Yes, it is true, my last post was in AUGUST. You missed the harvest? Well so did I. Then I got a regular job and it all went to heck. But I’m back, fighting the urge to buy seeds I don’t sow, plants I won’t grow, and what else, I don’t know. But I still hold true to the promise that you’ll feel a little better about your life when you leave here.
14 Jul
A visit to the Farm
My friend Penny is a member of the CSA, Anchor Run Farm in Wrightstown, Bucks County. When she goes away for a couple of weeks in the summer she sometimes lets me have her share. I love travelling there. See why?
The entrance to the barn where all organic veggies are displayed in bins with instructions to take things like 3 eggplant, a pound of tomatoes, a bunch of kale, a bunch of spinach, two pounds of eggplant, a bunch of beets, etc.
In addition to what the farmers have picked you can go out to the fields and pick specific things.
This was the week to pick peas.
Good things in the future:
Yum, sorrel. Like I know what to do with it.
View as I exit the farm. Good-bye happy place.
10 Jul
Staunch women don’t let rain deter them…
Polly at the ready. (Please can we go inside now?)
Hello rain!
Some call it a weed, I call it purslane. It’s the one crop I have the most of…
8 Jul
Went away…
Packed up, took the dog and My Mother and headed to Maine. Before I left I said good-bye to the garden.
Good bye baby eggplants
Good bye baby zucchini
Good bye glorious fig tree
I left it in the hands of my daughter who in previous years watered the day before I returned and found utter desolation. The acorn, the tree, falling not far.
7 Jun
Scott Arboretum Plant Swap
I almost waited until the plants I got at the Swap died to post but that would be really lazy.
Let me take you to the Swap. When one arrives, one takes a gander through what’s there and plans a strategy. The Dearly Beloved and I had a simple strategy: she heads right and grabs every pink thing I’ve pointed out to her and I go left and try to remember what’s she’s shown me.
Then we take our places in line.
It looks daunting, I know. I met the woman who was at the front of the line. When I asked her what her secret was her answer was so vague I don’t remember it now.
The rules are read. The anticipation grows.
You’ll have to imagine the stampede of plant fiends. I could not photograph and elbow others at the same time.
During the first round:
Our haul. Not bad. We took it to the car and prepared for Round 2 when everyone lines up again and unless marked, every plant is a dollar.
Round 2 doesn’t have the frantic pace and there’s the sense that everything good is gone, kind of like CVS on Halloween when all that’s left is a bag of peppermint drops.
There’s still lots to choose from:
We stepped into the all-new amazing Wistar Center to check out their restrooms and spotted this lovely little stash. Mhmmm, why weren’t these plants at the sale?
On our way home these pretty poppies waved good-bye.
31 May
Judged by Stressed Tomato Plants
John Cheever said that he imagined once he got to heaven he’d be judged by a panel of Labrador retrievers. I’ll be judged by some stressed out tomato plants. They definitely have reason to deny me entrance.
Stop staring at me!
Three hours later…
I’m lining the paths with photographer’s paper that I got after a shoot with this guy.
Fifteen tomato plants is way too many, I know, but how can you refuse a gift like Mr. Stripey, and I had fisticuffs with another gardener at the Scott Arboretum Plant Swap over some small cherries. And one night whilst walking Polly we came upon a flat at the end of a driveway with a sign for free plants and who could resist someone’s leftover Mortgage Lifters?
Polly wisely waits under the fig tree.
24 May
Trash talking
We finally cleared out the vegetable garden. Don’t the bags look like they’re talking to each other?
Psst! Hey girls, have you heard the one about the compost pile?”
“What, are you too good for garden refuse?”
14 May
Down to business
It’s ridiculous, I know, but a month of beautiful days has found me inside, almost nailed to my chair, some inner force keeping me in the house. Today my spirit broke through and I got out there in the sunshine and started yanking the weeds.
This is what I’m dealing with:
Even someone who’s not lazy would be daunted by this…and I had already been yanking out the biggest weeds for an hour when I thought to take this photo.
The real motivator was that I asked My Guy Joe, the one who mows my lawn for money, what he would charge to just come in and do it thinking he’d say 50 bucks, a hundred at the most. He said 300. I felt motivated.
It helps to have assistance:
Nice work Polly!
Isn’t it inspiring when you stumble across a survivor like this:
But this pair is the absolute scourge of my existence, Creeping Charlie and Locust tree pods.
Tomorrow I deliver plants (mostly my partner’s) to the Scott Arboretum’s Annual Members Plant Swap. Look for full coverage of this momentous event!
14 May
Plant drop off at Scott Arboretum
Tomorrow is one of the most important days in the calendar year — the Annual Members Plant Swap at the Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College. Here’s how it works: members dig up plants that have overrun their gardent, pot them up and bring them to the Arboretum. For every three plants a member brings (all labeled with Latin names of course), they get one ticket that entitles them to one free plant at the swap. They also get a number that gives them a place in line for the actual swap. They can drop plants off from 3 to 6:30 PM. My plan was to get there as close to 3 as possible. It was 3:10 when I arrived.
The Dearly Beloved had 27 plants, all labeled with computer printed names! Sigh. As you can imagine, I was potting plants at the last minute and came up with 12. Well 11 really. DB gave me an extra one so I’d get four tickets.
Here’s the path so clearly marked to the Plant Swap. Everything’s so well done at Swarthmore/Scott Arboretum.
Was your college like this? Mine wasn’t. Well, that’s not true, I went to Penn State where the LA/Hort people sleep with rakes next to their beds and everything is mulched to within an inch of its life.
The organization of the Swap is quite impressive. All the volunteers wear their crayola colored t-shirts that you can only get when you volunteer. Canvas hats and sneakers are popular here too.
Cool carts at the ready. Loading my pitiful Shasta Daisies (Latin name: Ordinarinus Populus) and Asters (Latin name: Dangerous Overrunus) onto these carts made me feel like I was Somebody.
Someone else’s contribution, quite impressive!
So tomorrow is akin to Christmas Day for me and the Dearly Beloved. We get up early after hardly sleeping at all for all the excitement and trek over to Swarthmore around 9 to look everything over. We chat amiably with the other gardeners as we eye the goods and by 10 a.m. we get in line and talk strategy under our breath. When the gun goes off we make a beeline for the one or two prized plants that we want. I will get four. She will get nine. I will not cry or beg.
Because I don’t have to! She’s generous and doing it just for the sport of it!
Well, maybe not.
What’s fun is how courteous and gentle everyone is beforehand and how they practically wrestle plants from other people once the gun goes off.
Once everyone in line has gone through they close the gate, we get in line again and then AGAIN they shoot off the damned gun and we’re off to buy plants for a dollar each! It’s great! It’s competitive and all over by 11. Then we take a nap because we’ll need one.
By the way, there is no gun. Swarthmore is a Quaker school.
