Hailstorm

All of my battered plants are wrapped in freeze blankets or covered in buckets for the next few days. Our bewilderingly early spring finally gave way to an onslaught of damaging weather. It seemed to come out of nowhere.

I expect weather and other miscellaneous factors to threaten my garden, and I work with them as best I can. Sleet, ice and snow. Torrential, drown-every-seed-in-sight-for-days-on-end rain. Blazing heat. Bugs of all stripes. Birds (that sing so beautifully in the morning I forgive their occasional berry theft). Exuberant kids that only occasionally forget to watch where they're stepping.

But the onslaught of hail that came down not once, but TWICE in a span of four hours was a first for me. I've never seen hail like this. It mercilessly butchered all of the beauty I've so carefully cultivated, much of it beyond recovery.

My first concern is always the asparagus. It's been such a labor of love and patience to wait for this year's harvest, and the thought of losing it all is unbearable. The harvestable stalks were beheaded and broken, but I'm counting on the crowns themselves being undamaged and continuing to produce.

                                                                       

My grow bags of onions looked like ice buckets. I gathered up the broken stems and mourned the damage. But I'm hopeful the onions will also survive.

I began planning last year for a grape arbor, and this year finally ordered two grapevines. Hope and Gratitude. I planted them reverently, praying for the covering of hope and gratitude at our gates, for these blessings to root deeply and spread wide in us.

I almost panicked when I saw this. 

They're only plants, I know. I can and will replant where I need to. But losses are still losses, and I've invested heavily here. 

Potatoes before

Potatoes after

I successfully grew all of my peppers from seed this year, four different heirloom varieties. Savagely pummeled and sitting in an ice box, they're a total loss, along with the quinoa. Next year I'll know to start back-up sets a few weeks after the first.

This was also my first year for strawberries, following two seasons of dreaming and planning. I planted them all over the place - under a tree, in front of the asparagus bed, beside the blackberries. I even planted some in my neighbor's yard, built a makeshift strawberry tower, and finally gave away handfuls of plants that I simply couldn't house. 

The ones I planted under the tree seemed to be saying "What happened to all of you?!" 

By some miracle, the vast majority of the strawberry plants seem to be pulling through. I think it was in one of Gayla Trail's books that I came across the encouragement that plants want to grow. Over and over again, I see how true that is.

I noticed this tulip a few minutes ago on my way to check on the strawberries,
and it took my breath away. 

So I've decide to embrace hope and gratitude again. Hail is one more setback I'll have learned to weather. Gardening has many lessons to teach, and I've been focused on Patience for many seasons. I hadn't considered Resilience and her close friend Determination until now, and I suppose it's about time I did.

In memory of the beautiful things I grew once and will grow again...

After I published this post, I realized that I'd made no mention of my tomatoes. I think it was a subconscious denial about their loss... I love growing tomatoes from seed. Tomatoes are the one plant I've successfully grown every year since I began gardening. Because I've always had so many tomatoes left over, I started fewer this year and was very selective about the ones I planted. Quality over quantity. Which means I had much more to lose and did. I'm still debating if I'm going to nurse the few broken survivors, or kiss them goodbye and replant with store-bought plants. I'll probably choose a little of both in the end.

How does my garden grow

We're having a whacky winter in Texas. It feels more like spring. My asparagus needs to go brown and dormant, so I'm crossing my fingers for consistent cold temperatures in the coming month.

I threw together some row covers last week for my broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and garlic.

Supplies needed:

• thin-walled, flexible PVC
• PVC cutting tool (my husband had one handy and I have no idea what it's actually called)
• 2 ft rebar
• frost covers
• old t-shirts 
• rudimentary sewing skills

I found 8-foot, flexible PVC in the plumbing section at Lowe's and cut it into 4-foot lengths. The PVC fits perfectly over the rebar stakes, shoved halfway into the ground. The resulting arches are surprisingly sturdy.

I cut 20 strips out of old t-shirts, and sewed 2 rows of 5 parallel loops into each frost cover.

I'm not sure how many seasons these will last... If I'd given this whole project more than 15 minutes of thought, I'd have made the strips out of an old shower-curtain instead of t-shirts. 

It's difficult to describe the peace that envelopes me when I step outdoors to be in my garden. I love to walk slowly in it. To be carefully observant. To allow myself to enter into this quiet world as a steward. It is in me to be a tyrant. But gardening has taught me over and over again that I am not in control.

I wanted this post to be about something else... but I'm a bit too overwhelmed for details today. Instead I'll post some recent glimpses.

A baby watermelon

My asparagus forest

A currant tomato somehow self-seeded from last year's crop
has demanded a place among the onions and carrots (and weeds).
I'm both baffled and amused as I watch it grow.

