After a couple of June hailstorms so unprecedented that even my UN-fearing gazillionth-generation rancher neighbors started tearfully confessing to their belief in climate change, my recently-thriving garden was reduced to a few stringy peas and squash. I replanted (after all, one of my big projects here is easting locally), but it was hard to keep my spirits up. If you don’t live on a driving range, you just don’t expect golf balls to fall from the sky on places like your truck windshield and head when you’re on your afternoon run. But I should‘ve known better than to lose (or even misplace) heart. By August the FBR was again an (albeit weedy) Garden of Eden.
“May this be the worst thing that ever happens to you,” my grandmother that Natalie the Goat looks like (see earlier Dispatch on the Goatlets) used to say to me when I came home weeping with a skinned knee. Indeed, when garden weeds are your biggest problem, life is pretty good.
In fact what I really learned, after procrastinating on the garden maintenance for most of July, is that the weeds were a crucial component of my gardening strategy.
See, when I finally got to thinning the prickly wild forest toward the end of the month, I found hidden carrots, leeks and broccoli that had been protectively shaded by the unwanted “weeds.” The brutal New Mexico sun had been tempered by my shrewd laziness to allow the fall harvest to grow to cornucopia levels.
“I’ve got to remember to implement this strict non-weeding regimen next year,” I said to Sadie the Coyote-banishing dog (more on that in a future Dispatch). “Not before the end of July do we start thinning and grooming.”
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7 Responses:
September 9th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Wow. This laziness epiphany reminded me of the Japanese “natural farmer” Fukuoka and his advocacy of do-nothing farming. I remember holding his book, “The One Straw Revolution,” in my hands in the agricultural library as an undergrad pondering the non-productive possibilities that might lead to something as tangible and palpable as an ear of corn.
suzy.
September 10th, 2007 at 8:11 am
I read your comment while digesting two ears of said laziness-cultivated corn. I’m realizing I have to be less lazy when it comes to harvesting: worms are also enjoying the corn, and what looks to be a winter’s worth of Anasazi beans are also ready for picking, drying, and storying in giant mason jars for February burritos.
Meanwhile, just as early “scientists” believed maggots generated from pasta, so might you be on to something with food materializing from books. Sounds like something Borges would have written.
September 12th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
there can be a downside to the weed thing: great green horned caterpillars hiding, gnawing away at your tomatoes. after 2 mos away from mine i’m sure with you on that smear of stars though.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
My theory: if I ignore the caterpillars, they’re not eating my tomatoes. It works with Republicans, too. They absolutely MAUL my brussel sprouts.
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I think the root vegetables are pretty storm-proof. Potatoes, carrots….also weed-friendly.
Glycemically terrible though, if you are a closet Atkins person, out there in the wilderness counting carbs, so you can come out of your “40 days in the wilderness” looking ripped….
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:48 am
That’s what it’s really about for me: surface appearances. I’d like to reduce my dependence on oil and perhaps inspire others to do the same, but only if I can do it in spotless Carhartts and well-pressed cowboy shirts. Dirt — goat manure excepted — is so 20th Century.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:22 pm
In all seriousness I wonder how to nudge people out of inertia. What images make a person want to do the unnatural or uncomfortable thing. (Breaking energy habits, in this case)
I guess sometimes it’s morality making people change. But that’s just the thinkers. What to do about the shallow majority? If they won’t read your book, would you like to become some sort of “brand” being instantly recognizable, “Oh, there’s the Green Guy! I guess I could ride my bike to work….”
Do you have a long-term artistic plan? Things you wouldn’t say or do for the cause?
If you got a six-pack of abs out there, starving…..would you display them on the book jacket if it meant more sales or converts?
I’ll read your book and see…..