A new bed. And a second bed planted.
When you make your own first big raised double-dug composted bed you get why it is called a bed. After a final flat top raking and sprinkling water to moisten and darken the rich compost laden soil, you turn off the water, stand and stare, and you totally want to roll right up over on top of it. It looks so soft and rich and inviting. Yep, just curl right up and become a little seed and lay down in the middle.
We are jamming a bit. Got this garden thing started late summer, mid-august, and want to get plants in for fall and there is still a WHOLE BUNCH of double digging to do. Ahhhh! Not to speak of fencing, gopher guards, snail thingys, watering systems, bordered paths (there is a reason we are calling barefoot, will tell you later).
It's more than getting some sort of harvest this early winter. It's wanting the plant roots in there working, aerating the soil, creating little magical honeycombs that hold water and air and enzymes and micro-organisms and worms and nutrients.
Even if nothing ripens this year, fine. We will be ready for spring.
And we are all bozos on this bus! None of us had ever done larger raised bed semi-organic gardening. We don't know a whole lot and the information we can get often contradicts. Last night we were sparring with sundown to plant beets (yellow and red). One book says 1” inch apart for the seeds at 1” deep initially, seed pack says ¼” deep (give me a break, have you ever tried to bury anything ¼” deep real composted soil? It's like trying to stack sugar out of the package on the counter). One site says to bury your soaker hose, another says to lay it on the surface.
And I'm clueless how much to water these seeds, is it OK if it dries out during the day when I'm away, and whether to mulch now (checking underneath the mulch to see when they start to sprout, to make room) vs. wait to mulch til they are up a few inches.
So we are punching little holes, dropping insanely little beet seeds (seeds? they look like clumps of toe jam) and we all stand up and get into these discussions about one inch or two, water first or after (the seeds float!) and I'm going, “Hey, hey, we are loosing light, who cares, just get em in!”
I think it will be fine, it's an essential part of the fun, not knowing exactly how to do it but enjoying it all in faith that nature is probably a whole ton smarter than we are and fairly resilient.
And the digging, it's good. Very good for me. I parse it out. It is a conscious practice for me. I do it as long as I can stay in the moment. I do it in a meditative rhythm, methodical, that lets me go beyond the physical tedium. I've got a history with this. I did construction, largely natural building (rammed earth, hay bale, solar, etc.) for ten years. You get used to long periods of intense manual labor. I usually dig for an hour in the morning before driving to work (that takes an hour itself in traffic) then an hour after getting home. Then on the weekend I'll put a 6+ hour stretch in.
This is the deeper power of gardening. Enjoying the slow rhythm of the work. The deep breaths sucking in oxygen expelling toxins. The mind finally slowing from a day spend over-saturated with media, long brain dead commutes, pointless heartless work, stupid self-involved ineffective over-busy co-workers and clients. So the sore muscles, the feet hard to walk on from stomping on the shovel, the tweaked wrists, the thorns, the lower back, oh the lower back...all actually very ok with me. Because it goes with a mind finally, truly rested and quiet for the first time that day and a heart that softenes right along with the soil.
As soon as I start getting too goal oriented I stop. Ernest Hemingway said an interesting thing about writing (in his book "A Moveable Feast"). He always stops for the day before totally finishing a chapter or story. Then he doesn't think about it anymore. He says then his subconscious can keep working on it. The blog helps me a lot.
But the physical is all good. I want it. You see, I have healed before from a life stage crises and know that the best way is to go through it is to get active, focus first on the physical (basically get in shape), and THEN go on to emotional/psychological work, and finally bring in the spiritual. It's a continuum. From the grosser to the more subtle. A fascinatingly parallel process to starting and growing a garden. First you double dig. Then later you weed and thin. Only then can you harvest.
You see, this is a healing garden. That is what it is for.
We do hope to eat wonderful things grown there (and share them with lots of people), but that is not it's real purpose.
Lettuce Unite!
Yesterday Lisa's son N. came home from high school. In two minutes he was back out the door, down the path asking “Can I help?” This is a brilliant and very contemporary young man. This means he spends the largest percentage of his day in short attention span media facilitated environments. Like his peers, even when with other people there, there is also the simultaneous cell phone calls, text messages, TV in background, video games.
Even when we do things together they tend to be activity based and goal oriented. Golfing, ping-pong, pool, computer, googling, i-Tunes, etc. We don't spend a lot of time in quiet, rhythmic, introspective, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—being. "Being" while together. But we can and do do this naturally working in the garden. And there is something about the reality that we are dealing with living things and need to pay attention or they might die that hovers in the background of our minds and hearts.
Quiet mind. Open heart. Pay attention. That's it.
My Uncle Arlo had a 6000 acre ranch in Montana when I was N's age. Ya, 6,000. Think about it. He had long cattle drives each year on his own land, land which went as far as you could see and more and included a whole small mountain range with antelope and big-horn sheep.
I would visit but unfortunately couldn't stay all summer like my older brother Mark did, irrigating all day long every day, because of my allergies. I so remember the mornings. 5:30 the big bell would ring, long dining table and about 20 strapping men and women (my cousins and hired hands) being fed this huge breakfast, eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, orange juice, goes on and on. The women and girls had to get up at 4:30 to get it on. After that, EVERYBODY out the door for chores for two hours, including my junior high and high-school age cousins. Serious chores like feeding cattle, pigs, sheep, milking cows, pitching hay and shoveling shit.
Very important chores. Critical. My cousins knew if they blew it, it could mean an animal dying or in severe pain. And they have seen an animal in pain. Worse, they could threaten the life income of their entire extended family.
Then fast clean up, change clothes, and hop on the bus and the 20 plus mile ride to high school. Get home like 4:30 or so in the afternoon, 2 plus more hours work. Big family dinner. Homework. Collapse in bed at 10:00 pm or so. TV? Video games? You're kidding! Who has time?
But these cousins, and my brother. They had, and still have, this quiet contented power. And an inner radiance. And you always knew, push come to shove, they would be there for you. Solid. They are the ones you want in the lifeboat with you, regardless of your personal differences.
Stay with the Beet
When a young person sees an older couple (well, guess I am now one of them! Lisa and I go for a walk most evenings.) walking along a rural road at night quietly talking and watching the orange glow recede behind silhouette tree shapes against the backdrop of purple-gray mountains--they might think “Not so exciting, not the life for me".
But they aren't (and few of us older folks are either) able to see the real energy behind that common facade. There is a spiritual law (and in many ways a scientific law) that the greater the energy and power, the subtler the manifestation outwardly. If you take water and add energy it boils. At this first level it appears wild and full of power and life, roiling and boiling. But add more energy it turns into vapor, a vaporous mist floating in the air. But careful, that mist can burn and kill and pull freight trains, it is so filled with vitality. Add even more energy and pressure, sooner or later the vapor turns into a plasma, all but invisible but now manifesting the molecular power of the universe.
So with people. Often the quiet and soft looking ones are overflowing with a calm yet magnetic power, and an almost ecstatic beauty and humming inner life experience that more than rivals the wildest and craziest outward expressions of youth. You can't just look to know. You have to feel, and be capable of deep feeling and intuition to empathetically know what's really going on. As it says in scriptures from India "He (she) who knows, knows. None else knows."
Peas be with You!
michael, from a barefoot garden.
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