From Whatever Field, A Gift

"Perhaps, after all, it is not what you get out of a garden, but what you put into it, that is the most remunerative.  ...By gardening, I do not mean that insane desire to raise vegetables which some have; but the philosophical occupation of contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growing things and patient processes; that exercise which soothes the spirit, and develops the deltoid muscles."
----Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, p. 53

The season is waning -- a gradual descent that does not sadden me, but affords me moments to pause.  A few things remain -- some lingering chard, valiant against the cold; some sprouting kale and twigs of broccoli that won't likely come to any good.  The carrots I have left to stretch out the season along with the parsnips and rutabagas and some other leafy thing whose identity I've forgotten -- but I dug up the beets and turnips this afternoon.  In a week or so I will plant the new garlic for next year, and I have begun to ready the greenhouse for a winter experiment, but just now there is this window of in-betweenness I can only describe as "quiet."

What have I, following Warner's accounting, put into it this season regardless of what I've gotten out?  I willingly confess to his indicted "insane desire to raise vegetables," but I nonetheless agree with his assessment.  It has been the contact with the earth and companionship with gentle growth that has nourished me most these past many months.  I was telling friends this week that I score my efforts a "C-" for the season, given the meagerness of the harvest.  But the warmth and settledness of my spirit somehow doesn't comport with the lowliness of that grade.  I have felt satisfaction, if not all that much fruitfulness.  I have felt diligence, if not expertise.  I have felt attentive and observant if not always productive -- not at all unlike my years in parish ministry.  More often than not in those days the most I could do was be present; and as often as not presence was enough.

Naked brown stems still protrude from many of the trenches; I'll pull them up when I have the chance, along with the other acts of tending in preparation for next year.  I begin the process of putting the furrows to bed for the winter with, if not much else, a bumper crop of tangled confusions I'll spend the next several months teasing out into comprehension.  If I am successful.  The dirt work, in other words, gives way to book work.  And I, of course, enjoy that too.

And every bite -- regardless of where it came from -- I will chew more slowly, more gratefully, more appreciatively for the blessing of simply having it on my plate...

...and all it took to get it there.

Prairie Management as Spiritual Discipline

Yesterday I spend the better part of two hours and a full tank of gas/oil mix in the power trimmer assaulting volunteer saplings in the field.  It is a formidable undertaking that has no end in sight.  Some of the species I recognize -- osage orange (from the thorns), cedar (from the smell), walnut (actually, just a guess) -- while others are mysteries.  In fact, given my larger measure of arboreal ignorance, I could be cutting down things I will later regret.  But I am more interested in prairie than forest in this particular area, and so the saplings need to go.

And I get the concept.  Given the 7 or 8 (I lose count) 5-gallon buckets-full of walnuts I have collected from beneath a single tree in the front yard and relocated with, again, no end in sight; given the hedge apples still waiting to fall in a veritable hailstorm of green and knobby orbs, I am only surprised that derivative saplings aren't taking over the world.

That said, there are plenty -- many of them nowhere near their sources.  Squirrels or rabbits or birds or deer or the wind itself -- or all of the above -- have scattered the seeds far and wide, some number of which obviously taking root.  There will be more such days to spend; more such gallons of fuel to burn if my interventions are to mean anything at all.

The whole process, however, has me thinking about other infiltrations that silently and, for a time, invisibly take root where one least expects them.  Habits, I suppose, I am thinking about primarily -- good ones, but more glaringly bad ones.  In their infancy, a mower can knock them over -- or a good, firm yank; before long a shovel is required, or the trimmer I was so violently wielding yesterday.  But in a surprisingly short span of time, the trunk of the things have thickened and deepened to the point that more extreme measures are required -- a chain saw, at the very least.  Eradication, to say it another way, benefits from early detection and early response.

And so I cut...and ponder, amazed at all the noxious sprigs I discover growing within and without.  And the field's experience is as humbling for a person of spiritual consideration as it is daunting:  this fact that there is, as I mentioned, no end in sight.

