Living in Time of Pandemic Better With Gardening

Home and garden in July 2012. We've painted the house since then and stricken down the aggressive hop plant in the middle, but we expect our pandemic garden to look something like this.  

PK and I have inhabited the same 3.5 acres in Southern Oregon's Rogue Valley since the mid-1970s. That would be around 45 years, most of them as tillers of the soil. Never did the idea of experiencing a historic pandemic occur to me—to us—nor did we consider that gardening might someday become a smart survival strategy.

We may be headed in that direction now. We're not among the "survivalists" who migrated to Southern Oregon in the 1970s about the same time we did. The survivalists believed Southern Oregon was the safest place to escape radiation fallout should a nuclear war break out. 

Us? We landed in this spot serendipitously. No plan. No destination. Blown by the wind. But damn. When we hit the land it hooked us. Well, the land and having a baby. 

Remember those days? Hippies, including us, and many others, migrated to the rural West, sparking cultural clashes but ultimately melding with the locals to cultivate new lives in the new-to-us territory.

Now that a pandemic is poisoning the planet and rural lifestyles including small towns, farms and ranches, open spaces and wilderness all around must be looking pretty dang fine to people stuck in cities. If unemployed and anxious urban dwellers could swing it, my guess is that many would choose to relocate to where social distancing comes with the territory and a well-established gardening culture is in place.

Our neighborhood a mile outside the town of Rogue River shot from a mountain trail on the other side of the actual Rogue River. Our 3.5 acres is there someplace on the right.

We can't know for sure what'll happen next. But gardening benefits include that you can pretty much predict your food future and also your health, provided you eat fresh whatever you can, and preserve the rest. (We give away a lot of produce.)

A late summer harvest but where are the tomatoes?

Not that we've slipped into survival mode, but considering that Stephen King-like nightmares have disturbed my sleep through the years, I don't discount the possibility that our current globally shared shitty situation could devolve into pandemic pandemonium.

Yes. Rainbows over our garden. 

Back to the land.  Although I paint a rosy picture, usually, it is sad but true that PK and I have had an on/off-love/hate relationship with gardening for decades. Seeding, weeding, shoveling, spading, tilling, planting, fertilizing, watering, harvesting, and food preservation required by the big beautiful time-sucking rectangle in our backyard has been as much of a chore as it has been a cause for celebration.

And that's not even taking into consideration that when we bought the property, it was an orchard with 300+ apple trees! Now that was work! Most of which PK took on.

Most of the original apple trees were cleared to make pasture. We still have about a dozen producing trees, including this one which was bursting with blooms in April and is now loaded with fruit. For the first time in several years,  PK is tending the trees so we have organic apples to make sauce and butter and share with friends and neighbors. 

In fact, after excessive toiling with yet another too-much-of-everything garden in 2019, we determined to throw in the spade and skip the whole cultivation thing in 2020. No garden for us this year!

Instead, we decided to elongate the run of travel we've relished during the past decade. We'd been plotting a cross-country road trip in our sweet and spiffy Sprinter van. We'd roughed out a 3-4-month ramble that included music festivals, visits with family in Minnesota and New Jersey, a jaunt up to Newfoundland, and, as a grand finale, a flight across the pond for a European fall bicycle trip.

Of course, this trip is not going to happen. For sure not the flying-to-Europe part. I risk embarrassing myself even mentioning how the pandemic has upset our privileged lives of travel when so many are losing so much. We are fortunate and grateful to have choices.

We've chosen to switch gears. There's no ambivalence. Staying home is good, even if it's forced. Gardening is great, something that feels right and full of purpose. We never lack things to do. Days fly by. It's a privilege to have fertile land that we've worked through the decades, that rewards us with beauty and bounty, birds, and bees. Benevolence.

Cosmos volunteers return every year. Bees love them. Me too.

It's raining today but my gardening gusto hasn't dampened. Work-wise, springtime is almost as intense as the harvest season, but I'm glad to be out there digging in the dirt, inhaling the sweet scent of the soil that has been worked by PK and me innumerable times since 1974.


Can it be that I am finally rooted? I guess so.

