Yesterday, I was consumed by tomatoes. I awoke early and, while walking with the dog in the front of our little urban abode, noticed that up on my balcony the eldest of my tomato plants was weeping over, drooping down from its container. It had gotten cold in the night, but not that cold, so, bleary eyed, I surmised it was time to string it up. I dug around in the closet and shortly procured a ball of hemp rope (not twine, mind you, but hemp – for beading). I stepped out onto the balcony, scrutinized the situation, and configured my method. With one little toss, the ball of hemp was up over the support beam of the balcony over mine as intended but, with one little bounce it was over the railing of my own balcony and rolling quickly down the hill from the apartment. I slid my shoes back on, and ran outside to chase the ball, then wound it back up and tossed it back up to the balcony. My tomato is happier already, climbing its way higher.
Yesterday was my first of the new job. We spent the day at the greenhouse transplanting tomatoes – taking them from plug trays, transplanting them into slightly larger celled trays. This was no light task; six hours (and 3,000 tomato plants later!) I began to get stiff backed and bleary eyed. Growing plants for research is looking to be a brand new experience. Slightly redundant, maybe, but as my research advisor says “You do work for the government!”
As for the rest of my small little garden, it grows. There were some late frosts shortly after I planted several of the containers and I had to pull these in for several nights, but I think we are moving beyond those now. At this point, I look forward to watching all the little sprouts popping their heads above the soilless bark mix potting media and even more forward to the bountiful goodness of summer!
Whew.
I took a minute the other day to lift my head from my textbooks, and was overcome to see a spot of sun hitting the patio and hear the sound of birds floating on the air. It seems one day there were flecks of white wafting about the sky and the very next the grass began to green as early bulbs stuck their tips above the surface of the soil. I feel I should run about collecting Snowdrops and Daffodils (but instead, I bought a bouquet of sunflowers – I wonder where in the world those came from?).
But, since I’ve been so absent, a quick recap. In the last 3 months whilst the world was cold, my head has been overwhelmed with a mass of information regarding flower propagation, soil science, disease of ornamental plants and greenhouse management. I have propagated a ficus via stem cuttings (which have successfully rooted but still look like two sticks in a cup of potting mix), grafted two plants together and layered another; I am also micropropagating a violet from leaf cuttings in culture. Should I mention that I frequently find myself having to fight back some Frankensteinenian urge to digress into insane laughter or randomly call out “It’s ALIVE!” I’ve also, on occasion, had to recount to my house plants the nature of their sex lives (in order just to remember it) and have awoken in the middle of the night yelling “Entomosporum leaf spot.” The world of plants is an entirely maddening affair.
Needless to say my brain has been consumed with technical, scientific jargon and my mind has been, honestly, pretty vacant (need I mention the time I got to the university and realized I failed to blow out the candles in the apartment?). It is interesting information to know and will at some point, I presume, be useful but at the moment it feels so impractical and disconnected from what it is I wish to do – have my hands in the dirt (please don’t tell my soils professor I just called it “dirt”) – that I am continuously hitting myself in the head. What good does a wealth of technical information do if I have no experience in applying it?
But, on the positive side… In the last three months I have found a great fiddle teacher and, although we’re both very busy and hardly have time for each other, I’m excited to have something fun to do while I’m procrastinating. I’m also excited by the possibility of working on an organic farm / university research station over the summer; I’ve still got my fingers crossed on that one. Also, my course work is going to lighten up as my Propagations course, which required a lot of my time (but was also among my favorites) has ended with the break. Now I’ve Tuesday and Thursday mornings completely free and to myself so I can lounge about in my pajamas, sip tea and stare at my Greenhouse Operations textbook – or bake bread. Also, my ornamentals class has shifted from plant diseases to insects and we’ll be having a new professor. Thankfully, the new professor is a lot easier, but I think I liked the diseases course work more. On the first day of class, the insects professor brought his friendly tarantula Rosy for demonstration and, standing about 3 inches from my desk, proclaimed “and if I were to upset or disturb him, he could jump up to 15ft!” Now, I don’t mind spiders per-se (I can at least get up the nerve to squish them with a shoe – in the plants world, we call this “rouging” and its completely permissible!) but I have to confess I do become a little queasy when the spider is as big as my hand.
But, as for news of my “garden”, with my time and my brain so full with course work, it looks like I’ve let the spring slip up on me. I managed to plant my chard several weeks ago; they have sprouted and, thankfully, with the warm weather are looking promising. However, I’ve completely failed to order and plant my peas! So, looks like I’ll be missing out; I was real excited at the promise of having pea plants taking over the railings of my balcony. In the meanwhile, I’ve made a tentative list of what I’d like to try and keep in my “garden” this summer: chard, tomatoes, peppers, bush beans, zucchini, basil, rosemary, and bay leaves. I’ll have to take a day soon and flip through my journals and estimate a good time frame for sowing and inventory my seed stash and pot collection. I’ll also have to do some searching and find a decent farm supply store as I’ve missed out on all the fun of ordering from catalogs this year. With some good luck, I might manage to coax something out this year. I’m hoping to at least find a good local market and spend some spare time (mostly, I just dream about this time in my head; I’m not certain it actually exists) canning sauces and jams. First, I suppose I ought to start searching out a good recipe and figure out just how I plan to do my canning…
In light of circumstances hindering my ability to use the portion of my brain responsible for the upkeep of this website, I hope it will be permissible for me to reassure you of my physical existence by sharing a little video clip:
So long 2007!
