Thoughts on my Garden

I've been taking my kiddo on walks around the backyard in the morning. Looking around I'm reevaluating my garden plans that I implemented last year. It could be that being a mom is really changing how I think about things or just that I have a really finite amount of time available or it could be that all the ligustrum and other trash trees as well as the poison oak have grown back after all I did to eradicate them. I also have a bumper crop of weeds, grassy ones that have grown over everything even my raised beds. Part of me really wants a nice garden with beautiful plants that is really planned out and part of me wonders if we were meant to struggle with nature this way? Do I really want to play tug-of-war with these plants or can I find a way to live comfortably with them? I have a really limited amount of time in the backyard, so I have to maximize the time I do spend and really evaluate my family's needs. As much as I wanted a place and space for myself in the backyard and just to have something beautiful to admire at one time, now I look at it and wonder where is space for my kiddo to play back here?

I'm thinking now what do I want to save and what is not worth saving? What died after only a year? Granted it was a nice year, but still I was planning for long-term. Can I say that my garden experiment failed or should I say it succeeded beyond my expectations, but my wants/needs have changed.

Part of me wishes, now that I am out of time that I could just tell someone else what I want and say go at it, but then again the best part of gardening is losing myself in the work.

ARG! Mosquitos & Lethargy.

I guess gardening has been so all consuming that I thought because I haven't been really absorbed in it the last few days that I must be over my gardening habit. I actually haven't felt like being outside at all the last few days and have been sleepy and tired. I thought it was the mosquitoes or finally being tired of gardening, but I started sneezing today, add in the lethargy, feeling down, sore throat, runny nose and headache, and it turns out I'm actually sick, not tired about gardening.

I was out trying to get some more done on our drainage trench on Tuesday but the mosquitoes with all rain we have been getting are out of control. In the hour I was outside the other day, I got 20 bites on my arms most of them up and down my left arm and that was with me killing mosquitoes left and right. I didn't bother counting the ones that somehow got through my jeans and clothes. I was getting bit before but not more than 5 to 10 bites on mostly exposed areas. I've seen bigger mosquitoes, but have never been bit like this before. The "man" doesn't seem to get bit at all. I guess I am just super tasty. I think I let it get me discourage, but now I realize that the tired and down feeling must be a result of my immune system hard at work fighting off germs. 

Some extra sleep today and lots of sick type food stuffs and herb tea and suddenly I'm sad I can't be outside gardening and am feeling more positive again, but I'm also in a quandary. I have a lot of half finished projects that just require time and natural materials like leaves. I was able to get some leaves from one of my neighbors on Saturday. He was somewhat bemused I think when I came over and asked if I could have his leaves for my compost pile. I got three 32 gallon trash cans full and they were not even all that noticeable once I stuck them in my piles that I'm hoping to plant on top of one of these days mound garden style.

I hate waiting, but nature can not be rushed. I'm also contemplating what I want for my garden. I've now planted some perennial ornamentals (mostly Texas natives) and though I really like them I'm contemplating if I really want to fill the rest of the back yard besides the future high density orchard with them or if I want to make a go of a forest garden (edible type landscaping) for along the fence and my other open areas. I started contemplating this when I realized I was no longer interested in planting a pride of barbadoes in the backyard when it was on my list of must-haves because I thought it was so pretty, but now I'm thinking it really doesn't fit what I have already nor where I think I am heading.

I'm really fascinated by the idea of edible landscaping and the almost counter-culture nature of it. I was watching some permaculture and forest gardening videos on youtube at some point and one of them pointed out how food gardening is not only good for one, but also a way of protesting our current national food policies. I'm definitely not a fan of frankenfood, genetically modified food, or large food conglomerates that care more about their bottom line.

Mostly though I am interested in forest gardening since it mimics the forest and is self-sustaining, but uses edibles. Less work and food to boot, though maybe more work in the beginning (not such a bad thing since I am highly motivated right now or will be after I totally beat whatever I've caught and may not be later). 

I remember there was a time I didn't understand why anyone would want to plant a flower garden when they could plant a food garden, but I wasn't willing to put in the work for either. Then I started really enjoying flowers. I also started painting flowers. I enjoyed their beauty and the worth of being surrounded by beautiful things. 

