It All Works Out

     Upper body workout for the day included an hour and a half in the back yard raking and picking one utterly overgrown and one merely spent and weedy raised bed with the able assistance of one granddaughter. She needed some reminding to place the weeds in the bag and the dirt in the bed. So at the second bed, she picked up handfuls of sand from the yard and dropped them into the bed. I accepted this as the lesser of two messes, but when she pressed a shred of weed-stop material and an aluminum foil "snake" to her lips, I discouraged it. "Yucky," we agreed. Aluminum snakes
     We dragged the bag out front, came back for a stint on the garden swing seat, some kicking of soccer balls and some lifting of said toddler onto the bars of the climbing dome. We pulled a few more weeds out of a small growing box and discovered a fell-fledged peanut in the soil. It was immediately harvested and carried in triumph into the kitchen to be shown to PaPa, washed and placed on the window sill to dry. Then we washed dirt off hands. And face. And hair. And scraped it out of fingernails. 
     We earned a relaxed viewing of Thomas the Tank Engine. Next: lunch. Peanut butter and jelly, I imagine. Bon appetit. 

Penury Is the Midwife of Invention

     I was planning to make a pinwheel out of a Chipotle takeout lid, a sort of aluminum pie pan stretched into an oval. Two fabulous steel pinwheels already stood in one of my backyard peanut patches, but they were too darn expensive for doodads with no other purpose than to amuse the eye and make me feel cool and modern. Pinwheels are also supposed to scare squirrels. Though I could almost hear the little blighters snickering when I installed the store-bought ones, I decided to make my own pinwheels to stand in my raised garden beds.

     So there I sat at my kitchen table with a paper pattern, kitchen shears and a Chipotle takeout lid. I figured if I trimmed off the heavy crimped edge, I could flatten the rest of the lid, snip toward the center, turn in the corners, stick a small nail through the center, and voila. The shears bit in and made their way around the edge of the lid where it bent outward. As the trimmed bit grew, it began to curl, and when it dropped to the table, it looked for all the world like a snake.

     I did make the pinwheel, and it spun all sprightly on its bamboo stick, but my mind kept revolving around the aluminum snake. I set it in the garden with a chunk of concrete on one end. It was wonderfully reptilian, curving about and moving a little in the breeze. With another lid, I began cutting at the edge, and snipped around in a spiral all the way to the center, leaving an oval at the end as the snake’s head. I shook it out and exulted at the way it shimmered and shimmied.

      Last year, one of my adolescent fig trees produced a dozen or so fruits. Squirrels ate all but one of them, before they were even ripe. The only survivor was hidden under a leaf and discovered by a party guest. We shared it. Few things are as luscious as a ripe fig fresh from the tree. This year, the tree repeated its performance, only draped with aluminum snakes. We humans ate all the figs except one, which ants got into. What a triumph. Now the garden is swathed in snakeish effigies, and I’m—well, sort of proud of myself, but more than that, thankful to have stumbled on a solution to rodent depredation. I even sent a photo and description to local ag agent emeritus Tom MacCubbin, whose book The Edible Landscape, or, as my brother-in-law calls it, Eat My Backyard, inspired my plantings. He said he’d try it.

     So, after all the trapping and shooting and throwing stones at the squirrels, the sprinkling of cayenne and the dripping of peppermint oil and growling fiercely at the critters that ventured close to the porch (Yes, I confess I growled at them. I may have used some unkind words too.), the solution needed only Chipotle and cheapness to reveal it. Come around next summer. We’ll eat figs.

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

     Years ago, I saw a poster of an aerial view of a farmer’s field where he had plowed the words “thank you.” It could be read only from the air. That farmer knew Whom to thank, and it wasn’t the Department of Agriculture. Horticultural images turn up a lot in the Bible, and as I garden, I think I start to understand them better. Back when most people were involved in farming, they must have understood things like the parables of Jesus better than we do today.

