All right, y'all. I'm going to be away at Firefly for the weekend, starting tonight. Camp Pinnacle, being even further up a mountain and in the woods, has no access to Net, so I will be taking a well-enjoy break from cyber space. But, here's one to tide ya over...

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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Yesterday was awesome!

I spent all morning in the garden. Patricia got me started, but she had to leave to lead a tour, so I took over on my own for a while.

I started by taking out morning glories. Good goddess! I am not exaggerating when I say that in four hours yesterday I pulled a couple hundred morning glory plants. Some were huge and already choking the life out of some poor, sad tomatoes; most were just little seedlings, some with no more than their characteristic cotyledons to give them away. As I’m weeding them out so that they don’t take over the world (or at least the garden), I could help but wish that the tomatoes would grow like the morning glories. But alas, having had their natural defenses bred out of them, the domesticated plants require a great deal of coddling to produce their heavy yields of food.

When I’d given the tomatoes some breathing room and some mulch (at MW, weeds become mulch, which is stacking functions, a permaculture principle!), I cleared the morning glories out the next bed and planted a bunch of okra. I got the seeds out of a dried okra from last year that was legit the size of a banana, so I’m hoping for an impressive crop. I know they taste best when you pick them young, but I’m hoping fruit size in an indicator of heartiness.

Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with the rigors of vegetable gardening (and the especially perma-organic cultivation at MW), planting food involves more than just putting seeds in the dirt. It involves figuring out what to plant, what strategic micro climate to plant it in, where the seeds are, how viable the seeds are, how deep the bury the seeds, how far apart to space the plants, what to plant together (or what not to plant together), and what to weed out of the chosen bed verse what to leave as companions. Once you’ve figured all that out, you have to assemble appropriate digging tools, a bucket of egg and ash, a nice hunk of mulch, and the business end of the garden hose (which could conceivably be anywhere). Then and only then can you actually put the seeds in the ground. But the fun doesn’t stop there! After that, you have to mulch it well enough to protect the little patches of disturbed soil from erosion, but not so well that the seedling can’t get through it to get some light. Then, you water thoroughly enough to get through the mulch and dampen the soil, but not so thoroughly as to make the soil soggy, which can rot the seed. A few hours later, you come back and sprinkle well with egg and ash, a low-tech formula of ground up eggshells and wood ash, which keeps our most common garden pests, slugs and pill bugs, away from the delicate baby plants. It is quite the undertaking!

Then I planted the spiral trellis bed (which I weeded out last time I was in the garden) with climbing (or trainable) vines – summer squash, pole beans, and cucumbers. The second planting was easier, mostly because I already had the figuring done and the equipment gathered but also because the late-sleepers finally began to trickle into the garden to help.

When I was done in our garden, I went over to Useful Plants Nursery to pitch in with their fig-potting party for Leaps. It was pretty nice because I got to work in the shade, Liz shared some ripe figs (YUM!!!), AND I earned Leaps! Hooray!

After that, I joined the Medicine Wheel (plus Marissa) soccer game for a roaring good time. I had so much fun! We ran and laughed and took turns rescuing the ball from blackberry brambles lined with poison ivy. I enjoyed watching the dynamics when I was in goal. When Chynna and Marissa were going head to head, they definitely tried to get the ball, but without hurting each other and apologizing if they step on each other’s toes. When Joe and Coleman vied for the ball, they went all out, knocking each other to the ground and falling all over themselves. They helped each other up, but the dynamics were very different. What was really interesting was when one of the ladies went after one of the guys. At that point, you can almost see the internal struggle on Coleman’s face as he tried to balance competitiveness with not hurting anybody. I also enjoyed when I rotated out and got to go for it. I even scored a few goals – more than I ever did when I played as a kid!

When we were done, we all booked it to the swimming hole for a refreshing dip before potluck, which was, as always, incredible! Since we went swimming, we were late to potluck, and we missed announcements. Apparently this should never be done, because during announcements Tara invited the community over to Medicine Wheel for music. Considering that Tara doesn’t live at MW, we were a little surprised when people began showing up later with instruments asking about the jam concert. It was fine, though, because we all love music. It was SUPER fun! We ended up with four guitars, a mandolin, the drum set, and a bunch of awesome music! I LOVE life at MW!!!