the ice is slowly melting

It’s been a long cold lonely winter, a frozen monotony thawed at whiles by the warmth of a few friends but firmly in the icy clutches of too much school work, and me with no motivation.  

So, I sat in my sun porch yesterday, most of the day, watching a gentle snow cover the sprouts of garlic and shallots and wildflowers that I had been watching intently make their first tentative reaches into sunlight the days before.  It was a different kind of snow, wet and gentle, barely freezing and mostly pleasant; I can’t forgive myself for not going running.  It felt easy, almost happy, after the long bitter winter of discontent.  There being little sun, I started a fire to keep myself toasty; the plants had to fend for themselves under their blanket of snow.  I was working on a comprehensive exam paper for my PhD program, and the view was relaxing.  And on the porch, there’s room to pace.

 Planting and pacing have been about the only diversions from my frenetic attempts to study.  Last Sunday, my friend Elizabeth visited and we planted lettuce and hops.  I followed that with grass seed on Monday, and followed that on Thursday with spinach and radishes and peas, oh my.  My neighbors on both sides look at me as I do this, the one lady making politely derisive comments as she scurries about her yard, busy to no visible end, and the guy across the street occasionally waving and giving me a curt nod before turning away and shaking his head.  I’m not crazy, tho, or if I am, the gardening is the remedy not the symptom. 

 And indeed, though this be madness, there is method in it.  Blessed with a patch of great weather over my spring break from the University, I planted garlic and shallots, now over two weeks ago.  The garlic should have been in the ground back in the fall, but either weather or class work conspired against me, so I wanted it in the ground as soon as could be now.  The hop rhizomes arrived from cold storage and were to go into the ground immediately.  Then, we were due for rain, and I figured that would keep the grass damp – I generally forget to water grass seed and it dries up promptly upon germination.  I knew there was snow coming, but peas are pretty hardy anyway, and I figured they would have just started germinating and wouldn’t freeze two inches underground.  The lettuce won’t have sprouted to be bothered by the snow, either, and the radishes… the package said they liked the cold, and well, if they don’t make it, it’s hard to care.  They’re mostly keeping the ground covered for a month until I plant something I like there.  The chives and wildflowers and oregano are doing their own thing, no help from me. 

 When I tried to explain my the plotting of my planting – an extended version of the above tedious paragraph, a discussion to bore all but the most ardent early planters – to my friend at the computer lab in which I’m stuck all Sunday afternoon, he said, “So, what?  You think you’re outsmarting Mother Nature?”

 Hubris!  My brain went clunk.  Be careful!

 “Ye gads, no!” I insisted.  “We’re working together!  She told me the rules, and I’m just trying to play within them.”

 The method was animated by wanting to use the tiller I bought last fall and barely used.  I almost always would rather that the tool I am using not be a word processor.  It feels good to build, to dig, to hammer.  The tiller feels good to hand, with its smooth vibration and occasional staggering lurch, the ironic whiff of petrochemical exhaust, the dirt and noise.  Each spring finds me checking the ten-day weather forecasts, scheming when to put what in the ground.  This spring doing so is a cross between manic obsession and guilty pleasure; not much of a cross, I know.  It feels good and unproductive.  Tilling was supposed to wear me out and send me back to typing.  The more or less I garden, the more I want to; opposite for study. 

 This spring has been worse than other springs which have been otherwise the same.  I can’t concentrate and am not entirely sure anymore why I ever wanted to.  I feel like compost.  School work has been the same old thing, only more of it done less well.  I feel stagnant like my pond’s water.  Writing this, looking for a metaphor, I remember a fairy tale sort of story: the king offers a reward for someone who can show him something nobody has ever seen before, and the kid brings him an egg as it’s hatching.  Not that I’m the type of person to look for symbols in his vegetables, for new growth in spring.  There is this literary tradition that likes to make a to-do of that sort of thing….  I wonder if the snow mightn’t have been Ma Nature telling me to relax, new growth can be hidden some times, the rules state that eventually the winter of your discontent will be made glorious by the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.  Be patient, like a spring snow, like winter garlic, like people who put up with you; it’s just that the tunnel ends sometime towards the close of June this year, when you hand the fucking exams in.  There is time enough yet for every season and all types of tools, shovels and keyboards in spades.

