This Year’s Garden

This week marked a turning point for me in terms of fatigue. The real low point was marked by my inability to make a meal on Thursday. I haven’t been keeping up with the grocery shopping, and sending others out with a list is inadequate at best. So far I’ve always been able to prepare something simple and fresh. But Thursday, Sunday’s leftovers were gone and about all I could manage was getting dressed and driven to my Granix shot (for WBC count) and some online work in bed or on the couch. Through the fog of my nap I was being hard on myself– there is leftover rice, eggs, snap peas and frozen cooked shrimp down there– surely you can rally for some stir-fried rice!

But no, I could not rally. I was nearly in tears when Steve got home and I said we should get some take-out Chinese food. Knowing that the vegetables included in our local Chinese food means maybe some scallions and nothing more, I did throw those snap peas in a pan with hoisin and soy sauce before the food arrived. Sigh.

Of course, this is also my annual anxious time in the garden. After a very cold April, we’re almost upon “the last frost date” and by June 1 all can be put in the ground. The seed potatoes arrived two weeks ago and have been sprouting in the basement… And I must have potatoes. I must! Potatoes have been one of the few things I enjoy eating still, and come fall I’ll be cooking again in earnest (inshallah). I ordered too late this year for my favorite red variety, but I got purple instead, and my favorite fingerling, La Ratte. And a couple reds from the local hardware store.

Plan B: Ask for Help

My friend Kate, who runs Common Ground CSA for the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, had offered to come out and plant my potatoes, and I took her up on that offer! Yesterday, on a day that was colder and windier than we’d expected, she walked the mile to our house and dug the trench, mixed the compost/peat, and all I had to do was cut the tubers and place them in the rows, then stand with the hose and water them. We had a lovely time, it took just over an hour, and now there will be potatoes. I also tucked some peas in along a fence that was used to support overflowing tomato plants last year, and she stood up my bean fence for when that time comes.

The bonus was this year’s yak skeleton find. The compost is the last from a local yak farmer who has since gone back to growing Christmas trees. Here’s a draft of a poem from H is for Harry about that. Kate unearthed (great word, no?) a large piece of backbone, vertebrae intact. Am I holding it upside down? I s that a pelvic bone or clavicle?

Plan B: Easier Meals

I still have chicken soup in the freezer that people brought over, and I just have to be a little more pro-active about defrosting it. But also, I have to remember what it was like to cook before I committed so fully to the seasonal/garden eating.

For example, they sell tomato sauce in jars! I used to be a big “Sockarooni” fan before I started canning tomatoes and freezing my own sauce. And the frozen entree aisle of the grocery store has also improved. I’m not ready to fork out the money for PF Chang’s entrees, but Birdseye makes some bags of stir-fry ready stuff and also creamy chicken pasta vegetables… And there’s frozen pizza, another thing that I’ve continued to enjoy eating somewhat (pepperoni, gotta be DiGiorno’s pepperoni).

So yesterday, although it was the end of the day and pushing it a bit, I did a big shop. And I went down some of the middle aisles, not just the produce and dairy aisle. And the freezer is stocked. And I’m doing just a little more letting go– for now.

But there will be potatoes.

And with the raised beds, there will be easy things to plant, too. We’re about a week away from the first harvest of greens from the cold frame, and I know there will be beets, and cucumbers, and zucchini, and squash, and kale, broccoli and cauliflower, lots of squash, and some carrots and onions. And downstairs the pepper and tomato seedlings are just emerging from the soil, germinating on their heated mats through the last week of cold weather.

yak bone collection 2014-2016