No end to the noticing, the truncating, and the bundling of all the detritus that needs hauling away.

Perhaps "Noxious" is Only a State of Mind

I think it is genius.  Or a horticultural appropriation of aikido.

Over the weekend we traveled across the prairies of Kansas to attend the 34th annual Prairie Festival sponsored by the Land Institute near Salina.  There were scientific reports, art exhibitions, folk concerts, dire lectures by climate change experts, glimpses into the tragic stories of farmers in India who were shifted from subsistence farming to cash cropping.

And there were prairie walks.  We hiked out into the fields to explore the test plots under the guidance and annotation of the scientists who are conducting the fascinating research.  All focused on the perennialization of grains, my favorite involved efforts involving grain sorghum...

...and Johnson grass.

Johnson grass -- a noxious weed -- and sorghum -- a desirable grain.  Crossed.

It turns out that Johnson grass and sorghum share some genetic ancestry which make them likely partners.  This isn't, after all, the kind of genetic modification that borrows an isolated gene from a butterfly and inserts it into a squash to produce a kind of tie-dyed pumpkin.  This is the slow and tedious process of shaping and nudging the generations of natural selection and crossing between cousins to borrow the desirable traits in one for the benefit of the other.

Or, as I was thinking, that horticultural aikido I mentioned before.  Aikido, a Japanese martial art synthesizing physical defense, philosophy and even religious belief, redirects the force of an attacker into a positive action.  In the case of these experiments, the tenacious reproductive and perennial prowess of the Johnson grass -- typically viewed with hostility by gardeners the world over -- is redirected to the positive benefit of the sorghum, rendering it not only perennial, but also as tenacious as its incorporated cousin.

So I have begun to think about this spirit of aikido with regard to my own garden, wondering to what positive uses I could turn the noxious elements I have encountered -- indeed, "battled" there.  I am certainly not into genetic research or experimentation, so those kinds of applications are out.  But surely the only obstacle to an effective and transformative use of squash beetles and tomato horn worms is my own lack of imagination.

Give me time.  I'm working on it.  In my spare time.

Resilience

There are new blossoms on the tubed pepper plants growing on the deck.  And more tomatoes are appearing on the grape tomato vines.  And today I picked a handful more of peppers from the garden.  All this, after the supposed "killing frost" last Saturday.  Perhaps this is the definition of resilience.

I think back to the stories emerging from the coastal regions along the Gulf of Mexico about how the area is recovering more rapidly than imagined, let alone anticipated after the BP oil rig offshore expelled copious amounts of oil into the waters a few years ago.  The awe-struck word they used to characterize it was "resilience."  Nature tenaciously clawing its way back to health.

Or in my case, back to growthful vigor.  My guess is that there is a lesson to be learned in all of this, not just for coastlines, waterways, peppers and tomatoes, but the whole of nature as well...

...of which people are a part.  Sadly, our species has worked hard through the generations of "civilization" to distance ourselves from the rest of creation, preferring instead to focus on that whole "dominion" assignment given by the Creator in the beginning.  We have relished and excelled in the multiform arts of "subduing" that supposedly went along with that divine assignment, loathing the thought that as creatures ourselves we might be subject to the same natural laws that applied to everything else around us.

But in all these personal and collective seasons of challenge when we are prone to despair, perhaps we could remember our "roots" and trust in the same capacities for resilience inherent in us as those plentiful examples in nature around us.

Anticipating the freeze last Saturday, Lori and I grabbed up what we could from the garden and the deck, including subjecting the tassly chives growing in one of the deck tubes to a severe haircut.  Now, scarcely a week later, the scalping and the frost notwithstanding, if it were a head of hair it would already find itself in need of a comb.

Resilience.

Too Little, Too Late

, a photo by Taproot Garden on Flickr.

I had heard of the dreaded monsters, but hadn't had occasion to see one first hand.

Until yesterday.

