Late but great....garden is IN

Early morning sun (yes, sun!) lights up recently planted peppers and tomatoes on the right, and perks up onions and potatoes. Garlic in the forefront, planted in October, will be ready to harvest in June. We've started filling up the trenches with straw, grass clippings, manure, and compost for next year's crops. This is late May Spring has been cold and wet and we're late planting, as are most area gardeners. By "area" I mean the Pacific Northwest. Compared with more northerly locales, we've had it easy. However, temps have been cool and the ground is still wet and we've yet to see beans sprout. Heat-loving zukes and cukes are also reluctant to come out.

We fill in the trenches to keep down weeds and preserve moisture,  then the next season, dig the trenchs and pile the composted material atop the rows. Yes, it's a lot of work.

PK planting one of about 20 pepper plants. In the buckets are organic fertilizer and mycorrhizae, the magic soil enhancement.

The difference between compost and "regular" garden dirt.

In the meantime, fall and winter crops are going nuts. What to do with all that chard and kale? I traded a bunch for rabbit manure, reportedly the best of the manures, gave some to a friend undergoing chemotherapy who is juicing organic veggies and fruits, and we're eating copious amounts in salads and stir fries. A half dozen chard/kale meals are the freezer and form the beginning of the 2011/2012 food stash.

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.