A Seed Box Murder

I have been trying to put plants into the garden, some starts from the nursery and some seeds (with varied success). I had an unfortunate mishap with my stash of seeds which kind of put a damper on my productivity. I was happily gardening, my seedbox open next to my raised beds and my favorite hand tools all arrayed around them,my fingers muddy and my mind a dusty haze of happiness. Suddenly, I had a Cinderella moment and realized I had gardened away more time than I thought and needed to run madly to pick up my boys from kid's club. I threw the youngest two into the car and cleaned my hands with 5,000,000 wet wipes at various stop lights as I zoomed through town and dusk fell. By the time we were home again, all that was on my mind was corralling all the boys into the house and cleaning and pajama-ing them up for bed, every thought of my interrupted gardening wiped from my mind.

Sadly, it rained that night....it rained cats and dogs. I went dashing out that morning and tore open a few of the sodden packets in the continuing drizzle, trying to shake the damp seeds into the proper places in beds, planting dejectedly and frantically until I had to go running back inside to make breakfast. There was a solid inch of water in the bottom of my seed box and the many remaining packets were floating in a mini lake.

The viburnum hedge between us and the neighbors.

I never cried, and I have been trying to let go of the disappointment and see it as a chance to have a clean slate. I did just tell myself that I was going to try to buy more of my starts instead of starting things from seed as they take more time and often I sacrifice actual plants for my idealism. Still, the loss is real and every time I am in the garden I am fighting a feeling of general discouragement and an air of defeat. I haven't felt brave enough to throw out the seeds yet. I'm just holding onto the mildewed collection for a bit and trying to convince myself to let it go. Maybe once I have all the beds full of real plants I will be able to call it a day and pitch them, or maybe just writing about them is enough moving on and later tonight I will bury them in a shallow grave in the compost pile and chalk one up for minimalism.

Our first black eye. Must be Spring.

In other news, spring is incredible. I can't ever quite believe it is this tremendous and never really believe it will come or be quite so pleasant and delicious and stunning as it really is. The layered scents of viburnum, lilac and iris is enough to make you delirious. The perfume is unbelievable round about dinner time when the yard is softly golden and the sun is streaming in our open dining room windows. Everything you could possibly eat goes with the scent of blooming flowers. I want to linger over every single supper even if the kids are squawking so loudly that A and I can hardly hear ourselves think, or someone has say, brought a toy bow to the table and is shooting other diners with it, or perhaps if someone has begun throwing the peas instead of eating them....hypothetically speaking, of course. Spring makes it all worth it. Dead seed collections, and insane boys, I can hack it all with a floral smelling salts to keep me lively.

Seeds and Other Lessons

We are homeschooling apace! All kinds of fun things happening. We have been watching our mushroom kit bloom (Thank you Aunt Sheila!!!), talking about living on a planet, testing out reading maps, chanting the Spanish vowels, and revving up for learning about the ancient Mesopotamian culture. Life is busy and I am not sure I have entirely enough arms but I am slowly learning little tricks and beginning to visualize a Pom nap schedule emerging which is a really helpful thought. Love watching the boys learn and wonder and puzzle things out. Vicarious enjoyment is a really good invention.

Our big science project this week was a seed collection excursion and then the assembly of a collage of the goods. Artist mama got a little enthusiastic about the whole collage part and made it mixed media when she pulled out the pens and watercolors. Anybody know the name of the weed that grew that beautiful pointy round seed-head in the middle.

Radish Babies

We have teeny, tiny radish babies...the first of our homegrown veggies to step toes out of the soil.

Or maybe just wee green faces...not so much big pink toes yet.

Is there anything better than that first zippy shot of new-seedling-chartreuse?

 Here we are on the 21st day of March and we have all kinds of veggies in our beds: bok choi, kale, lettuces, peas, carrots and our dear radish seedlings. Some of them are six pack veggies that I couldn't resist at the nursery and some are hidden seeds, waiting under the soil for enough rain or warm to sploing up. The radishes win the race!