Garlic Link: Welcome to Filaree Farm.  This guy is serious about his garlic.  I've got some ordered to plant this fall.

Hops Link: The Thyme Garden.  Hops are quick growing, bushy vines... good for privacy... and they smell, like, well, hops....

Planting Calendar:

 

Date:	Plants	Activity By 3-29
Last Year:	Prairie Smoke	All growing; one blooming
	Butterfly Milkweed	Strangely missing.  IDK….
	Side Oats Gramma	Not much yet
	Little Bluestem	A couple green blades starting
	Aromatic Aster	Spreading like CRAZY.  Am going to have to find a way to contain it soon.
	Left-Over Last Year’s Garlic	Clumped up and crazy growing
3-11 –	Garlic and Shallots	25% sprouted; some squirrel damage.  Grrr.
3-21 –	Hops and Lettuce with Elizabeth	Nada so far
3-22 –	Grass seed… not really garden, I know	It’s being patient
3-26 –	Spinach, Radishes, Peas	Soon, I’m sure...!

 

Winter Companions

Garlic and Onions. Yup. And Shallots.

“Oh, no. No. You didn’t eat them did you?” I had a distasteful vision of planting stock sizzling in butter.

She looked at me with a bit of puzzlement. “Well, not yet.”

“Good. Those are for planting.”

“Oh. That’s right. You told me you were going to bring me shallots.”

Then what on earth were you going to eat them for, I thought. I gave her the planting instructions for the organic goodies I had left her: red shallots and yellow shallots and three types of garlic, and hurried on my rounds. I stop and look at the school pond – too shallow for fish, but with a lot of nice irises and rushes. Students walk by and wonder what I’m doing. I smile.

Working at a school, I get many of the opportunities to exchange pleasantries that make Facebook seem like deep conversation. These sorts of thing are, I suspect, meant to reassure each other that we are ready to acknowledge each other’s existence. Most occasions, matching their ‘hello’ with my ‘how ya doin’?’ is sufficient. Other times, from opposite ends of a hall, we see each other coming and I’m sure they can see me thinking about how I’m going to entertain them as they walk by. Typically, their exchanges are focused on weather. And mine are too.

“Looks like winter’s almost here!” I’ll say, taking the initiative, as we close in.
“Yeah,” they take the bait, “don’t you hate it when it gets like this?” they try to agree as we pass.
“Nah… I love it!” I say half turned to disagree before they’re too far gone.

Late fall is not the best time for gardening, especially when the ground freezes. I need to plant kale next year, and leeks – both of which I understand to be very cold hardy. My Swiss Chard remains colorful and healthy after our killing freeze, and even the collards are hanging in there. They’re not long for the world, but the garlic, that’s a different story.

Garlic and shallots plant in the fall. Not unlike flower bulbs, tho not nearly so deep. It’s part of their life cycle, cold then cool, then hot. They start to grow in the fall, hunker down for the winter and greet spring with wiggly finger-like leaves. Ones that I hadn’t harvested over the summer have sprouted again, and may hold me over for the winter. I’m reluctant to till my shallot patch, because ya can’t really afford shallots, and they seem to keep growing back every year. It’s a good thing.

I do like the winter, almost as much as I like garlic. I think of my plants out there in the wind and the snow when a colleague complains. It’s all weather, I think, the weather. No, I don’t want floods or old folks to die in ice storms, but you never hear the shallots complain about a November flurry. I think of their green in the fall and their underground life in the winter and want tot tell people to take heart. Variety is the spice of life, and that counts for the weather as much as for the veggies.

www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM1894.pdf