Tag: Garden

WHERE DO YOU ORDER YOUR SEEDS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Yes, we know all about the catalogs and the pondering that happens each January, along with the flurry of ordering. If you’re a gardener, you’ve wrapped all that up and have the seed packets in hand.

So where are your favorite sources? And why?

And if you need inspiration or simply want company or comfort, consider the experiences in these poems:

Garden 1  For more on my poetry collection and others, click here.

TURNING THE PAGE FOR ANOTHER ANNUAL RITUAL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Now that the Christmas season’s over, we’re getting out the seed catalogs. Gardeners know what this means. Traditionally, they start coming in the mail about now, although some seed companies have tried to jump the gun, just like the Christmas decorations and music that now proliferate around Halloween rather than Thanksgiving. No, don’t rush us. This is to be taken thoughtfully, leisurely. Now, in the depth of winter — especially when it’s bitterly cold and snowy in places like the one where we live — our imaginations fly off to springtime and high summer. We evaluate the new varieties we ordered last year to decide whether we’ll get more (if we used up all of last year’s packet) or we’ll try something different.

Some of the catalogs are simply gorgeous. Others, including our favorite, are black-and-white and photo-free. The descriptions are fun to read and have led us to delightful harvests.

One thing I know: we’ll be ordering a certain chard we tried last year. The one that doesn’t taste like beets. No, it’s much more like spinach and so much more reliable where we live. Just don’t ask me to reveal its name. We want to make sure the supplier doesn’t run out. It’s something that happens, you know. As I recall, last year it was a kind of early pea. And before that?

It’s all part of the ritual, I suppose. Along with the intricate maps of our garden my wife draws to determine just how to fit it all in.

NEW POTATOES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

We’ve tried growing them in barrels, but that’s a long story. Sometimes we’ve just harvested them from rows in the garden.

Either way is always an experience.

~*~

dig up the last of the potatoes
fill a large basket

roasted with garlic
the marble-sized ones quite tasty
along with the softest skin

another year
I empty two of our five potato barrels
amid spitting snow

poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson

COLLECTING LEAVES TO COMPOST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

Dealing with clay soil like ours has convinced me of the value of compost. Not that I hadn’t composted before. But over the years here, I’m watching the ground become more supple and workable and productive, thanks to the effort.

The first autumn, I collected more than 200 bags of leaves from the neighborhood. (Each year, I try to reduce the figure, only to find some of neighbors now expect me to come over for the haul.) To that, we’ve added our garbage (thus reducing our expenditure on the city’s green trash bags). Once we acquired rabbits, their droppings and the hay from their bedding started going into the pile as well.

The process is incredible, watching the volume decrease to a fraction of what it had been. Consider the amount of heat the decomposition produces, and then the arrival of the red wigglers (or wrigglers, I’ve heard both), the friendly worms that do the big work of transformation. Forget his insights about evolution, it’s Darwin’s observations of worms I treasure. What’s left in the end is a gardener’s pure gold.

On a spiritual level, this humus and humility have a lot in common. So much can flourish from their nourishment and grounding.