Six Inches of Topsoil

 

My bedroom window overlooks the garden, so my first view every morning (other than the smiling faces of the dogs) is of the progress of the plants.

We planted just over a week ago, just before a big rain.  Four rows of beans, 2 rows of peas and 10 or 12 rows of corn, along with tomato, squash, pepper and okra plants.  We always plant more than we need.  Something happens to gardeners when they visit a nursery or open a seed catalog.  Even passing by the seed department at the Dollar General is impossible without stopping to look.  It’s as if a force field reaches out and says, “buy me, buy me, buy me.”   I’ve witnessed people in spring at the greenhouse load up a horse trailer with tomato plants and I once had a friend who planted 4 rows of squash plants.  I’m not sure, but I think that right there would be grounds for appointment of a guardian.  I’m sure people had to lock their cars when he was around.  He said he didn’t even like squash all that much; he just liked to give it away.

I wish everyone could have a garden.  Or at least work in one.  It would give a new appreciation for our food supply and for the earth and our environment.  Paul Harvey once said, “Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”  I would add another phrase to Mr. Harvey’s profound statement and that would be the fact that bees exist.  That’s a fragile system, when you stop to think about it, especially with several billion mouths to feed.  I remember a year when we didn’t see any bees around the garden.  Usually they appear in the spring, buzzing from plant to plant, harvesting and at the same time carrying pollen from plant to plant.  The year we had few bees was the year we had very little squash and okra.  The plants bloomed, but without pollination, they didn’t develop fruit.  I always am happy and relieved to see honey bees appear.  Can you imagine if we had to hand pollinate everything? 

Gardening is all about hope, something we desperately need in these times.  The seeds that come in the colorful packages don’t look like much of anything when you open them up.  How on earth can little dried up things like tomato seeds grow up to produce a big juicy tomato?  How can tiny cabbage seeds, hardly larger than grains of sand, make a head of cabbage as big as a human head?  Don’t even get me started about walnuts producing walnut trees or apple seeds growing into something as large as a tree!

 It never ceases to amaze me, even after 60 plus years of observing gardens, how quickly seeds sprout and push through the dirt, reaching toward the sun.  So, less than a week later, tiny seedlings march down the rows, barely visible green against the darkness of the soil.  In just a few days, the plants will be more visible from my bedroom window and I won’t even need my glasses to see them.  From experience I know that, all too soon, an army of weeds will also be marching down the rows, and between the rows, eager to invade.  Soon enough, the garden will be blooming, then bearing its bounty and eventually when I look out my bedroom window in the mornings I will be thinking, “surely not more squash!”

 

 

 

Sophie's Box and a Welcome Home

 

I had to take a box away from Sophie this afternoon.  She was just about to dismember it and was pretty happy about having it.  But it was a really good box, and I can’t let a really good box go to waste.  I have a large collection of good boxes in the spare room, but this was a size that I don’t have.  What is it about boxes that turns me into a hoarder?

Sophie looked at me in disappointment, even when I tried to replace it with a dog toy.  I had already given her the air pillow thing out of the box, which she made short work of, and I didn’t have anything else as good as that box.  So she is lying on the rug, and every now and then she lets out a big sigh.  The world is unfair to dogs, she thinks.

If it were Scout, he would be prowling the house, looking for something to get into to pay me back.  I am trying to teach him that his toys are in the box by the hall door.  So, when he comes into the room with something he’s not supposed to have, which is all the time, I take it from him and replace it with something from the box.  It’s a never-ending process.  How does he manage to find all this stuff?  And why can’t he find my other suede shoe and the curtains I bought for the dining room and have misplaced?  Surely he didn’t take the curtains – what would he have done with them?  The shoe is a different story.  One of his goals in life is to get outside with a shoe, any shoe, but preferably one with shoelaces.  He doesn’t tear up the shoes, but he loves to tear up the laces.  Last night he appeared in the living room with a full 2-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper.  I didn’t even know he liked Dr. Pepper.

Both Sophie and Scout love bubble wrap and sticks best of all.  They especially like to play keep-away and tug-o-war with sticks.  The front porch is usually littered with them, and their paramount goal is to get one inside the house.  I shudder to think the havoc they could cause if they ever succeed.  Sophie’s greatest desire when she was Scout’s age was to get outside with a shoe.  Any shoe, but usually one of my good shoes.  She succeeded a few times – I once discovered one at the front gate on my way to the mailbox.  And I have occasionally found shoes of unknown origin in the front yard.  I don’t even want to know where they came from.

Scout will not come in the door to the back porch.  My curious, playful, fearless young collie, for some reason, seems to believe that the bottom level of that particular place is a dangerous, dog-eating portal to another universe where there are no dog treats and canines aren’t allowed inside the house.  He will stick his long nose in and peer around the door frame, but that’s as far as he’s willing to venture.