Me with everything needed for spring planting in Oregon: a new pair of gardening gloves, a piece of dense foam for the knees, a raincoat, and a belief that ...
every little thing's gonna be all right. Bob Marley

Addendum

Oddly enough, I was primed for pandemic gardening during an intense volunteer trip to Guatemala in February. There I was inspired, even moved, by the extensive organic gardening, and other tasks, accomplished by indigenous Guatemalans, many of them teenagers at a remote mountaintop school named Maya Jaguar.* A post about my time there is in the works.

A master gardener, Pascual, oversees the school's
 organic gardening programs.

*The school is one of several efforts by the nonprofit Adopt-A-Village in Guatemala to lift Mayan youth from poverty and malnutrition through life-changing education. Graduates earn three certificates, one for completing academic studies, another for computer science proficiency, and a third for demonstrating competence at all phases of organic gardening. I love what I saw there. 


PREVIOUS GARDENING POSTS

Bye-bye garden, hello fun! 
A new take on marinara plus gardening ambivalence
Mid-June garden is messy but good!

Garden Show & Tell

A morning's catch from the berry patches. Remember "show and tell" in elementary school? I think we never got over it. I've heard numerous recent commentaries about how social media is such an ego trip. We post our photos, our words, our links to stuff we think is worthy in hopes of communicating with people we know,  or people we've never met but want to, or people we can't imagine, and so don't care about, but who we want to reach anyway. The need to communicate is strong and so we do it. Facebook and other social media has made it possible, pervasive, and acceptable to "show and tell."  I got over my ambivalence about being a senior citizen on Facebook, and I  don't care that some are profiting mightily on my (our) ego trips. I'm glad Facebook is part of my life because for some reason, I am compelled to take photos and write this blog, which 25 or 30 people look at, mostly because I broadcast the posts on Facebook. This lets me know that I'm not "showing and telling" to a vacuum. Hey, 25 people! Hello! Thanks for checking in. The snarky commentators, who all confess to using Facebook, dis people who subject others to their children or grandchildren, their travels, their hobbies, and so on. I've learned to be a discerning Facebook user. Seriously, there are some sketchy communiques. The thing is, I don't have to look, and "friends" who habitually post boring or self-aggrandizing crap warrant a click on "hide." I have yet to "unfriend" someone, however. Mostly, I enjoy show and tell by people I know, and I do it myself. (Especially since I won a camera! and have decided, despite an earlier post to the contrary, that there's no such thing as too many photos.) So here is a show and tell about our voluptuous Southern Oregon garden. This is really nothing more than boasting, as the commentators would observe, I am bustin' my buttons in Rogue River, Oregon.

Lily in the front flower garden.

Day lilies, woodruff and climbing roses along the garden fence.

Garlic is about ready to harvest and will keep us supplied for a year.

Early summer 2011. Tractor isn't used in the garden, but PK uses it for hauling and mowing.  Yesterday he attached an auger to it  to dig post holes  for fencing a soon-to-be pasture. Livestock may be in our future. 

Roses with hills reflected in living room windows. 

Day lilies and climbing roses.

Lily and purple yarrow.

So-sweet beets.

Beets before harvesting. Roughly a third were taken.

Stir fry tonight!

Onions and lettuce.

Home sweet home.

Volunteers - the garden variety

Plucky Swiss chard volunteer poking through paving stones. 

This photo of a burgeoning Swiss chard thriving between a rock and a hard place illustrates the nature of the volunteers we want, whether human or plant:

• They show up unexpectedly, but at exactly the right time. 
• They never leave, except for when they die.
• They don't ask for anything. 
• They are endlessly productive and even, sometimes, provocative! (I'm thinking of the voluptuous chard, the stalwart sunflowers, the diligent dill—all in possession of the traits we desire.)
• They are strong, brave, and nutritious. 
• They fill in the spaces that might otherwise be barren and boring and prone to weeds. 

This is a now-lowly fennel plant, which will jet to four or five feet and produce marvelously fragrant seed heads and attract beneficial insects. Once the seed heads mature, I'll use the some seeds in marinara sauce.
The birds can have the rest.