     Pastor Bill is walking us through the “parables of the Kingdom,” the stories Jesus told to give people an idea of how God operates in the world, for instance in Mark 4: “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seeds upon the soil and goes to bed every night and gets up each day, and the seeds sprout up and grow—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces the plants by itself; first the blades, then the heads, then the mature grain in those heads. And when the crop is ready, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

     Have I mentioned how miraculous it seems that I can push a seed, a little round woody-looking thing, into the ground and a few days later find a seedling pushing up from the soil? There’s a funny little folk song that turns up sometimes in elementary school music programs. Versions vary, but here’s one:

Oats, peas, beans and barley grow,
Oats, peas, beans and barley grow,
Can you or I or anyone know
How oats, peas, beans and barley grow?

First the farmer sows his seed,
Then he stands and takes his ease,
Stamps his feet and claps his hand
And turns him round to view the land.

If the folk who first sang this weren’t thinking of the parable, then at least they had the same awareness. How and why things grow is mysterious. Once the farmer has prepared the field and planted the seeds, he can clap and stamp all he wants, but it has nothing to do with the growth. That happens automatically. (The phrase translated “by itself” is in the Greek automatos, Pastor Bill informed us.)

     So is Jesus just making a point about agriculture here? Hardly. He did start with “The kingdom of God is like…” He is growing a crop of subjects for His kingdom, people who will know Him and be happy about it. When the crop is mature, it’s time for the harvest, and in goes the sickle. I don’t have much experience with harvest, but I have dug up a few handfuls of peanuts from my miniature field. Most look good, but some are shriveled inside, or even empty. People are that way too. Here’s where it gets scary. Some are wheat; some are weeds that only look like wheat. (See the “wheat and tares” parable, Matthew 13: 24-30.) The good ones He keeps. The rest go into the fire. 

Firstfruits of my modest peanut harvest.

Speaking of peanuts...

Fecundity

     

Fecundity. You could look it up, but I already did. It means reproducing, especially in abundance. It’s the only word for the asparagus beans, aka yard-long beans, growing in a couple of raised beds in my back yard. I’ve picked them fresh for several dinners, frozen a couple of pounds and given a bagful to my daughter. Now I’m harvesting the dry pods, which contain the black-eyed red beans you see on the plate. The plants are producing new fresh pods even as the older pods gradually fade and shrivel and harden. I picked both the green and brown pods in the photo at the same time.

There must be a trick to harvesting the dry beans, but I don’t know it. Sometimes the pod will split down the middle, and I can peel the halves apart so the beans drop into a dish. Other times, it just breaks, and I have to split and twist the pod at each bulge to release the bean. I feel very pioneer when I sit down to shell the beans, even though I am doing it at the Formica island in my air-conditioned kitchen. I do know how easy I have it. If my little garden were our only food source, we’d be real skinny, but I think I’m at least getting a hint of what it’s like to eat from the earth “in toil…all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and  to dust you shall return.” Sounds pretty discouraging, but the one who cursed the earth also gives us life “more abundantly.” You might even say with fecundity. I have a hint of that too.

Purple Dragons to the Rescue

I might have run for the insecticide soap-- or a blowtorch-- at the sight of these little monsters on my bean plants if I hadn't heard earlier about the purple dragons. A speaker at our church's garden seminar told us about his daughter's bean tepee, where she would sit and read and be a little girl. Aphids invaded. He didn't want to spray the tepee with chemicals, so he proposed that they wait a few days and see what happened. When he asked later how things were with the bean plants, his daughter said, "It's all right, Daddy. Purple dragons are eating the aphids." Ladybug larvae are purple dragons. 

I had sprayed soap on the aphid hordes on my bean plants, but it scarcely made a dent in the population. Then came the purple dragons, about half an inch long, and voracious. They slithered over the bean blossoms, nibbling aphids as they went, and left the plants perfectly clean. 

Today, voila, ladybugs. While picking some yard-long beans, I was astonished by the intense color and the size of this ladybug. It looked like a drop of red enamel, still wet. I ran for the camera, which I suppose I will have to start keeping on the tripod. It's tricky to take a close-up photo with a breeze moving the leaf and instinct moving the subject. Its less flashy cousin, lower down on the plants, was a little easier to capture. 

