Thinking warm...

If it can’t BE warm, then might as well at least THINK warm...
Current mood: hopeful
Category: Life

It's been several years since I attempted a garden. Those who know me know that, to put it at it's very most optimistic, gardening is still a "developing skill" for me. I remember feeling a bit demoralized about our last garden, even though we had gotten some nice vegetables out of it. But we had fallen to some classic pitfalls - loss of control over weeds, planting a little too close together, and, the worst - having the racoons raid our entire corn crop the very night before I was planning to pick it. I had even told my corn-loving father, "Tomorrow night we are going to have the BEST corn ever - do NOT miss this!" I think his disappointment even exceeded mine when I went out the next day to find bare cobs littered all around - not a stalk was spared. I was livid. Had I had a weapon I would have trudged, Elmer Fudd-ish, around the property looking to blow the heads off the little bastards who ate my perfect sweet corn.

OK, so, I was feeling pretty crappy about the whole experience when that fall I walked into a local gift shop and noticed a calendar with the most beautiful photo included of corn stalks and red sunflowers (not real common) just beyond a stone wall and a very ancient apple tree. As I looked at it I had a very strong feeling of recognition. Then I looked more closely - the caption was something like, "Sunflowers - Paris Hill, Maine." Then I knew - that was MY garden. The photographer had gone behind the stone wall at the back of our property, into the old cemetery, and snapped my corn and sunflower rows on a beautiful Maine summer day. I supposed my garden had borne some fruit after all - it had brought beauty and joy to as many people as had bought that photographer's calendar. I contacted the photographer and she was kind enough to print and frame the photo for me - well, for $50, of course. I had kind of been hoping for a print-in-return-for-inspiration deal, but framing is expensive, so...ok. That print has hung in my kitchen ever since, reminding me that I really NEED to try again for a garden.

Now, I do have chickens which are producing at a prodigious rate - in fact I have so many eggs in my fridge right now, frankly, I'm ready to set up a winter farm stand. And, we also have a few apple trees which, every other year, produce bushels and bushels of apples, which are then eaten whole, turned into pies, apple fritters, apple cake, occasionally apple sauce (although this is a skill I never really learned all that well from my mother, who is very good at making this), and strange recipes my boys make up. One of these is the "apple tortilla" - one apple, cut up, on a tortilla, then butter, cinnamon, chocolate chips - all melted in the microwave, rolled up and eaten with a grin. So, I have these sort of self-sustaining agricultural ventures, but...it's time for a garden...THIS year.

Here's the plan for what we're going to grow...all chosen from the catalog for hardiness, cold resistance, short season/quick growing, and idiot resistance:

Sweet peppers, hot peppers, sweet corn, radishes, cantaloupes, cucumbers, winter squash, beets, watermelons, summer squash, bush beans, peas, red onions, carrots, tomatoes, pumpkins, catnip, sweet basil, dill, and...skyscraper sunflowers.

I know it sounds ambitious, but as the cold rain falls today, poised to turn to ice later this evening, I'd do almost anything to be outside digging in dirt with a little sweat beading on my brow. I may not find that thought so romantic come July when I'm keeping down weeds, but, right now, seems like an attractive vision.

So here's the bottom line. I know I can pull this garden thing off, but any advice you master gardeners might have - particularly those of you who garden in New England - would be really welcome. This year, when the corn and the sunflowers tower over my head, I will remember how long and tedious this winter has been, and I will not need a photographer's art to remind me how grateful I should be for the garden, whether it is objectively "successful" or not.