Quoth the Raven

After many years of wondering how I would know a raven if I saw one, as opposed to a crow, I have finally learned. And discovered that our yard is ruled by a raven.

The difference is simple to spot: crows always flap; ravens glide. Now that I know the difference, it seems obvious and I feel as if I should go apologize to the majestic bird for muddling him with his lesser cousins.

He likes to sit on one of the stubby branches of the fir tree at the bottom of the yard, the few that are left after a predecessor in title from some other part of the company valued sunlight over trees.

We still have plenty of crows, too. They like the compost pile and tend to spread it. Actually the raven may help them. I'll have to watch more and learn his habits.

Green Things Growing

For the week that began two weeks ago, it snowed every day. Every day. Granted, it only stuck sporadically, but still. St. Patrick's Day! It should not snow on St. Patrick's Day!

The coming of the first day of spring did not look too promising, but spring managed to come anyway. The last few days have been sunny and on occasion even warm. And after a very long hiatus, I have a garden of my own again. Admittedly, right now it consists of a flower bed with a few gaps and some bags of soil. (I'm trying the new method of planting straight in the bag of soil--we'll see how it works.) But we have transplanted the first round of lettuces. I've been raising them from seed on the front porch in little milk jug mini-greenhouses, which seem to have done just fine in spite of the cold. And we planted a row of peas that I am hoping will grow all the way up the porch railing.

Also, His Majesty thinned the raspberries again, and this time I put them right in the ground, in three beautiful rows, so hopefully they will all live. Last year he thinned the raspberries while we were still negotiating on the house, and by the time we had closed on the house and made it habitable and moved in and turned to look out back, most of them had given up on life after two months in a plastic bucket.

And our daffodils are about to bloom, though they seem to be behind everywhere else. We must live in a bit of a cold spot. All the better for growing lettuces.

I haven't seen a rabbit yet this year. Here's hoping.

Blackberry Season

Blackberries are a summer fruit, but taking out blackberries is a winter chore. There's not much else to do. It's easier to trace and disentangle the vines with less foliage about. And it's more pleasant to wear the padded armor suitable to the task.

It's also a job I love. It contains none of those fussy details, fine-motor skills, or decision-making requirements of other manual labor. Nor does it require tremendous brute strength. Just stubbornness and complete indifference to pain. It's vegetarian dragon slaying. Attack and destroy. And it involves sharp implements.

Even better, it's a job that the kids prefer to observe from a respectful distance. When I'm whipping about a forty-foot length of vine with inch-long spikes, I never find myself suddenly tackled at the knees. And since it involves clearing new play places among the underbrush, they are happy to occupy themselves.

And it even seems rather Christmassy. At least, the third verse of Joy to the World sounds appropriate.

Earlier this week I cleared out around the base of a Douglas fir still young enough to have the lower branches to serve as a good climbing tree. They've been playing Boxcar Children there all week. But then they picked up a stack of Magic Treehouse books at the library on Tuesday, and sat down and read them, assembly-line, all afternoon.

So today, Deux was on fire to build a treehouse. I posited that I would take the matter under advisement, but he protested. He didn't want to do it someday, he wanted to do it now. I pointed out that such complex activities required planning. He agreed: we should plan it today and build it tomorrow. I suggested that we didn't have the right materials, such as lumber or nails, or the right kinds of trees. (Douglas fir grow rather spindly branches at weak angles.)

He hunted up a single board that had been discarded in the bushes. I found some nails and a hammer. We put a shelf up in the tree. It's enough of a fort for now. I don't know if it's capable of magical transportation or not.

Just what I need

Another blog! And a big new project! I can't help myself. I like big new projects. And new blogs.

Anyway, the time seems to have come to start taking seriously the prospect of growing food in our backyard. It saves money. It's educational. It gives us all something to do outside. It's fun. My Garden Grows will document our garden plans, problems, and produce, along with efforts to identify the plants in our backyard, book reviews of garden-related books, and whatever else seems to fit.

By the way, I'm getting addicted to Wordpress as a blog host. Who knew you could do all that stuff so easily? I hate changing addresses, though. Sigh.

Things to Do With Tomatoes

My drying tomato experiment resulted in about five successfully dried tomato chunks. The rest burnt in some spots while mildewing in others. I think I have the wrong kind of tomatoes; too juicy and not pulpy enough. Perhaps next year I will try growing some Romas.

In the meantime, Her Majesty informs me that you can just toss them in the freezer (inside a Ziploc) and they will be perfectly good to pull out and make salsa or soup from later. So that is what I am doing with the surplus this year.