I'm thrilled that the pumpkin plant I've given up for lost several times seems determined to grow.

a not-so-dormant garden

[dor·mant (dôrmənt): as if in a deep sleep; alive but not actively growing]

My chronic case of gardening fever sets in again in late December, and I start itching to order seeds. I buy a fresh 1-subject notebook and start sketching spring gardening plans. I devour seed catalogues as they come in the mail, occasionally flying across the house to grab a gardening book (or five) to aid in my planning. When I get impatient with dreaming and planning, I walk outside with an errant thought to stir up a little patch of ground and plant something early... but after a minute of FREEZING my butt off, I huff back into the house. 

This year though, I have a handful of edibles that have grown quietly throughout the fall and winter. They inspire me with their simple beauty and fill me with hope for the season to come. 

Lovely lettuces and a random bit of cilantro

My side garden doesn't look like much passing by. But it houses my dormant berries and a smattering of greens that are very much awake.

Arugula. My favorite green.

I think this is tatsoi...

But it might be spinach.

More cilantro. (When did I even plant all of this?)

That's what harvest is for

I've been discouraged about my garden lately. It's hot. Coming back from vacation, it's just hard to get back into the swing of working in the yard and garden. At this point, it's going to be an uphill climb out there. I've barely stayed on top of watering (mostly thanks to my new hose timers), cursed at my borer-eaten squash plants that looked so promising, looked the other way with the weeds, and feared another snake in my berries. I'm tired. And did I mention that it's hot?

Then this morning, the kids yanked up a monstrous carrot. Seeing it was a thrill. And the harvest was on.

The truth is my garden hasn't actually gone to pot. Or seed. My sweet potato is practically exploding out of its bag. Some of my squash is hanging on, and I have new seedlings to replace what was lost. I have learned how to build sturdy, presentable, affordable trellises that will last for years. I have another season of tomato growing under my belt, and I finally succeeded in growing big ones this year. I had begun to doubt that was possible. The list goes on.

Growth has continued, and I have a counter-full of fresh, homegrown produce to feed my family. 

An assortment of basil

Paris Market carrots, Red Malabar spinach,  Nyagous and Currant Sweet Pea tomatoes, Sheepnose Pimento and Aurora peppers and lots of basil. Yum.

Remembering Garden

My mom died suddenly on April 15th this year. 

Grief can be overwhelming. 

I brought home plants and flowers from the funeral that so many kind people sent in mom's memory. And my church community, knowing me well, gifted me with even more plants for a remembering garden. I cried almost every time I put a plant in the ground, pressing the soil firmly around the roots, making my shady, quiet backyard a place to rest, to grieve, to remember. 

I noticed yesterday with a shock that my caladiums had broken through the surface. I had all but given up on them after a month of waiting. Having never planted bulbs nor seen how they grow, I'm awestruck by the way they spiral out of the ground. 

My teacher friends gifted me weeks later with memorial funds that I used to purchase two Japanese maples.

Eve holds the "Shaina" we selected.

"Brilliant red leaves in spring change to maroon and then a new bright red flush of new growth in May"

Metro Maples

Acer palmatum ‘Fireglow’

"An upright red leaf Japanese maple that holds its red color in the heat. Brilliant scarlet in the fall." 

A friend once told me cheerily that my backyard was "like the woods." I still glow when I think of that. Another person might simply think I'm letting it go, so I suppose it's all in your perspective. For awhile I faithfully pulled up the "weeds" to make room for the bermuda that was struggling to grow. But at some point, I realized I was removing lovely, soft ground covers that grew effortlessly, carpeting the ground where only dirt or scraggly grass would otherwise be. Now I pull up only the growth that promises to be prickly and (trying out a permaculture technique recommended by a friend) let it decompose on the surface. Everything else gets to grow as it will.

Planting It Up

I established my new planting space beside the garage this weekend, a soon-to-be-vertical bed of sugar baby watermelons and delicata squash. Half the advice I found listed squash and melons as good companions, the other half insisted they be planted as far away from each other as possible. Which means -- I get to do whatever I want, since planting spaces are at a premium around here. We'll just have to see how things grow.

Evan is justifiably less than thrilled with my placement. The new bed is going to make use of that gate irritatingly awkward. But again, space is at a premium. I can't move the sun. And this has got to be better than breaking up the driveway. (I have to remember that line of defense.) I DID move the composter, for the 567th time, to make a better path. I can't have people clambering over my melons after all.

At some point, I took a break for some green beans and seeded nasturtiums around the pumpkin patch.

Then I gawked at our ripening blackberries...

Gawked at my husband installing our rain barrel diverter...

Fed the compost monster...

And found my next planting project in the pantry. Whee!