This post is bittersweet for me, as I have developed such fondness for this blog.  But Victory Garden Redux will henceforth be continuing under the guise of The Enchanted Earth.

I will see you there.

My response to challenge number 24 from The Four:

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

~Loran Eisely

Don’t forget to visit me at my new site, The Enchanted Earth, where I try to focus on experiencing the magic of this life in every setting and every moment.

[Please note, if you read this post over at my new site, you'll get more pictures and a better picture of which lettuce is which.]

Every Monday Daphne over at Daphne’s Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday, where those of us who are into such things may take delight in the sharing of our various garden successes.  This early in the season, my harvests are rare and tiny… but celebrated all the more in this house because of their rarity.  Fresh produce this early in the year tastes like a delicacy to me.

Perhaps these baby lettuce leaves are a delicacy, if you forget the current definition which refers to the costliness of a particular food item and go all the way back to the 1580s, when the term meant “tender loveliness.”  That’s a perfect description for this week’s harvest.

These tender leaves were snipped from the seedlings that have grown on a corner of our kitchen table since mid-January.  I planted them too early for transplanting at the proper stage.  (Yes, I was impatient, but the uncooperative weather compounded my mistake.)

The few that first made it outdoors promptly got eaten by the birds.  Several more ended up in a terracotta pot which could be yanked indoors when the temperatures dropped into the low 20s, but the birds got them, too.  The latest transplants seem to have made it past premature bird-death (Leo killed a feathered interloper yesterday, which made me horribly sad, but just might improve their chances).  Yet with a 100% chance of sleet and snow tomorrow, I’m not too confident they’ll survive until Wednesday.  Honestly, I’d rather the birds eat them so they don’t go to waste.

Most of the remaining seedlings are getting leggy and crowded on the corner of our kitchen table.  They’ve become friendly presences by now, quite pretty and with each variety showing off a much more individual personality than in the early days of seedlinghood.

To give you an idea of how F. feels about them, as I got out my scissors, he said, “I can’t watch you mutilate them,” and fled the room.

I didn’t mutilate them, of course.  They just got pruned very precisely.  With loose leaf lettuces (all but the Speckled Bibb, where whole plants got thinned instead), one may cut off a few leaves at any time and not prevent the lettuce from continuing to grow and develop normally.  In the climate we live in, loose leaf lettuces are the best choice because heading lettuces require cool temperatures to develop their heads.

F. didn’t get this detailed explanation; he was simply told the baby lettuces had had their first haircut and presented with a bowl of salad at dinner.

We had a guest with us, and everyone was asked to identify a favorite lettuce in the evening’s salad and to explain why.  We ended up sounding like a bunch of wine-tasters discussing our preferred vintages.

Of course, F. preferred the European heirloom “Cracoviensis.”  It’s been his special pet since the start, and as it’s colored up with sunset orange deepening to red and burgundy tones, it’s only gotten more of his attention and approval.  We all agreed that it had a wonderful, rich taste and a good texture, however, so I don’t think his choice can be put down to simple prejudice.

Our guest selected the “Speckled Bibb” leaves, claiming she enjoyed their nutty flavor and that their beauty in the salad bowl was unsurpassed.  Strangely, I didn’t perceive a nutty flavor (such as one might find in Arugula, for instance), but I had to agree about their attractiveness.  Naturally.  She and I are both freckled everywhere the sun has ever shone, so we might be biased in favor of this spectacularly spotted green.

My personal favorite, surprisingly, was the “Australian Yellow” variety.  The leaves are pretty enough, a bit shimmery and ruffled, exactly the color of the flesh of a cucumber.  I’d renamed her ‘Goldilocks’ in a previous post, if you recall, but the nickname didn’t stick.  Instead, “Blondie” emerged as her true nickname over time.  It definitely matches her vivacious, slightly girly personality.

But I was predisposed to dislike her leaves because they are already showing some signs of tip burn, and I really don’t want the headache of figuring out the cause.  None of the other seedlings has this problem, and it’s been worrying me a little.

