Friday, July 23, 2010

Good News and Bad News, and Good News

So the good news is that earlier this week (with a hand from a friend, much appreciated) I finally got that big blue tarp that's been occupying the better part of my backyard--in one way or another, for the past three months--folded up and back in the garage, and today I got in touch with an ass-kicking "chiropractor" who I believe will be able to help me out, for real, with some chronic body issues.  The bad news is that it appears I have been rather underestimating both the pain I've been in and the severity of my "neck" problems ("walking cranial mess", were the words she used, I think), and as a result my weekend plans to transform that big ol' pile of dirt into the northern hemisphere of my radiant garden have been reclassified from promising project into "ridiculous idea".  So, looks like everything's going on ice for now...

The gardens up north are thriving this year, in the loving and capable hands of my mom and dad.  It's a stellar summer for the curcurbits--zucchini and summer squashes, melons, cukes and winter squashes are thriving and full of fruit and blossoms.  The tomatoes are looking good, too, and even the peppers and eggplant, which were just spindly little leggy buggers when they went in, are now bushy and full of flowers.  The brassicas are lagging, but they should do just fine through the home stretch into the Fall, as things cool down, and even through frost.  Loads of sweet corn is about where it should be this time of year, and the onions and potatoes look great.  There's a super-happy patch of Calendula taking hold of the eastern border of the back garden, practically unstoppable now... Not so many peas and lettuces this year, after a late start, but there's time for more greens in the Fall.  Carrots are going gangbusters and the rest of the roots are slowly chugging along.  There's a beautiful, thick stand of Jerusalem artichokes at the western edge of the compost garden, and the patch of Russian comfrey at the opposite end is three feet high and rising, just a few short weeks after mom cut it down for the first time this season.  Borage abounds, as usual, and some of the perennial herbs I put in last year and this Spring have developed into nice little communities.  The old--I mean OLD, like at least 30 years--rhubarb that mom and dad split transplanted from the end of the asparagus bed to the northeast corner of the front garden is so big you wouldn't know it hadn't been there forever.  All in all, a good year for growing and things are doing well.  The bad news is, the good word has got out (perhaps spread by the baby rabbits who were born this Spring in last year's tomato patch...), and there's a plague of chipmunks who are, in relative terms at least, wreaking havoc.

My own gardens are doing sort of surprisingly well, too--tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and cabbages have quadrupled in size in the past two or three weeks, and I've got basil bushes with leaves so large and lovely I've been eating them like lettuce, in sandwiches.  The frigging squirrels stripped away the onion bags and stole my few precious strawberries, but since I wasn't really expecting any fruit this year I guess I can deal with that.   Still have flowers to plant and fencerows to fill in and various other things to tend to but that I will get to in due time.  Now I'm going to fetch the Led Zeppelin from the basement, refill my cup, lie down on my shaggy rug of bliss for a very long time, and thank god for doctor's orders.

1 comment:

JB aka JayBee said...

Enjoy your much deserved and ordered rest.