Surprised by apricots

I just noticed that there are several dozen marble-sized apricots on two different trees. I hadn't seen them before...maybe I was too busy thinning peaches and pulling weeds to see them. I wonder how many times in life we miss seeing beautiful things because we are too busy with necessary tasks?

On thinning peaches

"...every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."

We're still thinning peaches on our oldest, earliest-bearing peach tree. Last year a late frost killed most of the blossoms before they could set fruit, but this year it seems that every blossom turned into a baby peach. Once the fruit is marble sized, you're supposed to thin it, leaving a 5 inch space between peaches. There are hundreds of peaches in doublets and triplets and clusters on every branch, and these need to be culled from hundreds to dozens. If you don't thin peaches sufficiently, the fruit won't have enough nutrients to mature into tasty, eating-size peaches, and too heavily laden limbs can break. So I'm thinning peaches, and as often happens when I'm working in the garden, thoughts about God and life come into my mind.

It's still the season of Lent, when tradition has it we're supposed to give careful consideration to spiritual things. Many people give up something they enjoy for Lent, or use it as some kind of second-chance New Year's resolution to give up a bad habit or start a good one. So, as I'm thinning peaches, I started thinking about sermons I've heard about culling things from your life that get between you and God, or spending extra time in acts of service to others. However, this isn't the direction my thoughts went today. There's nothing wrong with most of the peaches I'm discarding. There are just too many of them, and if I leave too many small peaches on the tree, I won't have any big ones, they won't taste as good, and the tree could be harmed.

Is it possible that sometimes what we need to "give up" is doing too much, even if the things we are doing are good things?

Spring has sprung!

Now blooming in Arizona Backyard Eden:

Nasturtiums, Bachelor's Button, Larkspur, California Poppy, Gaillardia, Snapdragon, Allysum, Roses, Gladiola, Nectarine, Apple, Apricot, Pear, Plum. Cilantro

Now eating: Lettuce, Spinach, Sugar snap peas, Asparagus, Broccoli, Oranges, Grapefruit, Lemons

Now planting:Yellow squash, Zucchini ,Eggplant, Armenian cucumber. I've planted some directly in the ground, and some in peat pots to be transplanted later wherever I find room. No seedlings spotted yet.

We should have a bumper crop of peaches this year as we didn't get a late frost like we did last year; right now they are marble-size, so we're busy thinning them out. We're trying a couple of kinds of heirloom tomatoes this year in addition to the Roma, Early Girl, and cherry tomato staples. The other main garden task this year is trying to stay ahead of the weeds.

Messy things

I was excited to receive an email yesterday from the chair of this year's Real Gardens for Real People tour informing me that she was forwarding information about our "Arizona Backyard Eden" to the people who are planning the 2013 tour. Because the 2011 tour was in the west valley area, it's not likely that another tour will be scheduled in this part of the valley, but her email was very affirming and complimentary. It did get me to thinking "what if", though. What if our garden is selected for a future RGRP tour? Although productive and pleasurable, it's rather messy compared to the ones we visited on last year's tour.

There's a large pile of vegetable debris under the lemon tree, evidence of our current experimentation with open-air composting. We have two purchased compost bins, a traditional squarish one and a cylindrical tumbler contraption. Neither have worked very well for us, most likely because I haven't been diligent about keeping the material in them sufficiently moist. So this time when I cleaned out the broccoli and cauliflower leaves after last harvest, I just dumped them on the ground under the lemon tree. It's too shady to successfully grow much under there anyway. I also dump coffee grounds, banana peels, and other kitchen scraps directly into the raised beds outside the kitchen. Not very attractive, but the vegetables and flowers growing in them seem to like these additions. I also don't rake up fallen leaves from around the citrus trees in the gravel yard; they too compost in place and add needed organic material to the heavy clay soil.