If the leaves had tasted so-so or even average, I might not have bothered planting any more Australian Yellow.  Instead, they were lovely, oh so delicate, and sweet.  Their fine texture and flavor stood out beautifully in the mix, especially when paired with the darker taste of the European heirloom Cracoviensis.

For those who don’t know, tip burn is when the edges or margins of a leaf turn brown and basically die.  You’ve probably seen this on some lettuce in the grocery store.  There is no cure, only preventative measures that may be taken, and the condition appears to be related to a variety of causes, including dry air, calcium deficiency, and the ph of the soil.  I’m hoping the problem will be cured by growing this lovely heirloom outdoors, and I plan to direct sow some more of it as soon as conditions are favorable.

You may be wondering why no one had much to say about “Drunken Woman,” the poor dear.  Well, my first transplanting experiment was of this variety, and she’s been mostly wiped out by marauding birds and unfriendly weather.  There are only four transplants left, and so I cut each of us exactly one leaf to taste.  However, it was hard to draw a conclusion based upon a single baby leaf.

We all agreed to withhold judgment until she’s had a chance to grow up a little.  Her looks are certainly promising; she’s as ruffled as her Australian counterpart and her base color is even paler, but with a soft wash of bronze shading up and over each leaf as it matures.  (No seductive shimmer, though.)

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

– André Gide

This shot of the lake, a snippet of the dock, and a bit of my shadow spoke clearly to me of this week’s focus:  narrow, deep, and monotonous.  Also, every line in it is perceived at an angle.

As a work deadline has consumed me, I’ve had less and less time for many of the joyous little details that fill my life — and fulfill my soul.  But there has been a kind of austere beauty to these regimented days nonetheless.

I certainly would not choose this pattern all the time, of course, especially since the required hours have taken a huge bite out of, well, everything else.  My time for writing and contemplation seems to have evaporated overnight.  (Yes, I stole a little time for reading yesterday.  That evening tryst with a novel, a blanket, and a cup of hot chocolate I wrote about was illicit.)

And yet, by working on what is necessary now, I think I have seen a solution that I might otherwise have missed, even had I pondered the situation for the rest of the hours allotted to me in this life.  In point of fact, the issue was far from my consciousness as I worked — which seems to be the way the universe prefers to reveal itself, a flash of brilliance glimpsed at the corner of one’s eye.

Sometimes the answer comes to you at a strange angle.   Sometimes the way forward is not straight.

Namasté, y’all, and have a great beginning of a new week and a new month!

(And don’t forget to head over to the new site and change your links accordingly.)

“We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of this strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever.”

– Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

So many of you still have your gardens under a heavy blanket of snow that I do sometimes feel a bit guilty, whining about not being able to get out and garden as I’d like by the end of February.  But we can all experience the sun now, and it’s fun to realize that we all regularly participate in this unacknowledged, universal taboo, in every season, on every continent, and at almost every latitude.

Of course excepting the Arctic Circle where human beings are now experiencing perpetual Polar Night or Polar Twilight.  I’m in awe of the psychological fortitude required to live out this season in such places.  Comparatively, I’m a total winter weakling.

Today the sun has been with us, but has not managed to overcome the deep chill in the air.  It’s so cold I’m back to all my January behaviors, wanting to hunker down inside with a meaty novel and a cozy blanket, even resorting to making a cup of hot chocolate once twilight settled in the hollow.  My current read is John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, although I do highly recommend the origin of the above quote, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; both are winners of the Pulitzer Prize.

The cats seem to be responding to other signals somehow, spending as much time as possible outdoors, Booty traipsing back inside coated with shimmering mica dust, Leo bringing back the results of his renewed energy for stalking prey, and both of them beginning the infamous spring shed.  (Spring is truly the season where I heart my vacuum cleaner.)

