Double, Double, Soil and Trowel

The Plot at Fenton Street

I've just ordered a soil testing kit. This gardening habit of mine is getting serious. I'm now a confirmed soil freak. Last fall, before closing up my community garden plot at Fenton Street, I grew a cover crop of clover and then just as the clover started to cover the plot, I carefully dug it up in troughs, row by row, from the front to the back, and turned the clover upside down into the hole. Then over the top of that, I layered bags and bags of organic leaf gro. To great satisfaction. The smell of all that composted material left me woozy.

Now upstairs in Claire's abandoned bedroom, I've built a shelf and light system and my three-week-old seedlings are throwing off a delightful aroma that makes me yearn for summer sun and soil. I got it bad this gardening bug.

So the soil bags should arrive within a few days and I've been up early watching how-to videos from the University of Maryland.  I'm going to soil test both my home garden and my plot at Fenton Street and I'm feeling as if my dirt is going to pass the test with flying colors. I'll have a complete understanding of my nutrients—sulfur (S), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), and boron (B), and textural analysis (e.g. silty clay loam), percentage of organic matter, and cation exchange capacity (whatever that is??!!!). I'll be silly with scientific analysis. And with that knowledge, I'll bring out my kale, my Swiss chard, my onions, my lettuce and my basil and I'll plant them knowing that the nutrients that they need to grow strong and vigorous will be easily available to them. It's going to be a beautiful gardening year this year. The scent is in the air. The Putterer

Gazing Ball

My gazing ball perfectly matches the purple crocus.

Spring has come super early this year to my garden thanks to global climate change. Last year for Presidents Day weekend, I was dealing with the after effects of a bad snow storm and cleaning up the mess when a number of my trees were crushed under the heavy snow of a late January storm. In 2011, snow was still on the ground, but in 2010, the crocus were not in bloom until almost a full two weeks later into March.

I'm not complaining today because I had the most wonderful weekend cleaning out the winter mess and planning for all the new plantings that I'm going to add to all the opportune locations that my fence is now offering. I've got an assortment of foundation plantings on order at Wayside from native plants like Kalmia and fothergilla to a host of wonderful roses that I hope one day will grow like crazy all over the fence and make a beautiful scene and scent for anyone coming into my garden.

My hands are crackling with dry skin now and my eyes are sleepy with allergens, but it was all well worth it. I am one happy Putterer. The Putterer

Planning Putter

As my Meyers lemon tree delivers the last of the 2011 season, a plan is taking shape for my 2012 deliverables.

My quest to grow bigger, better and more vegetables in the community garden plot and to complement that production with edible landscape plants in my home garden is ever more earnest.

In my mind just now, I'm traipsing out to enjoy the sweet gentle breeze, the birds are chuckling with each other and zipping playfully around my chair. The new fence is crowded with a jumble of climbing roses that compete with each other to scent the garden. The new pickles are twirling their grabby tendrils up my purple ladder. Over at the community garden, amidst zinnias, marigolds and sunflowers, my bush beans and herbs and sweet onions and peppers and tomatoes and corn and squash are all  compatibly thriving under just the right conditions. A gentle rain comes every other day, and the sun marches pleasantly across the sky.

By now, I am familiar enough with how garden fantasies escalate on a cold February day when I'm tucked into my sofa, drinking a cup of chicken soup beside a warm fire. It's a vision, thanks to pests and drought, that I have yet to realize, but I can always hope.

Realities nip at the legs of this fantasy. How to manage too much garden with little time? How to grow just the right amount of starter plants. How to know when to set the seeds? When to plant? How close can I plant the seedlings to maximize variety. Where should I buy my seeds? Who will share with me? Which plants are companions and which are enemies? Do I have enough pots? Are they big enough? How much potting soil should I have on hand? How is the compost coming along? When should I turn it? Will the worms survive if I up-end their tierra firma?

Today, I'm off to figure out an indoor seed growing system. I'm going to buy shelves and lights and power cords and s-hooks and chains and I'm going to string it all together and start my garden indoors. The Putterer

Tenth of December and No Hard Freeze

Still growing

No freeze yet

It's just another beautiful day in December. We've had some cold, but nothing cold enough. I can even go out and pick a few more sprigs of Swiss chard for dinner tonight. The hard freeze has so far not settled over us.  The Putterer

A Gardener Tries to Control Time

Growing basil in the cold.

A chill is in the air.

I feel like this is a momentous occasion. It's Saturday, the end of a furiously fast week. It's the first of the season's freezes, at the end of a hectic two-garden summer. It's almost the end of a milestone year that included two graduations and a hell-bent for leather pace at the office. I feel like I'm riding a deranged steed, bareback, yet still holding on.

But yes it's Saturday and just above freezing outside in the garden. And I've started a little experiment to see if I can keep some green growing over the winter. Last Saturday, I bought two basil starters and slipped them into a fresh serving of potting soil and placed a bell jar over them to grow in a sunny spot on my deck. Last night, the first light freeze of the season brought white frost to the grass. Not a hard freeze at all. The Swiss chard is still holding its own and so are the impatiens. The last rose of summer may be singing its swan song, but this morning, I went out and snapped a picture of my basil inside its cozy terrarium. Well sure enough, it's as if I've stopped time and it's the First of May all over again.