Watering and generally checking over what remains of the garden, I came across this curious beast emerging from a bean row. About the size of my index finger, i couldnt decide if it was a Pygmy snake, an Amazon worm, or a neon caterpillar sans bristles. After reviewing the photo I had sent with my query, my farmer friend/expert resolved the ambiguity.

"Unfortunatly, I know that caterpillar all too well! It is a Tomato Horn Worm," he lamented.

My initial reaction was horror. "An infestation of these little buggers would be like science fiction horror," I mused in disgust. Even their name is off-putting. Anything with the words "horn worm" in their name sounds intrinsically ominous.

Before long, however, my disgust melted into into amusement. Recollection of Saturday's damaging frost flashed to mind, and how in anticipation Lori and I had gleaned all the extant tomatoes that had lingered on the vine. And only now arrive the tomato horn worms. It's like showing up at the dance after the band has left the stage.

I noted in retrospect that the worm, when I discovered it, had actually been headed out of the garden.

No doubt with its little tubular tummy growling with hunger. I couldn't help but smile.

Redeemed by Chow Chow

The squash, I suppose, is all that really surprised me.  Not the yellow summer squash or even the remnant zucchini, but rather the pumpkins, butternut and buttercup fall varieties.  I had every reason to think they would survive.

By Friday we had been warned of a likely freeze -- frost, at the very least -- on Saturday night, and that if anything sacred remained outdoors the attentive would surely take some precautionary measures.  Our brand of precaution was simply to gather up flashlights and the harvest basket when we returned home Saturday night and head out to the garden for a preemptive harvest.  There were green tomatoes, after all, and peppers and okra at the very least.  Most of what remained -- the root vegetables, the cold-hardy greens, etc., and yes the autumn squashes -- we assumed would be fine.  Upon closer inspection this morning, however, the larger extend of the damage became clear.

As expected, the pepper plants took a hit, along with the okra.  The beans seem fine, and surprisingly the tomato plants.  True to form, the collards, broccoli, spinach and kale look as hardy as ever, and the cabbage, if anything, looks stronger.  I see no reason for concern over the root vegetables -- the beets, the carrots, the turnips, parsnips and rutabagas.  In a demonstration of what a difference six feet of altitude can make, all the plants in the PVC pipes on the deck seem to have successfully weathered the weather.

But the squash.  Vibrant, healthy and vigorous one day; withered and wilted the next.  Clearly I have homework to do on fall squashes.



In the meantime, we made good use of the premature harvest.  The green tomatoes and the peppers were appealingly transformed into green tomato chow chow, courtesy of a recipe from Emeril Lagasse, canned and water bathed and nested on the shelf.  The only problem is the patience required.  Like virtually everything else associated with the garden, gratification is necessarily delayed.  The last line of the recipe instructs, "allow the ingredients to age for two weeks before opening."

As a friend of mine responded, "I've marked the date on my calendar."

Drops of Rain...and Time

The weather has broken -- at least for the moment -- and the morning is the chilliest yet of the season.  A heavy sky has offered up gentle rains, and all seems quieter for the change.  The nights have gradually been cooling in recent weeks and even the weeds have seemed calmer, somehow less aggressive.  Perhaps the bugs will take the hint and slow their voracious chewing.  Dripping with a kind of beckoning interiority, the day feels suddenly open -- less obligated; reflective and available.

It reminds me of those rare winter days growing up in west Texas when snow risked its way into down.  The cancelled school that necessarily followed felt like the exact same bonus day to a kid as this cool and wet autumn day feels to an adult gardener.  A gift.  A free and available day; as though a 25th hour had been squeezed into the day -- a 366th day shoehorned into the year.  The raindrops may not lend themselves to rolling into snowmen, but they create their own options for alternative pursuits.  There are books piling up and words as yet unwritten.  There is housework long overdue, and some tools to organize and repair.

And there are some thoughts, long fenced and channeled, that need some open range to roam.

Which is to say that the cool rain is as welcome to the clenched soul as to the curling leaves and the cracking soil.