May 27 2009
Stormy Weather
As I’m writing this, huge dark clouds are massing ominously right above my little house and garden. Storms have been racing through the area for the past two days, making wet and muddy work of the garden.
To make life more interesting, yesterday’s wash was left behind on the clothesline in the scramble to get indoors before the first storm hit, and there it still hangs, rinsed with plenty of rainwater and trying to dry in the periodic peeks of sun before the next storm rolls through.
Stormy spring weather is one of the joys of rural living, if only because the downpours inevitably move the little seedlings along their predestined path to being food on our table and in our canning jars. We live in the wilderness, and every year the wilderness tries to retake the space we share, so prepping a large garden is a major undertaking.
It’s true that I desperately need the warm sunny weather to get the soil turned and get the seeds in the ground, but the noisy stormy days offer a hopefully brief respite when I can get out of the dirt and into the house to do something – anything! – else that gets neglected during planting.
Putting in a major garden isn’t easy, and it isn’t for everyone. Think of it as you would having a baby. You can’t just pop it out, stick it in a corner and forget about it! You’ve got to watch it, feed it, care for it, groom it, spend lots of time training it to do the right thing.
Like a baby, as a garden grows older, you have to protect it from all kinds of predators – in our case, that’s currently the wandering little feet of a half-dozen ducklings who occasionally get to roam around the place and eat bugs. But it’s also the invisible little bugs who love the sweet crunchiness of my newly sprouted beans, not to mention the half-inch hail that’s just hanging about in those clouds overhead, waiting to menace the gardens and orchards that are just coming into their own around here.
But like parenthood, large-scale gardening has its special rewards! As annoying as the weeding and clearing and bug-repelling are now, we’ll surely appreciate the effort when, in cold November, we pop open a jar of wild grape and wild elderberry jam, or pour a blend of homegrown tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions and garlic – seasoned with oregano contributed from my daughter, Krafty Kitten – over a steaming pile of spaghetti noodles. We’ll love digging into a tender acorn squash sprinkled with brown sugar and swimming in butter. We can’t wait for that first picking of sweet corn to roast hot and juicy over an open fire.
I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!
But for now, no rest for the weary! Thunder’s rumbling in the distance and the wind is picking up. Looks like that laundry is about to get another good rinsing, courtesy of Mother Nature.
Enjoy!
