Category Archives: gardening

Writer’s Block

creativity, gardening, writing,
Gerard ter Borch, Woman Writing a Letter (1655)
The Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague

I have been writing a lot of words in the past week although they are mostly not ready for prime time. I discovered Jeff Warren‘s meditation designed to help with creative block and have been using it for the past few mornings. Warren’s approach is similar to Julia Cameron’s morning pages applied to whatever you create: just write or draw or sing or sculpt without thinking or judging. Warren even suggests that it should be terrible. Making bad art is something Austin Kleon has written about as well.

Warren uses a timer–I’ve been doing 20 minutes–and rather than writing long hand the way I have for decades of morning pages, I am using my Freewrite keyboard. I want to start producing publishable text and the morning pages don’t lend themselves to formal writing. For now, the goal is getting the habit in place.

I haven’t given up the long hand morning pages, however, and am experimenting with approaching them as letters to an old friend. Still mostly stream of consciousness but with a bit of organization and thoughtfulness.

Letter writing has been on my mind, perhaps as part of a general nostalgia I’ve been feeling as I continue my transition into semi-retirement. In the olden days, I loved nothing better than spending an afternoon writing long letters to friends and family, settled into a comfortable chair with favorite pens and paper, a beverage alongside, maybe some music playing. I had a few good correspondents over the years, including the friend I visited in Pennsylvania this summer, but time and life and technology eventually saw our letters dwindle to a few lines on birthday and holiday cards, and now have largely been replaced by email, text messages and social media messages.

I am going to make time this week to write a newsy letter to my old friend. I did send a short thank you note, one of those cards with a few scribbled lines, when I returned home, but life has happened since we sat beside her pool. I will tell her about all the tomato sauce I am making from my San Marzano tomatoes, the cool, rainy weather that seems to herald fall’s arrival, what I am reading and watching, plans for the fall. It will be, at least for a little while, as though we are together again.

Bits and Bobs

gardening, reading

What I am Eating:

Glass jars with lids of bok choy stems with pickling spices

While I am waiting for my tomatoes to get red, I am enjoying other fruits of the garden. The bok choy is past its prime due to the heat and bugs, but the stems make delicious quick pickles. I’ve added garlic and mediterranean spices to mine. My peppers–jalapeno and poblano–are coming on thickly, as they say, so last night’s supper included bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapenos. Spicy and delicious. As I wait for fresh tomatoes, I am using up the last of my tomato sauce from the freezer.

What I am Watching:

Season 6: Grantchester

This British murder mystery set in the 1950s deals with tough social issues including the homosexuality of one of the main characters, a local curate. The main characters are the young vicar and the veteran police chief who work together in what can be a prickly relationship some times. I had been watching the series on and off but am hooked on the Season 6 storyline and binging away. I am surprisingly up to date as Season 7 is just airing now.

What I am Reading:

I participated in a LibraryThing readathon this past weekend. The goal is to read as much as possible between 5 PM on Friday and midnight Sunday night then share the results on a forum. The readathons began as part of social distancing, and this is #122. I am sorry to say it is first one in which I have participated. A great excuse to settle into several good books.

I read Practical Magic and Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman, both part of the Practical Magic series, the Owens family saga. I read Magic Lessons earlier in the month. That book was really the start of the series as it told the story of the matriarch of the Owens family, Marie, who journeys to America with her daughter and ends up in Salem at the height of the witch trials. These two books tell the story of her present-day descendants as they choose different ways to deal with their special powers. Ultimately, all the books deal with love in many forms, as her family struggles with Marie’s ancient curse. I loved the story, the descriptions and the characters, but the books also deal with deeper issues related to the place of women in society and how “witches,” often just skilled healers and good listeners, had to be cast out in order to keep the preferred social order. I am also excited to discover there is a fourth book!

While I worked in the garden, I listened to Chris Grabenstein’s mystery Free Fall, the 8th book in his John Ceepak series. I have listened to the whole series. The story is told by Officer Danny Boyle, Detective John Ceepak’s partner on the Sea Haven Police Department, a town on the Jersey shore. The narrator captures both men’s styles perfectly: Boyle has a freewheeling, often self-deprecating, ironic tone while Ceepak doesn’t often break out of his by-the-book, former military police monotone. Ceepak lives by the strict West Point code and expects others to do the same. The mysteries they pursue deal with tough subjects and we also get to them, their families and friends. Ceepak’s estranged and dangerous father plays an ongoing role. I am hoping another one is on the way. Read them in order as the stories build on each other.

What Are You Going to Write About?

gardening

I mentioned a few writing topics in the previous post. Basically, I am taking the advice of the social media folks: everything is content.

Since we are at the height of summer, gardening plays a big role in my life. I have always been the flower gardener in the family, but this year, I also planted a vegetable garden. It is dominated by tomatoes but also includes the standard stuff: peppers, eggplants, okra, cucumbers, and herbs like basil, oregano and parsley.

