My garden, my love

Yesterday the hubs told me two things about my garden: One, that I have too many romantic notions about plants. And two, that my garden was a dry, dusty wasteland.

The first idea, that I have too many romantic notions about plants may be right. My mind has flipped out on fairies and majikal plant energies. It's because a friend re-introduced me to Susun Weed via her youtube videos. Susun Weed's energy has infected my mind! Or, re-awakened a sleeping spirit in me. I feel compelled to talk out loud to the plants and bees and winds.

This reminds me so much of the energy that swept through me when I lived with the wolves in New Mexico. There I made an extraordinary connection with a man who opened up the spirit world for me to have a peek. Really, it was just his mind, but it was extraordinary, and he reminded me that there are people talking with animals and plants and spirits and having real connections whether I participate or not. I jumped in with both feet and emerged gentler than ever before.

That experience slowly dripped off me until I let it go, or maybe just tucked it away. Because now after watching Susun's videos the old plant spirits are back, calling me to know them more and more and more.

That same dear friend who opened me to Susun Weed gave me a potted motherwort and it doesn't look like it's going to make it, which is devastating for someone who feels opened up to the energies of the plant world!! I say that with a hint of sarcasm because deep down inside, I know that Erik is right to say that I have too many romantic notions about plants. If I think about them too much and get so sad when one doesn't make it then I am projecting way too much onto the plants. Sometimes they just need to be left alone.

Which is what I think killed the motherwort! I should have re-potted it immediately when I got home?!

Who knows the reason... I put the motherwort on a bench under the blossoming orange tree with the chamomile next to it to comfort it. I try not to visit it too often, but is it my imagination or do the newest baby leaves look a little perky? The chamomile has a tendril hovering over the motherwort and it opened a flower on it today. So there is some hope!

So, yes, my notions of the garden are a bit romantic. He told me that I should be cutting all the flowers off the broccoli, but the bees are having the most blissed out time visiting all those flowers. He told me that the seeds aren't worth saving, that broccoli's genes get diluted by wild mustard. Oh well, I just don't care! I'm just letting the bees enjoy the flowers because I think it makes the garden happier. Also, my garden plants are packed so close together that I think if I ripped out the broccoli it would affect the parsley and chard surrounding it.

My notions of my garden are so romantic that sometimes I feel like I love my garden as much as I love a pet. When I see the strawberry plants with their prayer-hand leaves emerging from that bundle of green I feel so much joy. When I see the seedlings emerge their cotyledons from the black soil and open wide for the sun's energy it makes me feel so content and peaceful. I love my garden so much I could marry it!

So why did my husband say that my garden was a dry, dusty wasteland? Because he is encouraging me to pack even more plant-life into the nooks and crannies of the garden. More watering in more places. The garden is infecting us, we are becoming slaves to it, all willingly and peacefully. We are addicted to the rush of seeing food growing around us!

Hermit Phase

Hermit phase is full-on here. I had been resisting it for a while, but now I am embracing it. My personality spectrum falls into hermit phase for part of the year, inevitably. Micah does not talk about going to the park and I avoid the topic. He watches something on repeat (currently this) and I clean, cook, launder, and paperwork. This time of year is common because every day I think about the taxes, while I am doing everything else.

Hermit phase is deliciously repetitive. Helps me hone my skills. Examine the details of daily rhythms. Make discoveries, such as, pudding is porridge and porridge is a little bit of grain cooked in a lot of milk very slowly. Or other liquid. Milk is especially delicious.

I am having a love affair with milk. I envision my goat here at the house some day. She hasn't been born yet, but I am envisioning her coming earthside. Or maybe a miniature cow, because cows are such loverly motherly animals.

Before we can get the milk-giver we have to build up the gardens in the back yard. They have to cover every available spot in the back yard with food plants. That way there will be extra food for the animal.

Speaking of backyard animals giving milk and eggs, I told Micah that when I have my period I am giving birth to an egg. So now whenever I go to the bathroom he runs in to see if I "made the egg". And he looks in the toilet and tells me he sees the egg. I told him that it is too tiny to see it, but he was sure that he saw it.

I was telling Micah the other night that all girl animals have eggs, even Ana-Bees. Erik winced about all the egg and vagina talk. Eggs and vaginas (or cloacas) have a lot of emotions wrapped up in them! ^_^

Mommy Plants

The collard plants have turned into a riot of yellow-mopped beauties. These seeds are fourth generation wild-hybridized collards. The first seeds were planted in 2008, the variety known as Vates Georgia Collards. The parents and grandparents of these buttery lemonheads fought back against aphid invasions, but this winter they were able to flower early and so there are no aphids.

Today Micah noticed the bright display and commented on how the plants had turned into mommy plants.

"They are tall mommies. They are hairy mommies. I think they are hairy mommies."