Garden volunteers go forward with purpose. They're strong and they replicate. Our garden is populated by volunteers of the most opportune sort. They see a spot and they go for it.

Here we have a happy cluster  of volunteer  chard, cosmos and dill, which have survived thinning, have been mulched, and are now being  cultivated as part of the 2011 volunteer crop. Finches adore chard, so many leaves are filigreed. Still, I have frozen 17 chard meals and, as we speak, have about 10 more harvested and ready to give away or get into the freezer. I'll try for giving away first! Contact me if you want chard. 

I love this volunteer poppy and all of its kin around the blueberry patch. They make me smile. I tried to eradicate them a year or two ago (WHY??!!) but just the right number survived in the nooks and crannies. 

These sunflowers started elsewhere in our garden, planted by birds, but I relocated them to form a fall bird-frenzy area. When the seeds are ready, the birds go crazy. It's a wonder to behold. Relocation also prevents huge sunflowers from shading peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. Sunflowers are wonderfully tolerant of rough transplanting.

Lastly, a stalwart volunteer outside of watering zones but already forming flower heads.
 Tomorrow I'm going to water this plant and give it encouragement. Come on, baby!
Think of how much fun the birds will have with you come fall!

Dancing Into Fall

This is my young friend Katarina dancing joyfully in the mint-scented grass last night while cool winds blew fall into Southern Oregon. Rain was in the forecast, chill was in the air, and we celebrated the shift with our favorite thing. We cranked up the outside speakers and twirled, twisted and stomped til exhaustion to the musical mix she'd put together for me from her favorite dance tunes—18 high-octane gotta-boogie songs by artists ranging from The Who and The Police to Sublime and Bloc Party. Fueled by a little syrah and a lot of synergy that happens when two girls who love to dance get together, dusk turned to dark and the hours fell away and I didn't think too much about the fact that she's 40 years younger. Than I am.

Fall always dredges up that fading-into-old-age crap that's difficult to ignore when the flowers wither, the corn stalks rattle, the squash vines crumble, and the tomato and pepper plants shrink in dread of the soon-to-bite first frost. It's a little too easy to draw parallels with the waning hair color, the wrinkling skin, and the sagging unmentionables. In the garden, it won't be long before all but the insect-and-disease-affected plants will be tossed into the compost or ground up to plow right back into the garden from whence they came. Their energy doesn't vanish, though, it just changes. Their life current persists, and they'll return next year in other vibrant forms.

That's how I think about music and dancing—as current that persists and wells up in rhythm that feels like life itself moving. Switch on the right music, and it plays me. It plays Katarina, too, and my son Chris, and yoga teacher, Denise, and another young friend, Parker, and a few others I know who are blessed (some might say cursed) with the irresistible need to move to music. It is good to reaffirm that since I am undeniably in my own fall season, I can channel the unfathomable power of rhythm and dance to juice things up and keep the green going and going and going. Will it ever be gone? Not as long as I can hear and move and turn on the music. Loud.

