Back from vacation and spent forty minutes early this morning working on the front gardens. I figured that I need to add a third category: landscaping. While I pulled a bunch of weeds and took care of the various plants in the front yard, it was less about tending my garden as it was making it look great for passers by. I may be gardening when I tend to our three street trees but when I’m pulling weeds, I’m actually working the landscape.

I don’t know. Another category to ponder.

At the end of the fall, I planted a bunch of garlic. Through the winter and early spring I watched them grow. It was awesome — three feet tall and I thought we’d have garlic for the next year. About six weeks ago, I harvested the scapes, carefully trimming off the ends, trying to leave enough green for the plants to keep growing.

They’re all dead. Wooden husks. No garlic for me.

I’m still not quite sure what happened. Did the various heat waves wipe them out? Did I cut off too much? I know I didn’t over-water but did they not have enough water? Did I not give enough compost to that particular bed? Did the weeds on the other side of fence siphon all the energy from the soil? I’ll pull them out to assess the bulbs tomorrow.

In the end, though, I’m just a gardener. I love my garden but the failure means I spent a shade more at the co-op or TJs or Acme; no one is going to starve. What must it feel like to watch a field and see your food supply disappear or your ability to purchase what you need through the winter wither away. And what does it mean that someone else takes on all of this risk?

Loved this paragraph from Transatlantic:

The elaborate search for a work, like the turning of a chain handle on a well. Dropping the bucket down the mineshaft of the mind. Taking up the empty bucket after empty bucket until, finally, at an unsuspected moment, it caught hard an had a sudden weight, then delved down into the emptiness once more.

p.193

Colum McCann’s new novel, Transatlantic.

p.8 “Brown had flown reconnaissance. He had a knack for the mathematics of flight. He could turn any sky into a series of numbers. Even on the ground he went on calculating, figuring out ways to guide his planes home.”

(Love this as it reminds me of what we want for our students — to see real world problems everywhere they go and to feel the ability to apply their own expertise and passion to solving those problems)

p. 54 “The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart’s deep need for instruction.”

McCann is writing as Frederick Douglass and speaking of the balance he felt in Ireland — needing to know many things but unable to take the chance of appearing ignorant. The preceding lines:

“…his life these days was much about having to inquire without exhibiting a lack of knowledge. He could not seem ignorant, yet he did not want to be strident either. A fine line. He was not sure when he could show weakness.”

Yeah, everything is about teaching to me, but this is such a great description of what most teens feel in school. They want to know but don’t want to appear that they don’t. And they’re usually equally as worried about how their inquiry will appear to the teacher and particularly to their peers then they are about actually finding an answer.

Good, thought provoking book.

Ate some salad greens from the back yard. Had a bad moment when I saw a squirrel brazenly removing a dwarf eggplant. This is after he dug up a summer squash that had already flowered.

Kara and I deployed a trap today. I will remove squirrels to Clark Park for the rest of the summer. Would prefer to give them the Ned Stark treatment.

Starts in the basement look great. Cucucmbers are so large I may have to transplant now (why not; it’s warm as can be outside).

Would have eaten more but got a friend’s summer share from Red Earth Farm. A ton of greens to be consumed — tomorrow is summer squash and garlic. I will say that the chard they included ain’t got nothing on mine.

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel this way…

Giant pesto dinner + oak leaf + first cucumber of the year.

Have two jalapenos that are just about ripe.

Thought: Five-Seven kinds of lettuce in rows would let us eat from each once a week. The idea of sowing lettuce every two weeks is appealing but the heat would make that tough.

Everything in the basement has germinated. Worried that the 80 degree temps (basement is probably 75 and the flourescents kick it up a few degrees in the shelter will make it tough for the spinach to grow. Have to see.

Went out to eat with LC last night — Bobby’s Burger — so had to come home and eat some salad greens. Black-Seeded Simpson and Oak Leaf.

Chopped down a bunch of the front collards and used Mark Bittman’s recipe for flash cooking them. Harvested a bunch of Swiss Chard, which we will eat tomorrow.

Problem with this picture is that it fails to show just how enormous this pile of collards was…

I also started a bunch of seeds, so that I can have some lettuce starts as the weather cools and so that I have some stuff to put in the hydroponics. Arugula — Winter Density — Spinach — Marvel of Four Seasons — and a Burpee Basil packet. Did the same run in rock wool and in an organic seed starting mix.

A new goal for the gardening that is becoming all consuming:

I want my family to eat one green thing that I’ve grown each day. Between extending the season as much as possible and the various hydroponics kits I’ve cooked up, it should be in range.

Today: Kale from the front garden cut into a strawberry/banana/greek yogurt smoothie.

My boy knew immediately that something was up.