Alfalfa coming in!

The sticks are my temporary markers for where I planted garlic. The plan is that I'll have tomatoes inbetween each row of garlic. So far I have four varieties of tomato seeds and I think I'll keep it a that...unless I plant a cherry tomato. I have a beautiful deep red basic tomato, a green tomato, a zebra tomato and a fuzzy peach tomato. See, here's a basic problem I have - starting out with pictures of the alfalfa I'm now talking about tomato seeds. And speaking of ADD, I need to order some more krill oil.

I was reading about some pragmatic and inspired ways to be more productive and less distracted on a site called zen habits (www.zenhabits.net). The ideas I've taken away so far are instilling a morning routine and cutting down to the three essential things you need to do each day (plus one more thing that's related to achieving your goals). I'm also paying attention to all the little things that get in the way of me being effective. This requires the ubiquitous skill of mindfulness, something I've been teaching for years and still learning for years. So in the past 24 hours I've realized that the following things get in my way: there is not a place for everything in the kitchen so it's awfully hard to put away dishes when you don't know where they should go which in turn gets in the way of actually doing the dishes; when I walk around the house on hardwood floors in my socks, I slide around enough that it's uncomfortable and affects my knees and perhaps I should invest in some socks with grips on the bottom because otherwise I find myself reluctant to walk around; trying to remember my morning routine from memory takes time and brainpower I don't have at 7 am, so I wrote it down and taped it to the wall near my bed.

Thanks to zen habits, I rewrote my goals yesterday. Not in a detailed way...yet...but I jotted down the ones I could think of. In no particular order, they include Home (organized, peaceful, light, clean and attractive); Food (eating organic, producing at home, garden); Family (time spent nurturing each relationship, looking into adoption); Work (improving my skills, perhaps ABPP certification); Health (increasing energy and fitness); Finances (ha ha ha); and Not Ignoring Talents (music and writing for instance). I haven't worked backward from each goal, heck I haven't even done a good job of specifying the outcomes! But it's a start. Just like my garden. I'm preparing my own ground and with that I'll stop beating the analogy.

So today the goal-related task I have in front of me is to figure out where to plant the zillion too many fruit bushes I ordered. Here are pictures of the various areas around the house that all need (desperately) improving. Above is the front of the house, forsythia bush on the left. I need something in front that works well in shade and I don't know what yet. Suggestions??

See that little slice of sunshine at the edge? I'm thinking a currant bush can go there and still get enough sun. I think that any further in is too much shade.

Moving right along, here's a beautiful (not) bit of what is supposed to be a two-level planting bed that's under the (dying) maple tree in the backyard. Hmm. Can't even see the retaining wall under all the mishmash.

And a shot of what's to the left of the house. Garden, pear tree, overgrown apple tree, forsythia beyond that. Perhaps I'll take out some of the forsythia hedge and put in highbush cranberries. Perhaps I don't know. Either way, I have to figure out where to put a white imperial currant bush because it's sitting in a cardboard box on my back porch!

Garlic

I planted garlic today. The ground was soggy and it looks like it's just going to rain for days more. Perhaps I shouldn't have...but I also didn't want to wait too long. I stuck a stick in the soil to make a hole and dropped each piece in. There were about 13 total. Half of them were totally peeled and the other half, not peeled. It was hard to tell which way I should go. Of course I failed to mark which were which. Only now can I think of that.

I had to plan a little bit to figure out where to put the garlic. So I figure I'll put tomatoes near the "front" end on the left side. Garlic went there. I also had some little teeny "seed" garlic (??) that I planted with much less hopefulness. I put some by the raspberries and some by the rosebush because I read somewhere that this was a good idea. I also put a few by the lilies at the side of the shed (as shown in the picture above). 100 is a lot..I didn't treat them like individuals. Sometimes my life is like this too -- I make good plans and think a lot but then the actual doing falls short. It's rainy or I'm sick or both and my brain shuts off. I think the big cloves of garlic (bogatyr variety) will be fine. The small cloves - who knows. 99 cents so I suppose it won't have been an expensive mistake.

I'm also looking around the yard and thinking about where to place the currant and aronia and highbush cranberry plants (not to mention the seedless grapes, strawberries, raspberries and gooseberry) I'm getting in the spring. Was I seriously hyperactive when I made that order? Certainly there are some "useless" bushes that can be taken out. And a dead tree.

While planting the garlic I noticed that the alfalfa has already sprouted, which was encouraging. I put stakes in the soil to remind me where I planted garlic. And I had the moment of discipline required to write it down here in my growth journal.

A Beginning and an Ending

Here are the things I'm beginning: gardening for real, keeping a record, writing down important things, and not worrying about being redundant. After all, how many times does God need to tell us something before we get it? Aren't the scriptures a wee bit redundant and who's really complaining about that? I've wanted to garden - I mean really garden, not just pretend - for years now. And I've wanted to keep a journal. Both of these projects have had many half-hearted beginnings. How many notebooks or computer files do I have that say "This time I'm really going to keep a journal..."? Here's the secret of this new beginning: I'm leaving out all the stuff that I dreaded "having" to put in before.

And endings? Every new behavior is an ending of old behavior. I'm weeding it out. Literally. And it's autumn, so it's a perfect time to end and prepare to begin. I realize that all those leaves I used to think of as a waste of time to rake actually have a purpose. They are a preparation, a beginning, a component of the beautiful soil I aspire to. So now I have a reason to rake, because now I understand more.

Speaking of understanding more, here's a picture of my coleus plant (with a slice of orange pumpkin). I bought it at the A&P for $9.95 and it has been gorgeous. At first I thought it was a perennial and then was disappointment to find it's an annual. Then I learned it's actually a "tender perennial," so while it won't stay alive over the cold winter, I can take cuttings and propogate it. Perhaps I can replant some cuttings in the spring.

As for the actual garden - well, today I am soaking seed garlic in preparation for planting. I have a garden spot well-prepared (see above) where I removed all the grass and cultivated the top 12 inches or so. I planted a cover crop of alfalfa a couple days ago. I'm soaking the garlic in water with baking soda and a little seaweed, and as soon as it peels easily, I'll peel it and dip it in rubbing alcohol before planting it. Some of the garlic will go next to the raspberries (which are currently pathetic, probably because the deer eat them) and the rest will go near the tomatoes. At least that's the plan today. I may also plant a few bulbs next to my rosebush, since I hear it's a good companion for roses.



Finally, I have a space at the front of the house where I used to have bushes that did nothing. We pulled those out (tied them with a rope to the van and wow was that fun!). Then I spent quite a bit of time putting in some decorative edge bricks. Last year we had impatiens and mums in the space, and this year we had sunflowers, hollyhocks and some black-eyed susans. Oh, and a hydrangea that used to be where the coleus is now. It's been so warm lately that the hydrangea actually is in bloom again, a small beginning that, cruelly, won't last long. Temperatures here are dropping into the 50's for the next week and I expect it will get colder than that soon. In any case, I want to use the space at the front of the house better - I figure that as long as I am putting effort into it, I want more out of it. So I'm going to put currants there next year, on the left side. (Not sure what to do with the very front, as it has even more shade.) I read that currants do fine in partial shade, so this space will soon be home to a few currant bushes (white and black). Not sure where to move the black-eyed susans. The side of the house also needs help and I have no sure plans yet...corn? strawberries? It's the east side of the house and it gets plenty of sun.