Now I'm thinking long-term sustainability and how my garden can also be not only self-sustaining, attractive to butterflies and birds and other wildlife, but also how it can sustain my family long-term and not just with exposure to nature and beauty, but with actually feeding us too through-out the years. I really enjoy harvesting food that I have grown so much so that I'm back to wanting to add a few more raised beds to grow even more vegetables. I'm also rethinking my diagram of ornamental perennials that I was planning to put along the back fence and wondering how I can plant edible landscaping which can cover wildlife habit and human food.

I think I am starting to feel better since the ideas and plans and gardening excitement are peaking through the lethargy again...

Mound Garden "Hugelkultur"

I'm currently reading "Forest Gardening" by Robert Hart. He mentions using mound gardening which originated in China and is also practiced in Germany where it is called Huglekultur. I think I need to try this since I have huge stacks of rotting ligustrum already in make-shift chicken wire compost bins that I have stomped down (yep, having a bit a weight on me is really useful for stomping on tree branches). His description on page 53 says to dig a 1 foot trench (I won't be doing that...) fill it with woody material (branches, hedge cuttings purnings) to make a firm but porous core (already done), cover with sod, placed grass down, then layers of compost, then top with soil. Plants can be grown on the sides and the top. Here is a website with another description and pictures. Here is another blogger who shows a side by side comparison.

I was already thinking about growing pumpkin, sweet potatoes and other random vining plants on top of the outdoor compost pile, but this seems like it will be even cooler to try.

Book Report: The Garden Explored

I've just started this new gardening book. I appreciate any gardening book that starts by telling me that at least one part of their garden always looks horrible because they are experimenting and exploring. I don't remember where I read it, but the best advice I've gotten about inviting people over is to make sure things are not too neat because it is intimidating. Having something out of order makes it more likely for people to be okay inviting you to their homes after seeing yours because they know that you are not expecting perfection from them. This advice made sense to me and I have to admit part of that is that I have that feeling when I visit a house that is too clean and well put together as if it was out of a magazine and nobody lives there that if I invite that person over to my house they will judge me. My home is what most people describe as homey. We have a lot of things that most would say don't go together, but that somehow work together. I suspect it is all the art on the walls distracting people from the different colored bookshelves and at times haphazard stacking. The furniture that doesn't always quite match. I also have to admit the friends we have who are really messy, I feel those most comfortable with them staying with us because it takes a lot of the pressure off. I never feel with them that somehow I should try to make myself into a better housekeeper (like that is going to happen when the major way I think a house can stay neat is by getting rid of stuff and keeping possession down to a minimum).

Even better is the advice to not listen to people say "You can't grow that here" unless they can tell you why. The author is really into the science of plants which starts with knowledge of the origins of those plants. One of the examples is "English lavender" which apparently originated in the rocky cliffs of Greece so that to grow it one needs to know to give it the chalky, rocky, poor soil that it originated in. We have that kind of soil here in Austin, too bad I'm allergic to it. (I just have to mention that now that I understand that limestone and chalk are related every time I hear a reference to chalky soil I think of Tiffany Aching who lived on the Chalk and I want to say that I live on the Chalk since I find so much of it digging in the backyard. I never understood that reference before in the young adult books by Terry Pratchett about Tiffany Aching. The best book on tape I've listened to maybe ever is his book Wee Free Men. I couldn't stop laughing. Highly Recommended as well.) The other advice is to know your conditions of your own soil or how to mimic the conditions of the plants native habitat. Who knew that Tomatoes originated in the tropical jungles of South America... No wonder people have to spend so much time caring for them. I haven't tried it yet, but the next planting time go around I'm going to try to grow me some tomatoes.

I suspect the author will eventually get around to talking about adapted plant species, but I still suspect that you can adapt a plant only so far from it's original habitat without genetically modifying it. I'm really excited about what I will learn from this book especially since it will help me garden in a manner that suites me better. I'm an experimenter though I probably won't ever make much of scientist because not only do I hate to measure stuff, but things don't seem to turn out right when I measure (okay mainly food). The few food items I've ever tried to follow the recipe exactly on never came out right or good. The ones I cooked by the seat of my oftentimes were sensational. The "Man" watched me make cookies once and told me that there was no way they would come out right because I didn't bother to measure anything and you just can't bake without measuring. I combined ingredients from several different recipes without measure just intuitively working with the ingredients. Those were some of the best cookies I've ever made, though I have no record of what I did nor can I ever reproduce them in exactly the same way I have great memories of those cookies. They are a moment in time and I love those moments in time, captured memories, precious because they can never be repeated.

I'm already making some unrepeatable memories in our backyard...