Now, would that I could stop time so easily. If I could. Here's what I'd do. This week, I would have stopped the clock on Thursday at about noon. That's when my sweet girl Claire was walking home from her school in Ecuador and a man grabbed her from behind and a women covered her mouth and robbed her of her back pack. Could I have that moment back please, so I could fix it and make it go away?

On Tuesday, I would have stopped the clock at about 12:30 at the gym. That's when the exhilaration in my dance class was at its peak and the beat of the music and the sweet synchronicity of ladies in lockstep brought joy to my heart. Could I have that moment back please, just to savor it and make it last a little bit longer?

At work, on any given day, I wished that I could have stopped the clock just to get ahead on my load. Seemed every time, I finished something, the next thing was at my throat. With a new boss in town, the demand is going to be not only exciting and fun, but aggressively intense. Could I have a little more time please to get it all done?

And now it's Saturday, a beautiful chill morning, sunny outside, my fireplace is roaring, the coffee tastes good. Can I stop the clock right now? The Putterer

Chilly Tonight and the Lemon Is In for the Winter. Should I Pick It?

My Meyers lemon tree is "in" for the winter.

And so ends the 2011 gardening season. This evening, after working all afternoon at the office—and not in either of my gardens, I quickly hauled in all my plants. The temps are supposed to be in the 20s in some parts of the area and I don't want to take any chances. Our family room looks like a tropical forest. The blueberry bush is poking up over Patsy's head. There's a strawberry plant peeking out from behind Jim and I'm snuggled up between the fig and lemon trees. I pulled the geraniums in too, because I just love the idea of overwintering them again this year, just like Grandma used to.

The question is this. When do you pick the lemon? I read that lemons don't ripen after they are picked and my prize is almost totally yellow. But on the other side of my superstar, there is a tiny patch that is still green. (Its brothers on the other branch are still limey green and likely won't ripen indoors.) So I'm waiting for just the moment. But, when the time finally arrives, what will I do with it? What worthy endeavor will I find for my single lemon? An oven roasted fish dish? Or perhaps, a twist for a late afternoon iced tea. Does a lemon harvested in one's own garden taste any less bitter, slightly more nuanced? The temptation to pluck it has been quite overwhelming these past few weeks. And any time I happen by my lemon tree, my internal iTunes always plays: "lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon, is impossible to eat."

This lovely lemon tree has been giving us such a treat all year. Early this spring, even before it warmed up enough for it to go outside, it was already in bloom. And the scent of its sweet blooms kept our room so fresh. Now we close out the season with that bloom's progeny very soon at the ready.

Now when should I pluck it? The Putterer 

On Halloween, The Scary Witch is Giving Out Apples

Here's the irony. On Halloween, we buy candy by the bagfuls and give it to the little costumed children who ring the doorbell. Sugary treats that we know aren't good for the little ones are de rigueur. But if we offer a delicious in-season apple instead, we are suspect.

Now I have proposed via my neighborhood listserv that I am going to offer apples and other non-sugary treats to my little tricksters tomorrow night and you'd have thought I was the evil wicked witch of the west.

In fact, I am a witch again this year. It's my favorite costume because I look good in black and because my new hat, picked from a bin at Value Village, becomes me in an ever so wizardry way. It has a dramatic black feather at its brim and a crazy crocked peak.

I went out witching last night at a neighborhood party. A witch gets dressed up for parties by wearing plenty of beads down her elegant velvetine front and drinks rich red Pinot from a skeletal plastic wine goblet. And after imbibing a few, she gets to giggling. Witches hate to be sober especially at the annual neighborhood haunted house party, where down in the basement we creep around in a maze of white sheets and ghoulies and ghosties jump out and grab you and make you laugh even harder, when you aren't screaming.

Well, the kiddies were all dressed in their adorable costumes and I'm sure they are psyched to come knocking tomorrow night, but the subject came up among the adults of what we'll treat our tricksters and that turned out to be rather amusing.

I am giving out apples, said me, the witch. No more sugar, I announced. The stuff is poison. My husband, the lawyer, immediately cautioned me that if anything should happen, i.e. somewhere a child is poisoned by some evil pensioner with a penchant for picking off children using sparkling red apples, I would be suspect. Alas, I countered, let's fact-check it. What if it's a myth? But a neighbor warned that if said child were poisoned and the authorities searched my computer and turned up evidence that I was Googling the words apples and razors, this evidence would send me to the state penitentiary for life.

So sure enough, it turns out according to Snopes,com and Wikipedia, that all those much feared reports of razor blade-infested apples and pin-filled, poison-injected candies that we heard about in the 1970s and 1980s, none of it ever happened. All the safe trick or treating in shopping malls and the X-raying of candy bags at police stations, the media reports, fear mongering, worrying about the safety of our little ones on the one night when we allow them to gorge themselves on sugar is all for naught.

Wait. What? Sugar. Now is that stuff safe? The jury's out on that right now. But it isn't looking good for King Sugar, which, especially if it's fructose, might cause metabolic syndrome and "trigger the process that leads to heart disease, diabetes and obesity," according to the New York Time's 2009 article "Is Sugar Toxic?" by Gary Taubes.

So evil witch that I am, I'm going to be giving out apples and nuts and dried fruits. There are some sugars in those, of course, but likely those are far less insidious and less intensive than the ones housed in the Snickers, the Babe Ruth's, the Tootsie Rolls and the Sweet Tarts that our little kids will bring home in bagfuls. My contribution will be the shiny red apple. Happy Halloween! The Putterer