When Sophie was about his age, she was afraid to go down the steps from the top part of the back porch to the lower level that leads outside.  There are steps going outside from the top level, too, but they are long, steep and there is no handrail so most humans avoid them at all cost.  Sophie would follow me inside and bound up the steps, but she balked at coming down.  Instead, she would run back inside the house, through the hall and bang against the front door to get outside.  Then she would run around the house to join me in the back yard.  I had to use treats and my most encouraging voice to finally get her to use the steps.  Even treats and my most enthusiastic cajolery won’t get Scout to even stick a paw inside the door.  It makes me wonder if there’s something I don’t know about that spot.

I spent the night away from home last week for the first time since Scout joined the household.  I’m told he spent the night on Clay’s front porch, the first time he has stayed outside all night.  He met me at the front gate with Sophie and Bear when I arrived home late in the afternoon.  It was an enthusiastic greeting, but no more so that if I had spent the afternoon in town.  But once we got inside, it was a welcome home party.  I opened a package that came in the mail, and Scout took the padded outer package and tore it to shreds on the living room rug.  Then he rummaged through the trash can in the kitchen and found several cardboard packages to tear up.  He got my overnight bag off the bed and unpacked my clothes and toiletries.  The first I knew of this was when he brought a bottle of shampoo into the living room.  I took that away from him, discovered my clothes in a heap on the bedroom floor, socks strewn all over the floor, and rescued the toothpaste before he got the tube open.

I’ve been trying to teach him the meaning of “mine” and “give it”.  When I take away things like my good shoe, my underwear, or my notebook, I say “mine” and substitute something from his toy box.  He looks at me very seriously and I suspect he understands what I mean.  He just doesn’t really care.  As far as he’s concerned, what’s yours is mine.  But he gives it back willingly.

After several minutes of “zoom around the couch” he found the closet door open and grabbed a shoe.  I traded that shoe for an old shoe from his toy box.  Sophie watched all this in amazement, and Bear took possession of the favored dog bed and went to sleep. 

I thought things had calmed down and continued reading my mail in my chair by the window.  Then I heard a bump, bump, bump behind me.  Scout was dragging the broom into the room.  I was hoping he was going to clean up his mess, but he just dropped it on the floor and flopped down to rest.  It’s hard work throwing a welcome home party.

 

 

 

 

Planting the Garden, Just in Time

 

We planted the garden this weekend.  My red Ford tractor tried to foil our plans by stopping in the barn lot and stubbornly refusing to start again, but it did not count on the kindness of a neighbor, who stopped by and used his more cooperative blue Ford tractor to till up the ground.  We’ve always had red tractors on our farm, starting as far back as I can remember.  Even when green John Deere became the preferred brand, our family stayed loyal to the Ford.  Lately I’ve been wondering if that loyalty has been misguided.

I had already visited my favorite greenhouse and brought home an armload of tomato, pepper, okra and squash plants and my cousin, who is the main gardener now, brought corn and bean seed that afternoon and we wasted no time getting the planting underway.  The weather forecast mentioned rain for the weekend. 

On Sunday afternoon, I gave up on the rain and watered the tomatoes and peppers.  On Monday, my cousin brought more seed and it became a race against time to get them sown and covered.  We could see the sky darkening in the southwest and the radar showed a line of thunderstorms a few miles away.  As they left for home, I hurried to the barn to feed the horses, then poured a glass of wine and made myself comfortable in the porch swing.  The dogs sprawled across the porch and waited with me.  They scoff at the idea of being afraid of storms.

The distant darkness turned into menacing  clouds and I heard low mutterings of thunder, first from the west then to the north and east.  For a few minutes I thought the storm was going to go around us and I was going to have to water the tomatoes after all.  Then the trees began to dance and a few streaks of lightning flashed their warning.  Scout and Sophie decided to make a last patrol of the pasture, and I noticed that the horses had stopped grazing and turned their rumps to the wind.  Now I could smell the rain, just across the river that bounds my farm on the west.  A hummingbird arrived for a last-minute drink before taking cover in the crabapple tree.  The bluebirds were already hunkered down in their house.

The dogs returned to the yard just about the time the first fat drops of rain hit the tin roof.  Sophie took her spot on the edge of the porch, while Bear remained under the swing.  Scout had to be called to the porch – he seems to enjoy being out in the rain.  The thunder’s muttering turned to a roar and the patter of rain became a downpour. 

I am thankful my dogs are not afraid of storms.  I’ve only ever had one dog who was terrified of gunshots and thunder, and he crashed through the screen door into the house once when a storm came up.  Of course, he's also the dog who jumped the fence into the side yard one bright summer day when I unexpectedly encountered a large chicken snake and screamed at the top of my lungs.  It’s a vivid childhood memory and I can still see him grabbing that snake and shaking it.  Rinty (named after television star Rin Tin Tin)  was his name and he was quite the hero, in spite of his aversion to storms.

Almost as quickly as the storm arrived, it was over.  The thunder faded back to a mutter, the rain slackened and stopped, and the birds sang a celebration song.  I walked out to check on the garden, hoping the fragile plants were not flattened.  They stood upright, happy for the water and ready to grow.  The rain came at just the right time.  Now, if I can just get that red tractor to cooperate.