And the garden, too, is responding to some cues I must be missing in this unseasonable chill.  The rosemary is perking up and possibly preparing to flower, the garlic shoots are suddenly reaching for the sky, and the recently-thinned radishes are fattening up, as F. verified with an impressive Daikon he sampled today.

One pea is even sprouting.  I’m hoping he’s the advanced outlier on a bell curve of peas that not only survived the snows and cold nights, but might feel right at home in such conditions.  Peas, you will remember, are my new vegetable to try growing in 2010, and as such I have no idea what to expect.  Our last recommended planting date for bringing them to maturity before the heat sets in was February 15th.

This one may be a freak who survived against all odds — or the sign that not all is lost.  Even so, if the peas fail utterly, I have other seeds to plant in their place.

In the garden, it is hard to lose it all; isn’t it?  The flow of life and possibility never ceases, even if we’re stuck contemplating it only in the mind’s eye while snuggled under a blanket.

Tagged: A Confederacy of Dunces, Annie Dillard quote, daikon radish, faded blossoms, photo with glare, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Polar Twilight, rosemary, spring shed, sprouting peas, sunlight, the sun, universal human taboo, unseasonable chill, winter ]]> http://victorygardenredux.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/taboo/feed/ 5 mew averted faces http://victorygardenredux.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/winners/ http://victorygardenredux.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/winners/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:00:48 +0000 mew http://victorygardenredux.wordpress.com/?p=2872 ]]>

“I think carnations are making a comeback.”

– Carrie Bradshaw (a character on Sex and the City)

Carnations are winners in my book.  Not only are they pretty and ruffly, but they last forever in the vase, and their scent is lovely, with a hint of spice at the heart that makes me lean in to sniff several times a day.

I’m afraid I did not properly follow up on my half-anniversary giveaway, and I do apologize to you for that.  With the move over to the other site ongoing, I guess I just forgot.  It’s getting a little difficult to keep up with both sites and all of the details, so if you haven’t visited The Enchanted Earth, please come on over and don’t forget to change your bookmarks, subscriptions, and links.  Soon the transition will be complete, and Victory Garden Redux will be a happy memory.

Thank you to everyone for your kind congratulations on my half-year anniversary of blogging.  Some of those comments were so nice they made me blush.  I hope to continue to meet your expectations for another half year and beyond.

Without further ado, the winners of the selection of seeds are:  Annie’s Granny, Jackie, and Carol.   I know Granny prefers lettuce (not just for herself, but I think for her adorable rabbit Cookie, too), and Jackie wants a selection of radishes to amuse her husband’s taste buds.

Carol, you’ll have to let me know your seed preference:  is it to be radishes, lettuce, or cucumbers?

I’ll be in touch with all three of you soon about addresses and details.

As for the rest of you who commented and who read this blog, you know you’re all winners to me!

With the temperatures dipping back down into the 20s tonight, the cabbage transplants had to go under cover.  Yesterday evening, I cut the bottoms off of 10 bits of waste plastic which had been carefully saved by me, my parents, my sister, and my neighbor.  (People are remarkably generous with their trash if you ask politely and explain your need.)

Seven were gallon-sized milk jugs and three were two-liter soft-drink bottles, the latter requiring a knife to cut.  Granddaddy fully approves of planting cabbages early in the season… early enough to risk losing them.  Frost only sweetens the taste of cabbage, and they are quite resistant to the cold in general.  But brand-new transplants probably shouldn’t be exposed to these temperatures plus tonight’s high winds.

He’d told me before to immediately cover the baby cabbages with empty milk jugs, which have the added benefits of raising the outside temperature a degree or two to encourage strong early growth, protecting the maturing cabbages from marauding insects, and helping them to form a compact head if the temperatures are not chilly enough to make it happen naturally.

I suppose the idea is basically like a poor man’s cloche, only instead of a lovely dome of glass or a synthetic lookalike, these are, well, let’s just say not so aesthetically pleasing.  And I’m just finicky enough about how the kitchen garden looks, even in this time when it looks nearly empty (it is not, but looks it), that I refused to put the carefully hoarded plastic stash to use when I put in the first transplants.

