Learning to play while the pests invade
A battle against Mother Nature herself, a bounty of beans, and the endless enlightenment of experience
Did you know that a week in a garden is like an eternity, in the most incredible and life-giving way? Every day a little something changes in the garden, and it’s heartening to see. The plants have sprouted, huzzah! Beans are in the ground, huzzah!
But every day brings new battles too - what are these holes in these leaves? Why is that squirrel digging in my front yard? Why does water keep falling from the sky? What ate my squash blossom?
I’m in a season of learnings. Every day, I have an opportunity to learn something new, if I’m willing to stay open to what the garden has to teach me.
Academia vs. experience - living in the real world
A friend came over a few days ago and got a tour of my garden. “Wow,” she said, “I can’t believe you’ve gotten all this done. I feel like I’d want to study everything first and not make much progress on actually growing things.”
I know this so well - I am an expert at studying things to death. My academic nature has many times led me to study The Thing - writing, running, weightlifting, any other hobby I wanted to do - which didn’t always translate into doing The Thing.
When I started running a couple of years ago, I read everything I could about it while I got started. I don’t think this is inherently a bad thing, so long as it doesn’t impede actually getting started. I loved being immersed in running, wrapping myself in other people’s love of running (especially on days when I did not love it), and building hope that I, too, would one day improve.
This was in addition to actually doing the running. One day, while running, I remembered a description I’d read of how something was supposed to feel, and I was feeling that. The jolt of recognition in my body felt like a revelation. So that’s what the author had meant!
I don’t know that I’ve always made it to the point of embodied knowledge. Many times, the hobby has faded by the time I read fifteen books about it, and decided that was enough. In the reading phase - all things are possible. I could be the best runner in the world in my mind - and not have to confront the daily task of hitting the pavement and facing the inadequacies of being just an average beginner runner.
I don’t think I’ve made the connection between perfectionism and not getting started on new hobbies. I honestly believe that one of the biggest gifts running has given me is the understanding of what it is to pursue something I enjoy purely for the enjoyment of it - and being bad at that thing. The gift of doing something objectively poorly and still gaining pleasure from the pursuit, rather than waiting for the payoff of mastery, was brand new to me.
Also new to me was the commitment of showing up only for myself. No one else cares about my pace, my training plan, whether I get out the door several days a week, or if I sign up for a race. I mean this in the most positive possible way - of course my friends and family are cheering me on, but no one is forcing me to run, or relying upon me to run. It’s just me out there, showing up for me. And even now, 2.5 years in, I feel like every run teaches me something.
Learning day-by-day
One of the reasons I couldn’t research all things gardening to death is that gardening is inherently time-bound. There’s a season to grow things, and if you miss it because you’re busy reading about it - then you’ve missed it until next year.
But I have this season that’s happening right now, so I can’t wait to do it perfectly. I can’t wait to learn all the things I’d like to learn before getting started. I just have to learn, and fail, and try again, and do things differently.
Our little peat pot seedlings were a failure (except for a few strong survivors, who made it with no help from me). If it had been just me, I don’t know that I would’ve tried again. But I couldn’t let my son’s project fail without at least trying one more time, and now look where we are! Sprouts galore!
There’s so much joy in watching the learnings accumulate and build upon each other in real time, and then being rewarded with tangible progress. It’s so motivating - you see it happening right before your eyes. The garden is great for that - you plant a seed and within a few days, you have a sprout, and then, a full blown little plant.
I’m trying to absorb this learning all the way into my bones - I want to be a person of action, a person that tries new things, a person that expands into their full potential. But that’s also scary - growth is vulnerable, and not all avenues of growth are as visible as sprouts in the garden.
Learning to play: my first creative writing class
I’ve realized that in the creativity program I’ve been working through, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about writing, and a lot of exercises about writing, but I haven’t actually increased the amount of writing I’ve been doing beyond my journal and this blog.
While that has been wonderful and cozy and fun, it’s also been safe. But safety is not where I need to go to grow. In order to grow, I need to actually try new types of writing, open myself up to feedback, and embrace the vulnerability of once again being bad at something.
On Tuesday, I had my first creative writing class! After all my fear and nailbiting, it turned out to be… totally fine. A variety of tech issues, like every first virtual class anywhere, and then an hour and a half of discussion of our favorite writers and some quick writing exercises. At the end of our class, we received our first homework assignment - choosing from a set of prompts, and then writing enough content on that prompt to be able to read aloud from it for TWENTY MINUTES next week.
TWENTY MINUTES.
If you’re thinking, “My dear friend, it takes me at least that long to read your blog posts, and I’m skimming!” - Fair enough. But this is just me, like, talking to you - it’s not the same!
If we’re being honest, I’m writing this post rather than starting on my homework because I’m a big ol’ scaredy cat. What if it’s bad? (It will be, because it’s the first time I’m doing this, and the only way to get better is to do it anyway.) After writing the whole last bit about getting more comfortable being bad at things, I have to laugh at myself a little bit. Isn't it just so nice that I keep finding daily opportunities to practice?