Tall hairy hippy greens-lovin' mommies.

I love the greens so so much and they produced so much abundance that I became saturated. I ate an enormous meal of roasted greens the night that every adult in the house came down with a tempestuous stomach bug. So the plants have been left to themselves to complete their life cycle. We got our fill.

I haven't had a green smoothie in well over a week. There has been a cinnamon toast craze gripping the family. We can't get enough cinnamon toast! Just this morning we ran out of cinnamon. A wondrously magical plant.

Someone once told me that as long as I had a garden I would feel peace in my life. Mommy plants.

Pickle Cactus Flower

Someone told me this was a pickle cactus, but when I looked that up online a totally different kind of plant showed up. I think this came from Erik's Grandma June's house. Cactus flowers shore is purdy!

Cabbage Aphids (Brevicoryne brassicae)

It started so innocently. One day I noticed a few aphids on the tip of a flowering stalk on one of my collard plants. I cut that tip off, but noticed another tip with aphids on them. I thought to myself, "Here's an opportunity to observe nature in action. Predator versus prey. Can the plant protect itself? Will parasitic wasps and ladybugs and lacewings move in and lay waste to this enemy?"

The parasitic wasps and ladybugs did move in and make a valiant effort, but not before the population of aphids exploded on my patch of collards. Aphids are literally born pregnant, but that is not the end of the chain. The fetus inside is also pregnant! So each aphid bumbling and slurping up the precious phloem in the plant is pregnant with her own granddaughter!

Aphids that prey on Brassica oleracea (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, and kin) can convert the plant's own defense chemical, glucosinolate, into a kind of mustard oil that can deter some predators, such as larval two-spotted ladybugs.

Aphids in the garden patch in spring are a sign of a cool spring, because some of the predators, like lacewing larvae, will not hatch out until the temperatures are consistently warmer. As the weather warms up going into summer, the aphids die back anyway because the symbiotic bacteria that help them digest their sappy meals cannot tolerate higher temperatures.

Yesterday I pulled out any remaining straggly collard plants. I had already harvested seeds about a month ago from the plants that bolted before the aphid attack. Since we started focusing on buying a house with my parents a few months ago, I ceased to plant new garden beds. I still have my Indian onions growing and some cucumber young plants that got planted before we really decided to make the move. The onions will get moved and I will ask our rentors if they want to keep the cucumbers. The collard bed is a sunken bed, just like the others--I realized that it is one of the best ways to garden in the desert. The earth in the collard bed is dark and soft, so beautiful; I am sad to leave it. Erik wants me to top off the depression, which means covering it with the sandy gravely compacted dirt that I had so laboriously removed when pregnant with Micah. Once covered up, that lovely loamy earth underneath will be like prime real estate for all the weeds that roam this area-- Bermuda grass, wild mustard, cheeseweed, spiderling.

And yet, there are always more seeds, more opportunities, waiting to be planted and nurtured, tended to and cared for. Why lament the end of a garden plot? Because then it really meant something. It had a purpose; it fed us and taught us and showed us stuff about life and the universe. And then it got attacked. And then I finished its life. Yes, I, killed my garden. The aphids and I; I and the aphids.

Spring arrives

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Spring has arrived in Tucson. Sure, it still gets bone-chillingly cold at night. But the days are very gentle, inviting us to stay outside just a little longer. Most of Erik's native garden still looks brown and dormant, with a few exceptions. The bees are very thankful for my collard greens blooming. Thank God for Brassica! A bright spot and tasty food in an otherwise sea of less useful plants!

Another sign of Spring is that it is planting time. Plant your summer garden now. Plant your tomatoes and your peppers. My garden has evolved in just the short year and a half that it has existed. I believe I have completed one full year of gardening. Yea me! The garden was wonderful while I was pregnant. Pick-axing the bermuda thatch and shoveling the hard-packed desert ground provided just the right amount of physical exertion when I needed it.

At first I planted the seeds in rows with troughs between them, the way I assume is the "standard" way of gardening. Standard don't work too good in the desert! So I dug out square shaped depressions and filled those with a mixture of compost, manure, dirt, and straw. Then I just randomly planted the seeds or seedlings. That's how I successfully grew the beautiful patch of collards that I use to feed my Corucia!

I also grew a patch of radishes, but found the radishes were too plentiful in supply (that's a good thing!) and they ended up getting very bloated and hollow. Fortunately, that variety, French Breakfast (I love that name, because of the image it conjures) doesn't get too spicy or bitter when it gets old. I sliced some of them up into thin strips and poured a little oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper on them and it was darn good!

Once the patch had been de-radished it made the perfect spot for the Indian onions given to my husband by his co-worker. These little bulbs are pretty much full size, but with a little luck they will form dense mats of tiny, tasty onions.