There were no fireworks for us as we three climbed into bed at 11:30. We were all snuggled in and cozy by midnight, perhaps ringing in the New Year as best a way as one can. The dog was tucked in by my feet and the cat (who apparently thinks me a chair or pillow, as she takes every opportunity to somehow be on me) had burrowed her way underneath the blankets and was sleeping soundly curled up in my arms. This is how the night always finds us, nestled in amongst the covers of a bed that can thankfully fit us all.
So, hello 2008!
A new year has dawned and so has winter, finally. Yesterday afternoon we saw our first, though limited, snowflakes of the year, and this morning I awoke to temperatures in the low teens. If there was anything living outside before yesterday, it’s not anymore! It’s not just the last days of my vacation making me want to lounge about the house anymore, even the weather is saying I should stay inside, snuggle up with a tea and spend the day in contemplation and boy is there ever stuff to contemplate!
Now, I’m not one for New Years resolutions, or really even long-term goals, but I can’t help seeing that I’m presently in a place where I have every reason to think about change and new beginnings. I mean, hey, here I am in a new city, a new home, a new job, a new university and, for all intents and purposes, a new path. Regardless of whether I want to spend time considering what it means to make a fresh start, I have no choice it is staring me in the face! I’ll take this as a unique opportunity.
While I don’t want to overlay any dreams or hopes on the year to come, I can at least put some effort into formulating an understanding of my daily rhythms and rituals.You see, I have behind me 23 years of experience in family traditions, but also a year and a half of rituals which have become incorporated into my daily practices and rhythms. My old ways of thinking and doing have been modified and enhanced and are to be understood in a different light. This leaves me with the exciting task of living out this new understanding, of taking from the rituals of family and community and encorporating them into my life here and now, then seeing what comes from that on a day to day basis. I can live with that as a meditation for change, no excessive goals necessary!
- This is the moment of embarking
All auspicious signs are in place
In hopes of finding something to do for the day, this morning I peeled the liner from the dog’s bed with plans of washing it. Instead, I was surprised to find a rotting, torn and deflated foam padding underneath the used woolen exterior. No wonder he has been jealously eying the cat’s new condo, and refusing to get into his bed when asked.
“Pete, I think it is time to go shopping!”
Down the isles of the Petsmart we walked, past the collars and plushy toys, in search of the bed-to-be. One by one, we sorted through the stacks of beds. Each time I found something about the right size, I threw it to the ground and Pete began sniffing about, checking over every inch. Some were too fluffy, some not fluffy enough. Others were too hard, or too coarse; some too small and others too big.
Eventually, we narrowed down the choice to two beds, ruling out all the others. One was a green micro fleece, the other a blue canvas exterior with a woolen interior. I placed the fleece bed on the ground, and he slowly stepped inside, standing to assess its potential. About that time, a friendly Petsmart employee walked by and asked if we were finding everything alright or if we needed a little help. Pete started digging into the microfleece bed and I smiled; “It’s a tough decision trying to replace a bed. These things are important, you know.” As Pete began to exhaust his interest in the fleece bed, I put the canvas and wool bed on the ground next to the microfleece and he sniffed at it, and slowly, one foot at a time, he stepped into it and tentatively circled around inside of it. Then, in one swift move, he flopped down inside it, rolling about in the lavish clean wool, hiding his face in the corners, and smearing his scent across his new bed.
After some time, and lots of coaxing, I was able to convince him that the bed would be more comfortable at home, instead of the bedding isle at the Petsmart. We took the bed up to the front of the store and waited in line. While paying, I also purchased a couple tokens to make the boy a name tag for his collar. We stopped by the machine on our way out and I put the bed on the ground to be able to use the keyboard. I went about keying in his name and phone number on the little pink heart-shaped medallion and, after several times of erasing and starting over, I started to notice that people were smiling and pointing as they walked by. I smiled and waved back, waiting for the machine to engrave the tag, and eventually realized that everybody had been looking at the dog who had bedded back down. I slipped the finished tag on his collar while he was sleeping (he would definitely disapprove of a pink heart) and then had to once again coax him out of the bed (which can be embarrassing to do in public, because he fusses and complains the whole time).
We took the bed to the car, and Pete lay snuggly in the backseat during the ride home. As we got back to the apartment, I put his bed down in the sitting area, where his old bed was, and took the old bed over to the door so I would remember to take it out to the trash. Pete sniffed at the new bed, and then came over to me and sniffed at the old bed. He reached his head inside, grabbed his rawhide possession, and took it over to the new bed where he gently and tenderly placed it inside before commencing to lay on top of it and fall fast asleep. Dont’cha know, the sole purpose of these things is to ensure that they stay in your bed? They are not to be played with, and especially not eaten; on occasion, it is okay to walk about the house with them and make others jealous, but first and foremost they must be kept in one’s bed.
A busy day of shopping and hard decisions makes for one tired puppy, and one happy customer is now sawing logs in his stylish new digs. We’re pleased as punch that it matches the pillows in the sitting room. The cat, however, thinks perhaps she should like to go shopping sometime too, maybe…