Then there are the dandelion-type weeds, which seem to explode on some kind of exponential curve this time of year. I don't "dig up" the beds very often- an idea I took from a Phoenix Permaculture Guild class- and I prefer to minimize the use of chemicals, so that means lots of hand pulling of weeds, which takes lots of time I don't always have. Our largest pond is currently overwhelmed by cattails that are crowding out the water lilies. (Cattails are #3 on my list of "things I wish I hadn't planted", along with Mexican primrose and Mexican petunia.) Of course, the fish don't seem to mind living in an underwater jungle, and the hummingbirds can use the cattail fluff as nesting material. The sandstone pieces lining our lower pond are crumbling in places because I step on them while dipping water out to water potted plants...but the plants love the nitrogen-rich pond water.

Yes, our yard is messy, all right. Hopefully I'm not justifying my own laziness, but I see meaning in its messiness. When I think about it, life can be pretty messy too. We can spend our time raking gravel and spraying weeds into submission, and end up with a barren moonscape of a yard...or a life. I think I'd rather tolerate....and maybe even learn to appreciate.....a little messiness.

No picture this time, though! Not comfortable enough with my messes for that!

Of springtime and ashes

"What a wondrous time in spring, when all the trees are budding. The birds begin to sing; the flowers start their blooming. That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it. You want to sing; it's fresh like spring; you want to pass it on."

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, which I never have fully understood, perhaps because of my non-liturgical upbringing. Our pastor says Lent is her favorite season...I can't say that I feel the same way. Lent is sackcloth and ashes and repenting our sinful nature, which may be necessary, but is not enjoyable, and (I hope I don't get struck by lightning) seems somewhat masochistic to me. Maybe it works better in more temperate climates, where February is still winter, rather than in Phoenix, where it marks the beginning of spring.

Our earliest-bearing peach tree is setting fruit; a later bearing variety is covered in blossoms; and the apricot and almond trees are also beginning to blossom. I've already picked a nice batch of sugar snap peas and a few asparagus shoots (only because I only planted two plants....must remedy that!) and our second planting of lettuce is reaching harvest-size leaves. Pear, plum, fig, and apple have not yet blossomed, but have full buds I expect to see open any day now. Some of the nasturtiums are blooming (maybe I should pick a few and add to the lettuce for a salad tonight); lilac vines are blooming, and the air is becoming heady with the fragrance of citrus. Calla lilies, which I'd wondered if had survived, are emerging from the ground...larkspur and hollyhock are coming up everywhere, in unexpected locations. Even in the gravel part of the yard I'm seeing marigolds, hollyhocks, nasturtiums...to quote my favorite Jurassic Park quote, "life will find a way."

And, there are a few weeds that need to be pulled. There are always a few weeds to be pulled, and it's generally best to pull them early before they have a chance to grow to giant size and set seed. I can see that part of Lent. There are weeds to be pulled in our lives, and with weeds, it's generally best to pull them when they are small and manageable. But in my garden, and I think also in our lives, it's an ongoing process. And I don't want to concentrate so much on the weeds that I can't enjoy the flowers.

A long overdue gardening update

I've neglected posting updates here for several months, primarily because I've essentially been working as a long-term sub for most of this school year. Where time constraints force me to choose between writing about my garden, and actually working in my garden, I usually choose to work in my garden. But I'm inspired to start posting again, because I just submitted our garden as a possibility for a future Master Gardener Real Gardens for Real People tour. If our garden is selected for the tour, I think it would be fun to do a kind of "Julie and Julia" blog and try to write something nearly every day for the next year (or two...they plan these things quite a ways in advance!) There is a science and an art to gardening, but there is also a lot of trial and error and experiments that don't work. I think people might be entertained and informed by reading about those- not just seeing the finished product, and thinking "I could never do that!".
So here's the several-months-overdue update: Yellow squash was a smashing success, producing a continuous and abundant crop until this year's December frost, as did our one Japanese eggplant. The six summer-planted tomato plants that I coddled with shade screen until late September were loaded with green tomatoes at the time of the frost, which was earlier than usual this year. We experimented with various suggestions as to how to save the tomatoes. We attempted to protect two of the plants with frost cloth and left them in the ground, we pulled up two of them by the roots and hung them upside down in the garage, and we picked all the green tomatoes off two of them and put them in baskets on the kitchen counter to ripen. The counter and garage tomatoes ripened gradually over a period of weeks; we still have of some of those left. The frost-protected plants were still hit pretty hard, and the tomatoes never ripened. I finally gave up on them so I would have room to plant another crop of lettuce as the first one went to seed in January. (I almost never have to buy grocery-store lettuce, except in the summer.)

