares the pooh pellets out of Chuckie the way that unemployment or death by razor slashes scares me.

Ah, Chuckie, your innocent greed makes a lie of my ecological pretensions.