fledgling gardners

though it is hard for me to admit (especially to myself), i am a novice when it comes to growing food. i have only vague memories of the art of it, and know nothing of the science, but i have been itching to sink my hands and feet and teeth into the growing of some truly local fare for the past decade or so. during an arduous apartment search that consumed most of april and may we stumbled upon an place -- an affordable apartment, mind you -- with not only a lovely deck & a little yard, but a garden plot for vegetables as well! we couldn't be happier.

it seems a disgrace that we don't know more than we do, since joe spent much of his early childhood working & playing on his grandfather's 178-acre farm in bangor, planting and weeding gardens, sure, but also haying & milking cows; and i grew up with a massive backyard vegetable garden tended by my mother, a green-thumbed wizardress made of water and sun. hers is an intuitive, seemingly effortless approach to growing things. when asked how she kept the 'pests' away, she would attempt to explain that she had simply "asked" the deer & woodchucks to 'please leave her garden alone, and in exchange [she] would keep the compost pile accessible and delicious.'

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having had our fledgling experience planting, and tending, and watching... i can honestly say the following: firstly, i am in TOTAL awe of this process of birth and growth from soil. sure, gestating a human child in my abdomen was pretty neat and everything, but this, this is way more impressive for some reason. perhaps because it all happens right before our eyes? (as ours was an ultrasound-free pregnancy, my only day-to-day experience of the growth of that babe was in feeling-form.. for joe too, once there were kicks a wiggles to be shared). its incredible! 4 weeks ago we had seeds and a few seedlings, and now we have before us an 8-foot by 6-foot ENTANGLEMENT OF GREENERY.

we did read about the best relative placements, nutritional requirements, & row spacing of our different seed & seedling babies, but... well we may have, sort of, entirely disregarded this advice. needless to say, everything is about 3 times larger than we ever imagined it, and becoming larger (of course) and more indistinguishable by the moment. and we sort of love it. our snow pea plants, most of which were planted by gideon, 1 poke at a time in a small area set aside just for him, are pushing 5 feet tall. not surprisingly, they are not producing much fruit, just creating a spindly green wonder wall 18-inches thick, 3-feet wide & mommy's-head-high. and every so often, there's a pea. and because of our mistakes (our education in this process), and the subsequent scarcity of the fruit, that pea is precious green gold. how wonderful that we get the chance to appreciate so profoundly something usually regarded with a hundred others en masse.

(and how incredibly fortunate we are to live in a time and place of such abundance that these circumstances are more comedy than tragedy.)

peace to all and all your growing babes.