hopeful

I love gardening in May. Everything is promising, everything has potential. I can stick a handful of seeds in the ground and anticipate eating from their bounty in August. I can pat the rich, dark soil around a pepper plant and admire the soft strength of the leaves. In May, nothing has failed. There are no infestations on my pumpkins, and my tomatoes aren't leaning dangerously to this side or the other. In May, I am hopeful that everything I put into my garden will provide for my family in the later summer months. In May, my thumbs are green, and it is nothing but joy.

This is our sixth summer at our house, and the raised beds that we put in that first summer finally collapsed into a heap of rotting lumber. So last week I put my crafty carpenter hat on and constructed a brand spanking new raised bed.

If anyone is interested in a general description of how I did that, you can read my plan here. For the purposes of the casual reader, I'll just include a few pictures:

The site of the former and future garden.

Fun with power tools!

I drilled into a 2x2 length in the corners for stability.

Note: Empty garden beds make excellent dance floors.

The bed in place and filled with half a truck load of compost.

Adding the compost.

Finn pretending to be a strawberry.

Once the bed was finished, it was time to plan and plant the garden. We usually plant around Mother's Day, and this year I was gifted with a solo trip to the gardening center to buy everything we needed. It's not that I don't love bringing my two and four year old to a crowded greenhouse and pushing them around in a gargantuan cart while running back and forth from section to section...I just enjoyed it a teensy bit more by myself. To make the trip even more extravagant I bought a jamocha shake on my way there. Mother's Day Out.

Here's the finished garden. Nothing too unusual, though the bare root strawberry is a new attempt for us. Putting in the garden was a lot of fun with Finn at my side, and I think he'll really enjoy watching the process this year. We planted about half plants and half seed, so there should be plenty to see.

Laying out the plants and seeds.

Measuring.

The finished garden.

The happy gardener.

For the last four summers, we have grown vegetables in raised garden beds out behind the garage. It's a ridiculously sunny spot and gardening thus far has been fairly fool-proof; we add some mushroom compost in the spring, plant some plants, and make sure they get enough water through the hot summer months. In the fall, we pick what's left and compost the rest before the first hard freeze.

The thing is, I'm a lousy gardener. In my head, I'm supposed to be great at it; it goes along with the other things I love to do. But I'm just not. Part of it is that I don't have a lot of background knowledge about gardening, but the bigger factor is simply that I don't give the gardens the time and attention they need. I am not a fan of the hot, humid summer days, and I would much rather be cooking in my kitchen than gardening in my yard.

This year, knowing we'd be traveling a lot of the summer, we kept it simple: three tomato plants and three basil plants. I wasn't planning on planting anything in the second bed, but at the last minute Finn and I planted some pumpkin seeds and a handful of snap peas. In May, when the leaves are shiny and new and the plants just a glimmer of what they will someday be, the garden is abundant with hope, and I am giddy with anticipation. And most years, with very little effort on my part, we get a tremendous harvest.

Tomatoes and basil, June 1st

Watering his pumpkin

This year didn't go so well. There are summers like that, I suppose. This one was particularly dry around here - I think it rained twice the entire month of August. But the vegetables just didn't take off like they usually do. One tomato plant didn't produce anything at all, and the other two produced far less than I was expecting. The pumpkin plant got some kind of bug infestation in mid-August, and the peas never even sprouted. Fortunately, the basil plants did all right.

Tuesday's weather was sunny and bright, with temps hovering in the mid-seventies. I took advantage of the mild weather to harvest what I could from the vegetable beds and to say goodbye to the gardens. Even though it wasn't the most rewarding year, I did learn a few things...and I know that by late April I'll be making plans to start anew. That's the great thing about seasons.

And with this final harvest comes the opportunity to make as much pesto as I can possibly squeeze out of those basil leaves. It's never as much as you think it will be, but boy, does homemade pesto taste yummy in the middle of the winter. Finn and I spent the afternoon picking and cleaning the leaves, peeling garlic, and mixing up a giant batch of pesto to freeze.

Pesto Pro

"C'est moi, le chef"

Mmmmmmm!

iona gets a taste

Soon those 4 x 4 square boxes will be covered in snow, my gardening gloves will be packed away, and sun-ripened tomatoes will be a distant memory. But there will be pesto. There will always be pesto.