I've enjoyed the ten years I've been on the east coast, more or less, and I thought I understood and had learned to appreciate the seasons fairly well. Traveling for five months straight really opened our eyes and got us really seeing the weather, and now gardening has brought it all home and front and center.
Everyday I am thankful for all the goodwill that has passed in my life putting my shoulder into a few hundred shovel fulls of soil and shaping a place for plants to grow misguidedly under my sometimes careless and ignorant hand brings a new lesson every turn. We have nursed many of the plants that travelled out to our garden in Fair Lawn from seed trays in our studio in Brooklyn, hastily set into egg cartons when temperatures were still bleak and light was constantly fading. So, it is a fine thing indeed to walk amongst the garden at the beginning of July and see the change that has come upon us.
Three weeks turned out, whether by shear good fortune or dare I be bold enough and say good planning, to be the magic number of days to let pass without weeding or harvesting much. Tracie's father Peter has ventured out there on his own a few times to collect lettuces and nothing more, but our hands were the ones the garden had been awaiting. A hour and no more and the bulks of the predatory weeds were, vanguished on hands and knees, and then a few more put to trellising and we're nearly there and ready to head into the full thrust of summer.
As in everything you do, it helps to have something to measure a piece of work by, so I'll share with you the starting place of this garden back in August of 2010 when it was more of an inkling of an idea and a hope and prayer. I love this photo, I think it truly captures how little we knew what we were starting. But we had an idea, it could make a small piece of the world a better place, and I think it has.
It started with lil' more than a patch of grass and a hunch
With no more than about a weeks work of honest labor, we have somehow opened a space for something like this to happen, and I am so happy we have had a moment to do it and enjoy it. We all live for moments like these. It just makes up for all those dark winter days and nights and super hot and humid days yet to pass.
The glory of the soil and good weather brings bounty
After tomorrow, we'll step away for another few weeks, that at once excited to be away because I'll get to see family I haven't seen in years (what the hell, yea years) and on the other, I'll be just a touch edgy wondering what the weather and time will bring while we're away. Until then.
