Mystery author Eric Mayer* mentioned in a recent blog post that his blog journaling hasn’t been very habitual of late. He went on to write about habits, and that got me to thinking about my habits, and how they’ve changed in the past year or so. Obviously, for me, blogging has taken a back seat to other things. So has my fiction writing, other than attempting to sell my latest finished manuscript, a mystery about a tarot reader whose awakening ability as a medium gets her involved in a murder investigation. (Interested agents or publishers are welcome to inquire here.)
Habits can be good or bad, and I’m sure everyone has some bad ones they’d like to unload. But one new habit I’m happy to have taken on this year is gardening.
Gardening is indeed a habit, one that gets into your blood in a way I didn’t anticipate when I started out this year. I’d done a tiny bit of gardening as a kid, when I remember planting one rose bush of my own but mostly helping my grandmother with her strawberries and vegetables on the embankment behind my parents’ house. Later, in my first apartment, I nurtured a few houseplants, and throughout my work life I’ve usually kept a potted plant on my desk. I kept African Violets in a north facing window in the last house we rented, until a cat took over that window sill. Still, my husband did most of the outdoor gardening, with a little weeding here and there on my part, until March of this year.
It started this spring with tending a few vegetable and flower seeds until they sprouted, and then the seedlings until they went into the ground. From there I progressed to caring for plants in the ground and preparing the soil for more of them. It’s rapidly expanding to a succession of all of these things, in the hopes of keeping some fresh produce in our salad and veggie bowls through this summer, as well as brightening a corner of the front yard, where my ultimate goal is to keep flowers blooming in a little cottage style bed year round. I’m a ways from that goal yet.
I’m still new at this, and I got a late start this year, but I get help and advice from various sources, and gardening is now a firm habit that I won’t easily give up. It’s one of the first things I think about in the morning and one of the last I think about before the sun goes down.
The plants seem happy about my gardening habit, when they can figure out what season it is. Our weather this spring switched back and forth for a couple of months from one extreme to the other, first dry Santa Anas with temperatures in the 90s, and then thick cloud cover and a shifting Jet Stream chilled the air to the 50s. This went back and forth for weeks, with little pleasant weather in between, and it kept our plants confused. In the past two weeks the weather has leveled off, and the plants are loving it.
They say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and I’ve recently realized there’s little more beautiful to me than a tiny plant bursting out of its seed container. Call me crazy, but I think baby plants can be almost as cute as a kitten, and they, like the kitten, draw out my mothering tendencies.
(I’ll bet you expected a photo of a seedling, but I couldn’t help the obligatory kitten shot.)
To some this pleasure might seem like taking joy in watching paint dry, but to me it’s more like watching a sunset at the end of a heat wave.
We celebrated our first avocado blooms a few months ago.
Now some fruit has set, which we hope will grow to maturity.
Avocados, according to my resident expert Ken who’s read something like 200 online agricultural reports about them, tend to drop a good portion of their fruit early, which can be disappointing to home gardeners. It will be disappointing to me, if it happens, because Reeds are my absolute favorite avocado variety.
Two days ago I celebrated my first squash blossom.
Zucchini may seem an ordinary thing to seasoned gardeners. It’s one of the easiest things to grow and the butt of gardening jokes, usually in reference to an overabundance of it. But I like zucchini, I love my resplendent squash plants with their huge green leaves, and those yellow-orange blossoms are gold to me.
I’m learning more about the various weeds that grow in the garden, some of which are edible. For instance, purslane and dandelion make delicious salad greens. Note, if you decide to try eating weeds from your garden, be careful that you know what you’re eating. Ensure that the plants haven’t been subjected to herbicides or pesticides and that they aren’t in fact toxic weeds.
Even some semi-edible weeds, like the sour grass we all discovered as kids, can be a problem if eaten in quantity, I’m told, and purslane looks very similar to a toxic type of spurge that often grows right alongside it. Have an expert show you how to identify edible weeds, and examine carefully whatever you pick to eat. This point was driven home to me when I found spurge, with its milky sap, growing in my own little purslane patch.
Yesterday Ken pointed me to a Los Angeles Times article about Guerrilla Gardeners, which linked to a slide show on how to make “seed bombs” as well as two blogs, here and here, about guerrilla gardening.
Gardening has not only revolutionized my daily routine. It’s apparently a revolution that’s spreading once again, as Victory Gardens did in the last century, with people today gardening to save money on local food and working on a clandestine volunteer basis to re-green the land.
