When a Garden is More Than Just a Garden..
We are in the second half of July now. Our Spring drought has more than resolved thanks to several inches of rain these past two weeks. Snapdragons, coneflowers and gladiolas are in full bloom. The garlic leaves are slowly dying back, green tomatoes abound, with a few ripe cherries here and there. Our newest chickens have just started to lay their first “practice” eggs. Our Cornish cross broilers have made it to freezer camp, and we were glad to have that behind us before the hot weather took hold (those birds do not do well in heat). Dolly and Mae, our Nigerian Dwarf goat kids, are continuing to grow and although they are larger their energetic antics haven’t subsided. Our Pekin and Khaki Campbell ducklings are large now, and have made friends with their big brother Ferdinand (also a Pekin). They waddle here and there, spouting out random loud quacks as if laughing at some barnyard joke. Our two Buckfast honeybee hives are a mixed bag this year; one hive is coming along well and the other swarmed in late May, which means a queen left with many of the worker bees in tow. The remaining population is rebuilding and the new queen just started laying eggs again. This is good, but they are far behind their sister hive. Victoria, our senior Quarter Horse mare, has been busy supervising her adopted goat kids. She has had a good summer so far but she has been ill this past week and on and off her feed with other symptoms. We are concerned, particularly about Potomac Horse Fever, so the large animal vet will come out tomorrow and let us know what he thinks. If that is the diagnosis, there is not much to be done except encourage her to eat and drink, rest, and hope for the best outcome. It’s always something here.
We are working on a few more YouTube videos for our channel. Instead of just using an old iphone and editing in ivideo, I am finally attempting to learn new editing software now that we have a computer system capable of running it, but it is not something I am a natural at to say the least. However, I need to keep trying because I suspect the results will be well worth it. We are not yet in a regular routine but hopefully we will get into the swing of things as I gain more confidence.
Projects in general are slow going here for right now. We both have day jobs which take much out of us, each in different ways. That’s all I shall say about this publicly, but we both recognize that we are being called to other things. Homesteading and trying to become more self-sufficient is tough when you need a full time effort in a part time timeslot. That said, we do the very best we can while taking small steps each week towards larger goals.
I was talking with a friend recently about the sorry state of our gardens these past many weeks, lamenting the overgrown aisles, the unused space in many of the beds, the unpruned, tangled mess of tomato vines that are a result of my failure to trellis them appropriately. These same plants were that I painstakingly germinated from seed last winter, fed and watered, provided light for all Spring, hardened off and babied until they stood safely on their own roots in the garden..and yet here they are in this state only months later. Lettuce bolting everywhere, overwintered plants now seeding out, and me not even recalling the varieties in order to save seed from them. In many places, volunteer seeds from last year’s bounty have sprung up from where they fell, like haphazard little blessings offering their services…just not where I needed them to be. That rectangular plot of land we call our garden is a reflection of our lives at the moment. There’s a definite direction, but we let outside worries distract us; work stress, family obligations, personal losses, all of those things descend on us and what suffers most is often that one thing we love most. The thought of having to put all of the chaos back in order is overwhelming, but if we don’t reclaim that space we are at risk of giving up on it altogether at some point. Where to start, where to start..
So, when is a garden not just a garden?