Also, as DOB was beginning to look askance at yet another platter of sliced raw tomatoes, I tried making broiled tomatoes for supper last night. The recipe was a little too greasy--next time I will cut down on the butter and probably use olive oil instead. And the tomato halves were hard to eat, so I might go with my initial instinct and slice them. But there will definitely be a next time. Seriously yummy.

We picked a few more tomatoes today, in between trips down the street to watch the men working on the sewer line. The plants seem to be slowing down production, though, which is perhaps just as well. Or maybe the squirrels are getting more of them. I suspect the squirrels of evil designs on the pepper plants, too--I don't think I'm getting as many of those full grown as seemed to be budding. Maybe next year I'll plant hot peppers. That will teach them.

You Say Weed, I Say Native Plant

I proudly exhibited my tomato plants to DOB the other day. He then looked over at the weeds towering over the patio. "The tomatoes look good," he said, "But it's like investing in tech stocks in the nineties. Everything goes up."

Being new to this garden, and not wanting to waste anything that might already be happily growing, I went easy on weed-pulling this spring. Some of those unidentified leaves might prove to be flowers. Some of them did. The others just got larger and weedier.

Next thing I knew, they were too big to be pulled by hand. I needed clippers. I forgot I owned clippers. Turns out there was a set ($2 pink yard sale tag still on the handle) in the basement. This morning I finally ventured forth to use them.

Too late, again. Clippers were not what was called for; I needed a hatchet. Little George Washington could be happily and productively occupied under our patio for quite some time. Unfortunately I haven't come across a hatchet at a yard sale. So I hacked, snapped, and mangled until I at least lowered a portion to within a foot of the ground. I caught an enormous yellow grasshopper and the ducklings watched him, fascinated. D1 tried to get him to jump on cue, but he did not catch on.

The tomatoes are doing very well. They have passed our ability to keep up with eating them; they have passed even the ability of the squirrels to keep up. I don't think I have quite enough plants to ever do a canner load at once, though, so perhaps I shall have to look into freezing them. Or drying them. (Can anything sun-dry in this humidity? I have an electric food dryer, but everyone always talks about sun-dried tomatoes--do they work any other way?)

I'm excited by the success of this year's garden. It is very small still. In a few more years, I shall have more helpers and be more ambitious. I was chatting with an elderly lady who grew up in the neighborhood of DOB's office, reminiscing about the huge garden she and her parents grew in their back yard. So did my grandparents, though it was long before I was born. People used to grow food (and even raise animals) in the city and suburbs as a matter of course. Now we all drive twenty minutes to the organic produce section of the nearest megagrocery.

The search for a simpler or more authentic lifestyle seems to send most people to the country. It brought us to the city. We were tired of driving fifty minutes one way for work, twenty minutes another way to church, and knowing no one nearby because they were all driving different ways, too. Here, we can spend our time living instead of driving, and we can still grow tomatoes and watch bugs. And if everyone who cares about homegrown tomatoes leaves for the countryside, what will become of the city?

In this line, there's a wordless picture book I came across at the library, called Home, by Jeannie Baker. It depicts what time and love and work can do for a place, even in the city.

The Tomato Report

I am at war with squirrels. Not the Canadian variety. Just the local ones.

For the past week and a half, I have been eagerly watching the first of the ripening tomatoes. A few were nearly ready to pick. But when I thought I could restrain myself no longer and went out to pick them, all but one (the least ripe) had vanished.

I know who the culprit was, too, for earlier in the day I had startled one of the scamps in the backyard. He fled over the neighbor's tumbledown (but freshly painted) shed, tossing back a half-eaten carcass over his shoulder, whether as a taunt or merely an oversight I don't know. I still can't believe I left all the other tomatoes just sitting on the vine, but I still had not realized how dearly squirrels love tomatoes. (Where I grew up, tomatoes are generally an indoor plant.)

Unfortunately, I don't think I have the skills or materials to construct a squirrel-proof shelter for the tomatoes. Squirrels are wily things. So I shall have to resort to the other solution, picking the tomatoes as soon as they start to turn color and letting them ripen on the windowsill.

Alas for vine-ripened tomatoes. And alas for my kitchen windowsill, which is pitched down toward the sink, as if in a perverse desire to knock things off all by itself.

Don't want to count my tomatoes before they hatch

But these are by far the best vines I've ever grown.

My Big Back Yard

This is our back yard: small, muddy, and mosquito-infested. But I'm starting to know its little quirks and see its magnificent possibilities.

Since a large part of our homeschooling philosophy (and for that matter, life philosophy) involves spending time outdoors, both in active play and observing nature, I want to make the back yard a good place to do that. What we lack in money, muscles and space we will have to make up for in inventiveness. Fortunately we have no shortage on that.