Gardener 4, Squirrels 0

     I buried my fourth squirrel today. I'm a nice old lady who loves babies and little furry creatures... except squirrels. "But they're so cute!" Uh huh. They pose adorably as they nib-nib-nibble on the sunflower seeds they have stolen from the bird feeder. I'm sure they were ever so perky when they dug up all my seed peanuts. And ate the pineapple top I planted. And the chayote squash I was trying to sprout. And the buds of my day lilies. So, so cute was the sweet potato they dug up and took a single bite out of. And, oh, the peak of charm are the toothmarks on the passion fruit, which isn't even ripe, but has been knocked off the vine by the sweet little balls of furry EVIL. Did I mention the dozen or so unripe figs they purloined from my struggling fig tree?           

     Yessiree, I kill squirrels. Cayenne pepper and oil of peppermint have protected some of my crops from their depredations, but I have to go back around every couple of days poofing the cayenne out of the gigantic warehouse club container and sprinkling the absurdly expensive peppermint oil from the health food store. Hub and I have both taken shots at the little blighters with a pellet rifle, but Davy Crockett we ain't. Slingshot was hopeless. Spring rat traps they easily unbaited and snapped without injury. I could almost hear them chuckling.      

      Enter the Victor brand electronic rat trap, a black plastic quonset hut about eight inches long. It takes four C batteries, and you bait it with peanut butter. The first night, I set it on an arbor bench. Next morning, big kahuna squirrel had met his end. In fact, the end is what protrudes from the tube: rear legs and tail. I dug a hole and tipped the body in. Subsequent squirrels seemed a trifle shy, so I placed the trap at the base of their favorite tree and sprinkled a little birdseed at the entrance and inside the trap. That did the trick. Another hole, and another, and another. About one a day. Today's squirrel fell bum first into the hole and kind of stuck upright, seeming to look up at me with reproach. At least, that's the poetic, sensitive interpretation. "It won't work," said I, pushed the nasty little thing down into the hole and covered it up. I shall reset the trap forthwith.

Green Thumb, Purple Heart?

     Assembling the raised garden bed kit was pretty easy. Filling it was something else. With three compost bins in service for more than a year, you’d think I might have plenty of lovely compost to use in my raised garden beds. I lifted the little door at the bottom of bin one and slid the shovel in. Out came some defiantly uncomposted leaves.

     When I pushed deeper into the bin, the shiniest, sleekest, healthiest looking roaches I ever saw rocketed out in all directions. Having such an idyllic home probably keeps them from bothering with the house, but still… roaches. I smacked as many as I could with my shovel. Do roaches send out commandos? A smaller black bug ran up my leg. Flailing at it, I overshot the target and smacked my knobbly, arthritic left middle finger on the compost bin. Ow.

     The finger swelled up and stuck out straight for the rest of the exercise. Bin two had a little more crumbly stuff worthy of the name “compost,” but it came out in tiny amounts. It must have taken a hundred shovelings to spread a modest layer over the bottom of the bed. Finally, time for the bags of soil Big, heavy bags of soil. Picked one up. Put it down pretty quickly. Solution: hoist two bags at a time into a wheelbarrow and wrestle it over to the bed, dump one in each half. Cut off the end and pour out the soil, which doesn’t necessarily want to leave the bag. Six bags.

     Then I realize the bed isn’t going to get as much sun as I thought because of an oak. Phooey. It’ll just have to do. The new tenants will be asparagus beans and scarlet runner beans. They’re supposed to thrive in heat. That we got. I planted the seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in egg cartons, and the sprouts fairly blasted up through the potting soil, ready for a new, productive life in the wide world. At least, I hope so. There’s another bed to assemble. And my finger is still throbbing.

Butterfly in Two Perspectives

One: 

Mad with life,

a butterfly

greeted me in my garden.

Another:

A butterfly, wild with life,

ignored me in my garden.

A moment's rest was far too long;

it fluttered fast,

drunk on air and sun and wings.

It circled my head

and vanished over the roof. 

"I bear the image of God!" I cried. 

"I bear His whimsy," it answered.