Sunflower Love

Here's PK snuggling up to some of our proudest specimens. The best thing about this garden forest? It was planted by BIRDS, and lots of them. Come spring, sunflowers will once more leap from the soil, and I will again transplant most into groupings, as I did with this bunch. Since the original plants had cross-pollinated like crazy, I had no idea what they'd look like. They did not disappoint. And the birds are jubilant.Here are a two from the clouds of American and lesser goldfinches that descend, chirruping in glee, upon our garden everyday. These seed-eaters adore the sunflowers, but are haphazard about consuming each and every seed. The ones they drop all over the place turn into next year's stars. About a third of our large garden is bird-planted or wind-planted, especially lettuce, which appears in random patterns in sometimes-shocking sizes:
This succulent head is nearly 24-inches across and tasted as wonderful as it looks. Dill is another garden commodity that we no longer plant because it emerges as if propelled by partying earthworms and seeded by rockin' robins: And flowers? I still plant a lot of annuals and perennials, but this year the landscape was dominated by rangy four-foot tall volunteer marigolds, which bear scant resemblance to their hybrid predecessors, and reliable four o'clocks, which jumped in with enthusiasm.
But back to the garden rock stars. The acrobatic finches hang down to satisfy their insatiable avian appetites.
The finches have a darting and undulating flight habit, dodging amidst the hummingbirds, who plummet and soar and hover and thrill while extracting nectar from the asters, cosmos, marigolds, and more. Every now and then, blue jays invade and intimidate. But overall, it is an ecstatic scene, and standing quietly in the morning garden is a deep pleasure. But wait. There's more!This sunflower is over 16 inches across. The blue jays covet it, chasing the finches off. Probably the seeds are too large for the finches anyway. This variety is the only sunflower we planted from seed. PK chose it because of its density and hugeness of the seedhead. Later he'll hammer what remains of the dried seedheads to the fenceposts as easy pickings for the birds when they really need a boost. However, here's how these depressed and frustrated sunflowers look now:That's right. They are sunflowers that can NOT follow the sun. How pathetic. They are so heavy, that except for the one mutant, they're unable to adore the sun as sunflowers are programmed to do. It will be interesting next year to see if any of this variety volunteers. I was surprised to see this one come back from 2008:One single shaggy sunflower plant (with numerous flowers) emerged about 20 yards from where it grew last year, and I am so happy! It makes a great cut flower,and the bees enjoy it, but I'm not sure about the finches, jays, chickadees, nuthatches and such, which are more attuned to the "garden" variety. Fall is upon us. The sunflowers will dwindle, but until the end of October, the birds will rule the garden. And this is what will sustain them: Thank you, sunflowers.

Tomato & corn extravaganza

That’s my mom Lavone, age 92-and 7-months old, salivating over a slightly under-ripe Brandywine weighing in at one pound 9 ounces. (LaVone insists that after age 90, the number of months should be added to one’s age because 90 is when the months start counting a lot again, just like when it was a big deal if you were one year or 18-months old. More about that another time.)

Anyway, the garden is pumping out tomatoes like crazy. CRAZY. Paul picked about 70 pounds of tomatoes Sunday (Gee - wonder what I'll be doing today....) and that's just the beginning. I'm already feeling rich with tomatoes for winter and will soon be firing up the food dryer and hauling out the veggie roasting pan, and maybe even the pressure cooker. In the meantime, we have all the fixens for the best summer salads, like this extravagant delight.
It's called "tomatoes and marinated veggies with corn-raft garnish," and is from writer/artist Jan Roberts-Dominguez's syndicated food column, which I read in the Medford Mail Tribune. I rarely follow a recipe to the T, so here's Jan's renamed and abbreviated recipe with the modifications that saved me a trip to the grocery store and let me use one of those monster tomatoes plus a bunch of fresh sweet stuff from the garden.





Hot damn tomato/corn salad with marinated veggies
1 medium-sized cuke, sliced. No need to peel a fresh burpless cuke.
8-10 sweet small peppers, any color, cut into pieces, seeds removed. (Jimmy Nardello's sweet Italian is what I used. An Italian heirloom and sooooo good.)
1 med-sized sweet onion, chopped
3 ears corn, cooked, cooled & cut off the cob
1-2 large Brandywine or other heirloom tomatoes, sliced. (Jan's recipe calls for4 large tomatoes, but maybe her's didn't weigh nearly 2 pounds each.)
4-6 ounces crumbled blue cheese (good, but next time I'll use feta.)

Combine the cukes, peppers, and onion toss with a liberal amount of vinaigrette. Marinate for about 3 hours. (Use a bottled Italian-type dressing, or make your own like I did from Jan's recipe for dilled vinaigrette. Either way, add some fresh dill and/or a dollop of pesto. )

Boil the corn for a couple minutes, cool, then slice off the cob in chunks, like in the photo.

Slice the tomatoes and arrange in a single layer on a large plate. Use a slotted spoon to dish the marinated veggies over the tomatoes, then carefully place the corn on top of all. Crumble some blue or feta cheese on there and prepare to dazzle those lucky enough to be around your summer-harvest table.