Gardening is, as they say, in my blood. My father always had a vegetable garden and the yard was filled with flowers, especially roses. Even now, at 87, he plants flowers outside, including those roses, and also tends about 100 orchids that live in the greenhouse he built in the basement of their retirement-community condominium. My maternal grandmother, named Daisy, lived in the city but kept chickens in the backyard along with her victory garden and a beautiful peach tree who limbs hung with the succulent fruit each year.

I have always found a way to garden. While I am fortunate to have almost unlimited space here on the farm, even when I lived in an apartment in Los Angeles, I grew houseplants along with pots of lettuce and peppers on the tiny balcony.

Gardening brings opportunities unavailable in other ways. Besides getting me out into nature, it forces me to really see the natural world, connecting with its rhythms and learning how plants fits into the environment. I have a better understanding of how my actions impact the ground beneath me so that, while summer is the major focus of my work, there are things I can do throughout the year to help the soil help me and my plants. Knowing the difference between soil and dirt is a good starting point and this article from the Napa Master Gardener provides a great introduction:

Remember: there is a difference between soil and dirt. Dirt is what you get on your clothes and hands while working in the soil. Soil is made up of elements that have been decomposing since the earth was created.

Finally, a word of encouragement to those of you who don’t think you can garden for whatever reason: no green thumb, no space, no time. I count any relationship with a living plant to be gardening, and there are houseplants that refuse to die despite your best efforts.

As for me, I’ll be outside with my hands in the soil! A few pictures of the current situation in the flower beds for your enjoyment:

Flowers in Early July 2022 

Gardening

adult learning, gardening,

NOTE: This post was drafted in early April, about a month ago. I have been waiting for the spring blossoms to show themselves as I laid down bucket after bucket of mulch. Now I have pictures to share along with the words. If you like, feel free to skip the words.

Gardening is a passion of mine, and this time of year can be overwhelming as well as exciting. I was up and out early today, weeding and mulching. The roadside garden on the farm has been, as they say, years in the making. It started as a small perennial bed near the driveway with the usual daylilies, irises and hostas. But it quickly grew, expanding along the road to the opposite edge of the property. Now, after close to five years of work, it is mostly complete except for the wildflower bed I have planned, and the seeds for that are just waiting until the evening temperatures get above 50 degrees. That means the ground will be warm enough for them to germinate.*

A bad hip kept me from finishing the full garden over the past three years. I tinkered around the edges and even tried paying people. But no one was willing to get on hands and knees and dig up wire grass for what I was willing to pay, and I just couldn’t do what needed to be done. Last spring, I did better but was still recuperating.

This spring I am back and better than ever. I get into the garden beds for some time every day and for hours on the weekends. Seeing them come together in ways I could only imagine have made all the work worth it. And, the lovely finishing layer of mulch reveals the garden design, highlighting the plants that, for now, are just getting started.

This year, I took a before video on March 21 when I was just getting started.

And then again on May 14, 2021, which just happened to be my birthday.

It wasn’t just my health that kept the garden from completion. I lacked the finances to simple buy a garden at the home center in one fell swoop. I paid for or was gifted a few unusual (read expensive) plants, worked with my husband to raise things from seed (his particular gardening super power), divided plants, swapped plants, and plundered bags of perennials at the local dollar store. (They are cheap but tend to have a low success rate.)

Here are pics from early spring through yesterday:

The Gardens on My Birthday and Beyond

I was fortunate to grow up in a family, really a community, of gardeners. Small, neat kitchen gardens were common. I have a family photo that features my maternal grandmother’s peach tree in her urban garden in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  When my paternal grandmother died, we discovered dusty jars of canned vegetables and fruits on the basement shelves, enough to last several lifetimes. My father always had a vegetable garden in the communal garden at the high school and continues to cultivate roses and orchids even into his 80s. My mother canned and froze the produce from the garden and even now takes advantage of living in central Pennsylvania to buy locally grown vegetables to preserve. She also makes her own ketchup when the tomatoes are cheap and sweet.

There is something satisfying about engaging with living things from people to animals to plants. Plants bring the bonus of digging in the dirt, an activity that I suspect many of us enjoyed as kids. Even if you don’t have an outdoor space or want to make time for a large garden, container gardening is a possibility whether it’s radishes and greens on the patio or herbs on the windowsill.

I am also a fan of the odds and ends garden. You can put those bits of potatoes with their eyes sprouting into dirt, and you will get more potatoes. They like sun and a deep pot where you can mound dirt as they grow to get more potatoes. You aren’t going to feed the world, but you will get enough for a meal or two and they will taste wonderful of dirt and sunshine and rain. You can experiment with celery ends, onions and garlic, too.

* I planted these seeds on Monday, May 10, and am happy to say they are sprouting!