We planted broccoli, cauliflower, and bush sugar snap peas in place of the tomatoes, eggplant, and squash. The broccoli did really well....we enjoyed fresh roasted broccoli, broccoli cheese soup, and wound up freezing 23 quarts to enjoy later. (Here's a link to my favorite roasted broccoli recipe. If you haven't tried it that way, it's amazing!) The cauliflower didn't do as well, although we did up with a bit fuller heads than we did last year. Because I was working, I didn't have sufficient time to address the never-ending Mexican primrose invasion into the place we'd planted the sugar snap peas, so the number of surviving plants was limited. However, the half-dozen plants that weren't choked out produced a surprising number of pea pods.

What didn't work? The picture above shows where I planted several varieties of lettuce and spinach, along with the vining variety of sugar snap peas. Note to self for next year: If you are going to put ground-up spent hollyhock plants in the compost bin, make sure all is well-composted before using it as mulch. There are actually a few lettuce and pea plants among the fine crop of hollyhocks you see growing here. Not exactly what I had planned, but then a garden seldom is.

New Beginnings

The Jewish New Year is always in the fall, which seems appropriate for a desert-dwelling people. My husband has observed that in the Phoenix area, we ought to have our own version of Groundhog Day in late summer. If Prairie Dog Pete comes out of his burrow and survives long enough to cast a shadow, we'll have six more weeks of summer...or something like that. In any event, today is semi-overcast and the temperature was down in the 80s this morning, so I have hope that cooler days are ahead!

Our "Arizona Backyard Eden" looks more like "Arizona Backyard Hades" right now, with leaves on rosebushes and fruit trees scorched. Most vegetables and flowers have long since given up trying to survive, although a lone Japanese eggplant looks pretty healthy, and basil is thriving. There are a few spots of color from portulaca and vinca on our north patio. We've been working on the never-ending task of clearing out Bermuda grass from the raised beds in preparation for fall planting, which begins in September and continues into early October. For anyone who's interested, here's a link to a PDF of the planting calendar we use.

My attempts to start tomato plants from seed several weeks ago were unsuccessful. I couldn't find the peat-pot refills for the Jiffy indoor greenhouse system I prefer for starting seeds indoors, so I tried starting them, along with peppers and cilantro, in regular potting soil outdoors. Although the seeds sprouted in their sheltered location on the north patio, I missed a day hand-watering them, and that was the end of that. So we bought tomato transplants, put them in the beds closest to the north patio, and put portable shade structures over them. We also have yellow squash coming up in the same area, and I planted bush beans a few days ago in the second-shadiest area of the yard. I finally found one peat-pot refill at Lowe's, so we now have broccoli and cauliflower seeds sprouting indoors. They should be ready to transplant by mid-September, and by then we should be able to plant sugar snap peas along with various kinds of lettuces.

The anticipated end of the long, hot, and dry summer is upon us, beauty will return to our backyard garden, and it will soon be enjoyable to spend time outdoors again. The change of seasons reminds me that although I may experience (and should expect) periods of discontent and spiritual dryness in my life, these are not the permanent state of my inner landscape.

"There is no journey gone so far we cannot stop and change directions,
No doom is written in the stars. It's in our hands.
We cannot know what will occur
Just make the journey worth the taking
And pray we're wiser than we were
In the beginning"