So what have I been doing?? Mostly it feels like I have just been treading water. Trying to stay afloat during the times I feel like I am drowning. And a lot of times I've felt like I failed.....
To help me through through to the other side of those moments I have given myself a little project. Our vegetable garden. We have always had a vege garden, and I will have to look back through posts on my blog to remind myself what I have done. There is a great deal of satisfaction when you reap what you sew. I have a couple of gardening books that I would flick through occasionally, reading them like a coffee table book (Alys Fowler).
A couple of months ago I thought that I would like to put more thought into our gardening - we plant what we know - tomatoes, zucchini and bok choy. But I would like to start from the end... think about what we like to eat and plant a variety of things. Last year I was inspired by the eggplant I grew. I loved it.
So that is my first goal - plant what we enjoy eating. Then I thought, I would like to go back to the beginning and plant heirloom seeds (which should surprise no one who knows my love for heritage). Heirloom seeds are open pollinated seeds that have been passed down from generation to generation. They are true to type, which means that you can save your seeds from a plant and expect the same thing when you plant the following year. My second goal.
To ensure I have beautiful seedlings to plant in our garden for Spring, I will need to have something of a little greenhouse, or more likely, use our bathroom to get the seeds going, as we did ten years ago when hatching chickens in an incubator :) I found a fantastic website that has a great little spreadsheet to do halt the work for me. I simply put in the the first frost free date of the year (Melbourne Cup Day??) and the website works backwards for me, according to the vegetable I want to plant, telling me exactly when I need to plant my seeds in order to have seedlings ready to go outside when frost free.
Then my mind turns to the planting outside, and the care of the plants. Something else that has interested me over the years is companion planting, grouping plants together which help each other to grow. This would mean plants to attract beneficial insects (bees) to help pollinate. Also plants to disguise odours and thereby deterring insects that might attack your plants (more on this when my seeds arrive). So third goal, companion planting.
I am finding the research and the planning rewarding... hopefully it becomes what I envisage.
In our "people roll their eyes" conversations, there are values we have that also lend themselves to having a healthy vegetable garden. One thing I have always been frustrated by is how we can expect to have every fruit and vegetable available to us all year round. I think eating seasonally is healthy, not only for our bodies but for our minds. Think food miles. Yes it is a thing, and yes it makes a difference. If I lean towards the political side of things I could talk about the orchards we drive past in the Riverina with fruit dropping to the ground and rotting because of the cost to pay people to pick, when givernments by fruit from overseas and bring in cheaper to the detriment of our own farming industry...
Gardening is an opportunity to be mindful in what I am doing. Seeing the beauty and experiencing the thrill in growing something yourself. Since Nicholas was a toddler, Audrey and now Maggie, there is joy in sharing the gardening experience with kids. Maggie was excited at a recent Bunnings trip when I bought her some kids garden tools. Of course I was quickly reminded that I need to be on the ball and checking exactly where in the garden she is digging.
I have seen women looking at jewellery ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogues in January.
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