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* In case you aren’t aware, Eric Mayer and Mary Reed’s latest John the Eunuch Byzantine mystery, Seven For A Secret, was released in April by Poisoned Pen Press. If you haven’t kept up with their historical mystery series, it’s not too late to start. The earlier books in the series are still in print, and some are now available as Kindle editions.
1.
Thanks for the plug! We’ve been wrestling with the eighth book this past week and I’m a little frazzled, so I appreciate the kind words. I keep trying to harness the *power of habit* to write more, read more, make myself generally more productive, but mostly I seem to manage to drink coffee regularly.
Various kinds of squash are great fun because they produce and produce. Just when you think your harvest is complete you find an enormous squash that somehow hid itself under the leaves for weeks. It is also nice to be able to pick a variety of fresh greens for salads. I don’t think store bought greens can match ones plucked a few minutes before from the garden, And I envy anyone who can grow their own avocados!
We’re more or less in the woods here, so no gardening. I was never a great gardener but I did some for fun. I am a big believer in communing with nature, whether digging in the dirt or walking in the woods. It’s good to be reminded that our human-made, artificial and often ugly civilization is not all there is to the world.The sprouting plants are going to grow and go through their life cycle no matter who wins the next election. The squirrels I see running around the trees don’t care about who wins American Idol. I find that comforting for some reason.
Hey, I hear the market is good for mysteries with a bit of a supernatural tinge.
Comment by Eric Mayer — May 30, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
2.
Aww, what a cute kitty. And I’m a dog person.
Comment by creechman — May 31, 2008 @ 12:07 am
3.
I think you’ll find, Barbara, that time spent outside tending gardens can be the most inspirational for writing. It frees the mind within a peaceful environment to wander onto fantasy and story. Beautiful shots here, by the way. Kittens and sunsets and squash. Lovely!
Comment by susan — May 31, 2008 @ 5:59 am
4.
Due to my arthritis, gardening is something I no longer do, but my woods are resplendent with all kinds of indigenous beauties. I recently discovered that my acres have a bumper crop of blackberries, and earlier in spring, willowy volunteer dogwoods blossomed. I only have yard in the immediate area surrounding my home and have planted it entirely with Periwinkle, which was beautiful this spring with its tiny purple flowers. We’ve had an amazing spring with gentle rain nearly every day – my ground cover is gaining ground. My plan is to have a fairly maintenance free yard, yet one that is pleasing to the eye. I also have a Flowering Plum and two smaller Dogwoods and a Japanese Maple. The Geraniums that I brought in for winter are back out on my front steps and full of blooms. I keep it simple now and still swoon.
Comment by Reenie — May 31, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
5.
Stunning photos! I talk a good gardening game, and I can make stuff grow if I devote enough time to it… but the best I’ve managed in recent years is buying some potted geraniums for the front steps. I’m enjoying the scenes fro your garden, though!
Comment by blogdog — June 1, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
6.
those avocados looked awesome.
Comment by violetismycolor — June 1, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
7.
Ah, Barbara, welcome to the world of weeds, gardens, fruits and flowers. I count the tomatoes that have set every day and also welcome each batch of tiny yellow flowers. Yes, indeed, the leveling off of the weather extremes has been welcomed by a growth spurt.
Don’t you just love those gorgeous yellow zucchini flowers? I think they’re beautiful as decoration, as well as being the precursors to yummy zucchini.
The first tomato is just starting to blush pink. When it’s ripe, we’ll have a little “first fruits” ceremony that is a heritage from my mother’s side of the family. We put out a clean table cloth, make a special dinner that goes with whatever the first fruit is, light candles, have a glass of wine and make a little ceremony of it. It’s the start of summer with early tomatoes (Early Girls usually).
I’ll be thinking of you this time when we celebrate our first tomato.
Comment by Sarah — June 5, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
8.
I’ve never seen an avacado plant. Actually, never even thought about how they grew. Best of luck!
Cas
And the kitten is beautiful!
Comment by cassie-b — June 6, 2008 @ 4:15 pm
9.
Oh Barb, I’m so envious of your wonderful gardening. I can’t do it anymore
and I miss it terribly. In the Pacific NW, I grew everything…and so much of it that I supported the tables of the whole neighborhood. But now, the
fingers and back are stiff and old, and I can’t even pull a week anymore.
So ENJOY every minute you can!! I so loved it. Your photos are great,
(that kitty is fabulous!)
Comment by Bev Jackson — June 10, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
10.
While he may be a fictional character, even William Forrester had a finished manuscript in his file cabinet when he died.
Perhaps you should consider publishing it yourself, otherwise it just sits in a file cabinet or on a hard-drive and nobody but you gets to read it.
Comment by Ken — August 27, 2008 @ 7:15 am