But, oh, well, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.  I refuse to potentially lose half of my poor cabbages because I thought, in effect, that their scarves were an ugly color.  I can be practical, even if the result is not pretty.  (What you can’t see is how my lips are pinched as I type that sentence.)

To make the whole ordeal less sordid, however, I did go outside after the moon was well up, gorgeous and bright with a soft blue nimbus in that cold air, and request protection and maybe some extra love for my darlings who are now swaddled in yucky plastic, asking that this early undercover stint be followed by jaw-droppingly beautiful, barely-nibbled, magnificent, dew-spangled heads later in the season.  I pictured them for a moment rather like pimply, whiny, superficially-minded preteens swathed in baby fat who end up as ravishing, emotionally-mature young adults with deep thoughts and wonderful ideas for saving the world.  (Hey, it does happen, and more often than you’d think!  I’ve seen it several times, and it always gives me cause for hope.)

As you can see from the photograph taken when I peeked inside this morning, so far, so good.

On a too-short trip to see my parents this weekend, my father invited me out back to see the results of a compost pile that I began so long ago that no one can remember exactly.  (Consensus is the late ’90s.)

Following my usual jump-right-in style of trying any new discovery that captures my interest, I began it in a hidden spot where two brick walls of the house meet at the corner, shielded from view by the raised deck, and I’d only read one or two articles about the concept of compost and not investigated any further.

About the only thing I did do right was to lay gravel at the bottom, knowing from hard experience that that area of the yard can have drainage issues after heavy rain.  And I soon moved on with my life and forgot all about my first experiment in decomposition.

But Dad kept faithfully putting grass clippings on it all summer every summer, piling on a bushel of dry leaves every autumn, and dumping his used coffee grounds on top, day after day.  Mom occasionally remembered to take out her eggshells or orange peels or carrot shavings and toss them into the mix.

Otherwise, no one has really done anything at all to it.  It’s never been turned or carefully layered in “brown” and “green” matter, and no one has ever added a compost starter to it, checked its temperature, or watered it when it dried out in summer’s heat.

“Could you use this?” Dad asked, scraping away the topmost layer of leaf mold and pine straw to reveal dark, crumbly compost three feet deep covering an area fully six feet by four.

I went down on my knees in awe and immediately stuck my hand in it up to the wrist.   The compost was moist and several fat pink earthworms frolicked in it wherever I disturbed the top layer.

“It’s black gold, Daddy,” I breathed.

He helped me pack up several garbage bags of the stuff, over 400 pounds at a guess.  But then we stopped for fear of stressing the back axle of the car.  And also, because my poor arms were trembling from being unaccustomed to wielding the shovel for so long.  (Dad has ongoing shoulder issues, and I refused him the option of shoveling in my stead.)

When I got home, I barely took the time to kiss F. hello, take off my coat, and put down my purse before rushing back outdoors to direct F. in the unloading and begin spreading my new treasure in the garden.

And now I have another reason (as if I needed another) to want to go back and visit my parents again soon:  to get another 400 pounds of free black gold.

I did photograph the earthworms for you, but it turns out they are not very photogenic.  I felt mildly disgusted by the results and instead settled for a shot of a small hill of the new compost in the fall extension bed.

Beyond the edge of the hill, you can see the thinned autumn radishes stretching away in their rows, and Leo busy investigating some garden debris on the edge of the driveway (he is so happy to have me back in the garden and is already on patrol for birds marauding my poor lettuces), plus the geometrically butchered azaleas, our trash and recycling bins, and even a hint of our mailbox.

By the way, since I was not only gone, but unplugged for a refreshing change of pace, it may take me a little while to catch up on reading all of your lovely blog posts.  I still cannot access Blotanical upon my return, and I’d like to request an e-mail from anyone who has not had a visit from me lately, but knows I used to read and enjoy your blog.  Let me know I haven’t been by, please.  Sadly, I cannot possibly remember you all off the top of my head.