Poetry Friday: A Watermelon Poem

 Happy Poetry Friday, everyone!

Today it is cold and rainy, again. We've been having quite a lot of those spells this summer. The handy thing is that I am spending very little time watering the plants and everything is growing like gangbusters. I am looking forward to a few more of those painfully sunny days now that it is officially summer.

It's important to have squint-your-eyes sunshiny days for watermelon eating. A's favorite fruit, and one of his very favorite foods is watermelon, a quintessential summer pleasure. He always asserts that it is "the thinker's fruit" which never fails to make me smile. Who doesn't have rosy memories from their childhood involving watermelon? Today's poem is a little intro to summers past in my brain, in celebration of the solstice this past week. Shout-out to my cousins, scattered all over the world but still as fond as ever!

Ode to Watermelon

I remember standing on my grandma's veranda
The grey wood, slippery with dry beach sand,
Ptoo!-ing black seeds into the curling sawgrass.
All the cousins, reunited for an elastic week,
Here together flicking the stubborn ones from
Crisp, rosy flesh with springy index fingers.
Proper technique also meant leaning far forward
All of us slanted togetherlike books on a shelf,
The whole deck tilting,like a summer canoe as
We dripped rivulets of juice down our arms
And let it plink in pink drops overboard.
I heard the aunt-sisters laugh from the kitchen,
An adult world of loud talk and ice in tinkly glass.
Behind us Grandma opened the grill and squinted
Briskly balancing the deck again by leaning backwards,
Dodging the smoke cloud from the shish-kabobs,
Carefully threaded on their funny blackened sticks.
Bellies full, we heaped up a mound of rinds,
Gnawed to pale crescents with a moat of juice.
And then clenched and unclenched our fists
Giggling at the tacky feeling of all that sugar
Dried to rubber cement between our fingers.


We still buy a lot of watermelon, we're a melon a week family at our house, but I miss the seeds. A thinks I'm crazy, but there's a little bit of evidence out there that perhaps the modern hybrid breeding programs that have culled the little black teardrops from our fruit have done some taste dulling in the bargain. I hope, eventually to accomplish growing my own old fashioned seeded melons. Next year I will actually be able to get plants in the ground at the right time and maybe that will be the clinching key. In the meantime, thank goodness for the farmer's market!

Check out more Poetry Friday poems at Carol's Corner, the host blog for this week.

Related articles

• Kuhn Rikon Launches Watermelon Knife (shoppingblog.com)
• Chilled tomato-watermelon soup with shrimp (salon.com)
• Breast of Watermelon (ideasinfood.com)

Winter Sowing My Little Heart Out!

Image by nociveglia via Flickr

Winter Sowing is a genius way to plant things. I mentioned earlier that I had made a silly gaffe and left my giant box of seeds out in the un-heated, un-attached garage for the winter. Heh. For most of my seeds this means a certain doom but, there are some that can handle the cold, usually flower seeds and of those, usually the ones that are native to cold or and/or mountainous regions. These seeds can not only handle being left out in cold winter weather, they actually tend to sprout well and grow in these conditions...with a little help.

I first learned about Winter Sowing on Garden Web...one of my favorite places online. (If you're interested, even sort of, in growing things...any kind of things, Garden Web is a wealth of comradarie and information.) So, that I don't have to belabor you with an explanation, suffice it to say that Winter Sowing is a way to start seeds, fuss-free, in little mini-greenhouses made of recyclables, right in the dead of winter when there's snow and ice and little else outdoors.You can find out what to Winter Sow and when, here. And here's another blogger or two who are walking through the steps and a great article on the method to boot! I love Winter Sowing because I'm the type of gardener who stresses seedlings out by forgetting to water and God does a much, much better job at keeping them consistently moist. Starting seedlings in homemade terrariums is painless.