First of all, the lawn is just not big enough for a full game of football. So if we nibble away at it here and there, it's no great loss. That swampy spot in the back end of the property, with the thicket of shrubs just past (in the neighbor's yard, but he shows no interest in cutting them) is a favorite haven for birds. We can dig that away to make a real pond, and next to it work on growing a small meadow of other bird and butterfly-friendly plants.

The pond should improve drainage in the rest of the yard, and will provide some extra dirt to heap up a little mountain for the ducklings to climb, and later run, up and down. It can go over near the back left corner of the property, which being a shady spot and supplied with some old stacks of cement blocks and bricks, and a good pile of clay, already serves as a sort of open-air playhouse. Planting a screen of tall grasses there will make it feel cozier, and eventually we can build a little stepping stone trail that winds through the yard, around by the pond and the bird meadow, and back into the little playhouse corner.

In the back right corner we can put in a quick-growing climbing tree (and dig up more dirt for the mountain) and all along the fence and patio can be narrow (someday perhaps raised) beds for growing vegetables and berries. Somewhere, someday, I want to find a spot for a bean tent or a sunflower house. And somehow I've got to find a way to camouflage that compost bin.

That should leave enough yard for a game of horseshoes or croquet, while attracting all the birds and bugs (except mosquitos!--I continue to vow biological warfare against them) to keep our little naturalists busy for years.

Yes, it will take years to do all this. But a girl's got to dream sometime.

Note: My own imaginings have this past day been greatly enhanced by checking out A Child's Garden, by Molly Dannenmaier.

Transplanting Weeds

Yesterday I thought it was about to rain, so we stayed in the back yard instead of venturing to the park. The ducklings, naturally, were drawn to the mud pile like worms. I planted the six parsley seedlings that survived an infancy under my care, in hopes that they will do better in the open air. We also planted sunflower seeds, because sometime in your life you simply have to try planting sunflower seeds.

I showed the ducklings how to make "soup" out of various leaves and flowers from the yard; our yard is a diverse ecosystem that supplies many tasty possibilities. Then I worried about whether I play with them too much. (Yes, friends, there are no limits to the possible variations on mother guilt.) Maybe I should leave them more to develop their own creativity with undirected play. Then again, why should I have to miss out on the fun? As long as I play nice, I think I should get to play, too.

Anyway, once they had caught onto the idea (D1 is all for any activity that involves pretending to cook and eat) and I had built them a stove out of bricks, I tried redirecting myself by considering the patch of bare clay that lies at the border of our yard. It needed something growing on it; on the other hand, given my track record, it hardly seemed worthwhile to risk a plant for which I had paid good money.

All I needed was some sort of ground cover--and then I noticed the little purple flower groundcoverish weed that grows all through the yard and into any unnoticed part of the flowerbeds. The very thing. So I transplanted a dozen or so little clumps of it. If it dies, it dies. If it lives, the spot will look much less slimy and I will know it's capable of supporting life.

It did start to rain, and I took the ducklings inside and got them all cleaned up, and even gave them baths and put them in clean clothes (which I do not usually bother to do--if God meant little kids to be clean, he wouldn't have made them out of dirt), and looked outside and realized the rain had stopped as soon as we had come inside. But we really needed to do the laundry and dishes anyway. Nice weather is very bad for the housekeeping.

Killing Things

Someday I'm going to give up on gardening. This year I started four flats of seeds--two of herbs and two of flowers. The only trouble is, we really don't have a sunny window where they can sit. So I kept them in the basement, bringing them out to the back patio on days that were warm enough.

The trouble is, I'm really not good at taking care of anything that doesn't scream when neglected. Sometimes they got left out overnight. Sometimes they got left in the basement for days on end. Sometimes they got drowned in thundershowers and sometimes they didn't get water at all. Sometimes the kids dug their dirt up and used it to make mudpies.

It's a wonder that even the parsley has survived. The sweet williams are done for, I'm afraid, but I'm still hoping a few basil and coneflower plants will pull through. If I don't forget them again.

So my hopes were pinned on the seeds I had planted straight in the ground, on a benign and sunny day in early spring (and the package said "Plant outside as soon as ground can be worked"). Then it frosted and frosted again, and I did nothing to cover them because I couldn't think of what wouldn't blow away. But when the weather warmed up again the little seedlings still stuck up bright and green.

On Wednesday night, on the way home from church, we started noticing odd patches of white. Sure enough, the terrific rainstorm that had hit during the church service had been a hailstorm here. With children still fussing in their carseats, I dashed out in the dark and started raking an inch of ice pellets off my tender little plants.

They do still look alive, but I'm not sure until I've seen them actually grow some. They hardly seem to have the nerve to do that anymore.