I had not bookmarked or subscribed to many of the blogs I read, but was using Blotanical as my virtual subscription service — a mistake that I now sorely regret.  Now that I have a blogroll at The Enchanted Earth, I plan to use it for my own convenience (and maybe locate a plugin which will notify me promptly when you update your blogs with new posts, too!)

Come on over and check out The Enchanted Earth and change your links and subscriptions if you haven’t already!  The day of Victory Garden Redux’s final post is approaching fast.

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

– Robert Frost

I almost missed my first glimpse of the season’s transitory flash of gold, arising at my feet on the path’s edge near a garden bench at the South Carolina Botanical Gardens.

Many of the first signs of spring seem to be showing up outside my normal line of sight; looking up, the silhouettes of buds show stark against the sky, and looking down, the blades of crocus and new baby moss are quietly and confidently announcing spring’s arrival.

The view outside my window now is drab sepia, rust, and brown, with a blue-grey backdrop.  It’s hard to imagine that soon that spring green with golden highlights will dominate the landscape… especially when the weather man is promising us an “arctic blast” with lows of 28 degrees F on Thursday.  This year’s winter has developed an irritatingly clingy personality.

I am determined to spend a little bit more of this summer sitting and enjoying the garden, which means I am currently on the lookout for more comfortable garden seating.  In my porch-level container garden, the plan this year is for flowers and herbs instead of tomatoes, so that I can sit and watch the butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds visit from a more close-up and relaxed vantage point.  I’ll also be able to look down on the main kitchen garden plantings.

The big question is, how will I ever be able to sit still when I see weeds and unharvested fruits and a million other gardening tasks left undone?

There is always something more one could do in the garden at peak season.

What am I saying?  Already there is more than I have time to do in the garden.  Although in this season, it is due to the heavy rains making the garden a muddy, unworkable mess, or to cold spells that make the work unpleasant and difficult, sometimes downright impossible.

I guess I’ll just have to choose to take time to relax out there knowing that there will always be more work, but there won’t always be bright blooms and delicious scents and colorful visitors around to enjoy.  That’s a lesson I need to learn over and over again in so many areas of my life, it seems.

Impermanence.  “So dawn goes down to day,” as Robert Frost sagely reminds us.  So often I fall into a kind of walking trance, busy with all of the other stuff, numbing the awareness of truth with habit and rote behaviors, and I forget.

Let’s make today the one day we don’t forget impermanence, don’t forget to revel in the beauty and joys we have access to now.

Namasté, y’all.

(p.s.  Did you realize that Victory Garden Redux is in the process of changing addresses and titles and generally undergoing a whole new makeover?  Come visit its new incarnation, The Enchanted Earth, at theenchantedearth.com.)

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of” — February?  (Just one more reason why it really worked out well that Shakespeare was born in England.)

Everywhere I look these days, this one thing I see:  buds, whether elongating into slender points at stem’s end, rising in a row of knots along the length of a branch, or swelling to a ripe and rosy plumpness.

So how could this week’s Focus photo be anything but a bud?

Buds are the symbol of pure potential.  (Or maybe that’s newborn babies?)  As such, the image of a single bud rising to meet the blue skies is the perfect illustration of this week’s focus, as I jumped off to a new blog site, sowed the first seeds of the early spring incarnation of the kitchen garden, and began a new chapter of my book.

F. also got notification this week of the probable date of his doctoral defense.  Cross your fingers for us; won’t you?  This end-date means it’s time to start the job search in earnest, and that’s a little nerve-wracking in this scary economic climate.  I confess to also being a little worried about how we’re going to manage a job hunt plus his regular duties teaching and doing his research, plus my day job — and not attain a state of near burnout.

Still, seeing the bud of a new step in our life together begin to blush and swell on the limb this week has given both of us new resolve and focus.