tending the soil for winter...

"We all need sanctuary. We need a place where we can feel safe, one that rejuvenates and refreshes u, somewhere we feel nourished and loved."  Jessi Bloom

Yesterday I started to tend the soil of our garden for winter. Because I am a novice, it is slow going - with ample time left for allowing the wisdom of past masters to sink in to me and the earth - before moving on. So, I pulled out the worn remnants of the cucumbers and recycled their vines in the compost. I weeded and raked the new terrace in anticipation of adding more soil, wood chips, and compost. And I pondered what the soil was telling me as I read from Andrew Keys' guide: Growing in the Northeast Garden. Besides learning that our yard is too sandy - meaning that "nutrients will wash through the soil without sufficiently sticking" to the vegetables - came this gem: "The moral of the soil-testing story is this: nurturing your soil will nurture your garden; and testing your soil will illustrate how your soil may need to be nurtured." (p. 259) 

Part of my commitment to building this garden as an everyday sanctuary is to be a good steward. Sentimentality and naivete have long defined my practice of gardening. I love the delicate beauty of flowers. I delight in the aroma of fresh basil and oregano. I am captivated by the arrival of butterflies amidst the wild flowers. But when it comes to caring for healthy and holy plants beyond my romantic affectations, wisdom matters. Moving beyond pretty pictures and the random poem is vital. "Creating spaces where well-being is the focus," writes Jessi Bloom, "we have a vested interest in maintaining functional ecosystems for our own health and prosperity. This means protecting ecosystem health and regenerating or repairing degraded landscapes. It also means being careful about how much we consume in building our special sanctuary." (Everyday Sanctuary, p. 32) St. Paul cut to the chase: "When I was a child, I thought like a child, acted like a child, and spoke like a child. But now that I am maturing - or ripening - I have put childish things away... now we see as through a glass darkly, later we shall see face to face." (I Corinthians 13: 11-12)

This year's garden was all about beginner's mind mixed with my all too well-developed sentimentality. I was captured with the aesthetics without knowing how to do the hard work that bears fruit over the long haul. Consider how I built the first two terraces: pure trial and error. To be sure, I learned a great deal through my mistakes, as I needed to rebuild them four or five times. It was an excellent way for me to grasp what I didn't know - and now I will reinforce the terrace walls with rebar before winter. I didn't know how to grow pumpkins and was flummoxed when they developed a white mold. Not only was I watering them wrong, but our soil was too weak to feed them well.  

And I had no understanding of how the sun actually moved over our garden. For those who are well-trained, this will seem bone-headed. Of course you need to know how much sunlight will touch your plants before they go in the ground. But I didn't. And now we have about one hundred green tomatoes in need of ripening in a plot that gets maybe two hours of sun each autumn day. I don't lament learning from my mistakes. There is something humorous and humbling in this way of wisdom. Moreover, making these missteps helps me know what I don't know and need to know. Like how I can put some of the unripened fruit into a box wrapped in newspaper and stored in the basement for ripening. Or how I can even uproot some of the larger tomato plants, clear away the vines and roots, and hang them upside down in the garage so that they can ripen in their own time, too.

Once the tomatoes have been moved, I can do a test on the soil to determine how acidic or alkaline it is. I'll send a small sample of soil off to the county agent, too for their analysis. There is a rugged beauty to this garden that I have sensed by being in it so much this year. Its spirit is not delicate or Zen-like but more like a Thanksgiving cornucopia: big, bold, and beautiful. Studying how to enhance and strengthen that will be some of my winter garden work. I also need to discover how best to address the presence of deer and chipmunks as the days grow shorter and the snow does its own special work.  At the close of this weekend the raised beds and terraces will be ready for some repair. Next weekend we'll finish fixing the deck so it can be power-washed and stained before winter, too. It is somehow fitting that one of the poems that come to my in-box each morning included this one from Wendell Berry entitled, "In Art Rowanberry's Barn."

In Art Rowanberry's barn, when Art's death
had become quietly a fact among
the other facts, Andy Catlett found
a jacket made of the top half
of a pair of coveralls after
the legs wore out, for Art
never wasted anything.
Andy found a careful box made
of woodscraps with a strap
for a handle; it contained
a handful of small nails
wrapped in a piece of newspaper,
several large nails, several
rusty bolts with nuts and washers,
some old harness buckles
and rings, rusty but usable,
several small metal boxes, empty,
and three hickory nuts
hollowed out by mice.
And all of these things Andy
put back where they had been,
for time and the world and other people
to dispense with as they might,
but not by him to be disprized.
This long putting away
of things maybe useful was not all
of Art's care-taking; he cared
for creatures also, every day
leaving his tracks in dust, mud,
or snow as he went about
looking after his stock, or gave
strength to lighten a neighbor's work.
Andy found a bridle made
of several lengths of baling twine
knotted to a rusty bit,
an old set of chain harness,
four horseshoes of different sizes,
and three hammerstones picked up
from the opened furrow on days
now as perfectly forgotten
as the days when they were lost.
He found a good farrier's knife,
an awl, a key to a lock
that would no longer open.