I just hauled my box out of the garage and spread everything out in a massive swirl of seed packets and scribbled-upon envelopes and started working through it all. Eventually I arrived at a decent amount of things that qualify for Winter Sowing. I raided my recycling bin for what had around to use (anything with a lid will work, even bottles and jugs).

Then, on to the dumping in of potting soil, the splashing and sprinkling with water, the inevitable leaking onto the floor, and small fingers covered with mud and then it was planting time.

And that is how it was that I came to have a small, misty looking pile of various plastic containers, in my back yard. The greenhouse effect makes them condense and bead droplets of steamy water all over the insides of their lids once they are out sitting in a snowbank. I didn't plant all of what could be salvaged, not nearly, but there will be more plastic containers and slowly the flock will grow...and someday soon we will have little sprouts of green to greet us and slowly grow tantalizingly taller by our back door.

Man! I have got to get that apple tree in the yard pruned or else! Heavens how the winter has flown!

Veggie Fever

The catalogs have started arriving in droves...A brings in another few every night or so it seems. Last night we were chuckling when he leafed through the mail and said, "I swear you've had this one already!" and indeed, he was right...so I had. This fellow garden blogger's beautiful post reminded me fondly of some of my favorites companies and really, I can't have too many seed catalogs, right....?

Especially this year.

It's always good to clean out your seed box every once in a while but I didn't mean to do quite as drastic a job as I did recently. Heh. When we moved in, all the gardening gear went out to the garage, including my big box of seeds. I never thought to pull them in before the cold weather started and I just realized "Oh crud. Lots and lots of those seeds aren't frost hardy." Guess I kinda need that stack of seed catalogs now, right? *grin*

On that topic. I've been busy today thinking about what layouts would be best for our vegetable beds. We've decided to  tripling our veggie space this year (Hooray yard!) and since I vegetable garden exclusively in raised beds I'll be ordering two more to match the one we already have from this company.

I wish I were handier with a saw, I realize it's not expensive to build them, but with three littles and a husband who is more executive-type than bashing-out-handmade-wood-products-type I'm thrilled somebody out there has decided to make and sell wooden beds for me. Free shipping is my friend.

Yes. And just look at these wonderful, glorious kitchen garden designs from The Gardener's Supply Company (a New England business, no-less!) I realize they intend for folks to buy the seed packages they are selling but I think personally I'll just magpie the plans and integrate into my own little green world. I am fond of Cook's Choice, Fun For Kids and High Yield. What strikes your fancy?

Birds and Babies

Nib has recently become ridiculously smiley and talkative. Its sooo fun! I forget how completely enchanting this stage is. I get really enthralled with making him grin and coo and find it hard to keep my mind on much or work very hard on anything useful. (not that I was particularly driven before...heh) He's right on the verge of those heartbreaking, deep belly laughs and the anticipation is killing me. Every time his wee eyes crinkle into a a face splitting grin and he gurgles I wonder if this will be it. Maddening, addictive sweetness.

The roadside wildflowers are giving way to Queen Anne's Lace....last of the scattered weed blossoms and today as a result I caught a most breathtaking sight. There was an enormous flock of male goldfinches feasting on seeding chickory. I've never seen so many spontaneously gathered, brightly colored birds all in one spot before, there must have been 30 of them or so. So pretty! I wish I had a better shot but I'm afraid I scared them all off before I got any really lovely shots. See if you can squint and pick out the five finches in the photo.

And at last I have a water baby! I swear Nib is a baby of legend.  He smiles and coos, puts himself to sleep, wakes once or twice a night, only really fusses when he needs changing, food or a rest and is inordinately happy to be passed around to any obliging friend who wants to hold him for a spell....and he loves his bath! This little snap is a glimpse of him in his first real immersion bath in the big tub. I've only sponge bathed him before this. He loved the water and just placidly kicked and "floated" (with my hands underneath of course) and bath time ended up taking much more time than I allowed as it was so very fun to let him wiggle and splash and watch him grinning in the drink. What a change from Dee's painfully tearful baths which just finally became less wrought with blood curdling screams this year! *sigh*