Why do the stakes feel so high? Who cares if every single person in my writing class hates my stories? Honestly, who actually cares if the stories are objectively bad, the worst stories ever made up? I feel like I’ve lost the plot a little bit. All of this is meant to be play, it’s meant to be fun! Stop being so serious and worrying about making it good!
Interestingly, this does tie back into the garden also. Earlier this week, I’d shared some fears with Stephen about the garden. What if it fails? What if I’ve planted all these things and set up all these beds and I did it wrong and everything dies?
Unsurprisingly, my calm, endlessly patient and level-headed husband was less emotionally devastated by this possibility than I was. His takeaway was: that will suck, and then you will do better next year.
Of course he does not equate the idea of the garden failing with the idea that I am failing. He sees me as a beginner, brave and trying something new, and learning something every day. I’d be wise to take a page from his book, because I am likely to fail in many small ways over the coming weeks - in writing, gardening, running, and beyond. But that doesn’t mean I’m a failure, just a beginner and a scholar and an experimenter, adding to my logbook of learnings.
A bounty of beans, beans, and more beans
My current experiment: beans. The bean inoculant arrived! I’ll be honest, I’ve read a lot about why beans need to be inoculated and I still don’t fully understand, so just know that the description that follows is not dumbed down for your benefit, but for mine. We’re in “explain like I’m five” mode, ok?
I trusted the little seed packet and did what it told me to do. Apparently, bean inoculant is a… powder… that looks a little bit like ground coffee. It contains a bacteria that helps the beans build a strong root system and more successfully draw nitrogen from the air into their roots. How? I have no idea. But it’s like magic - if we believe in it, it’ll work!
So the beans have been inoculated with their magic powder, and now they’re going to grow ten feet tall, all the way to the sky like in Jack and the Magic Beanstalk! I’ve planted three varieties: rattlesnake pole beans, Cherokee wax bush beans, and Christmas lima beans. I messed up my rows, so now I’m not quite sure which beans are planted where. Happy surprise growing to me!
Happy sprouts abound!
If you were to zoom in really, really close on this picture, you’d see the very early beginnings of a few butternut squash sprouts and a sunflower sprout! If you don’t zoom in… it just looks like a block of dirt with deer netting on it.
The deer netting has been surprisingly effective at keeping curious birds out. It occurred to me that birds like to eat sunflower seeds, and since they’ve been popping by to check out this new bed, my son and I set up some netting to deter them. So far so good! The sprouts have a few inches of clearance, and I think they’ll be out of the bird-snack-danger-zone by the time we need to remove it.
In bigger sprout news, the corn is going gangbusters. It’s WILD - I know the saying is something about watching grass grow, but watching corn grow is actually a very fun time. You can see a difference in how much it’s grown from the morning to the late afternoon - it’s jumping up an inch at a time.
I had to thin it for the first time. You essentially plant it fairly close together and assume it won’t all sprout, then pluck out some of the plants to give more space for the ones that are doing well. See above! Unthinned row on the left, and thinned out row on the right.
I’m very curious if this rate of growth will continue. I’m hoping the corn continues to escape the notice of various critters - some of our other plants have not been so lucky.
The pests invade
All was going well - sprouts were sproutin’ everywhere. And then: holes. Holes in leaves, first in the eggplant leaves and then in our burgeoning sunflower sprouts.
Then, I popped into the front yard to check on our squash and zucchini. It appears an errant deer bit the top off one of my beloved little squashlings, and some other sort of pest helped themselves to the zucchini.
I thought of myself as pretty deer-neutral, as far as deer-based opinions goes. I felt similarly about squirrels and chipmunks. But now, I’m about one good chomp away from sitting in the front yard with a sling shot, pelting pesky critters away from my baby plants. And animals aren’t the only thing besieging my plants.
Eternal, blessed, and infernal rain
With all these new plants, Mother Nature has been giving a helping hand by helpfully watering all of our plants every single day. While this makes seeds and new plants very happy (hooray for the beans!), it makes existing plants kinda… wilty.
You remember, of course, my vigorous survivor squash? He is now my drowning squash. He started to yellow and his leaves started to droop. The problem with water falling from the sky is that I’m not really sure how to make less of it. It’s out of my control, and any thoughts of covering plants during the rain were quickly dashed because it would also block their light, and likely, air circulation.
Enter, my incredibly ingenious water diversion plan:
I have no idea if any of this will work (a refrain I sing to myself daily now), but nevertheless, I persist. I figure any amount of water I can divert away from my squash friend will be beneficial. It’s hard to see, but the plate is tilted in such a way that I hope any water that hits it will run down and out of the bed. I hope the plastic cups will just capture a bit of water.
Everything else is hanging on so far - a few of our front yard plants have developed a yellow leaf or two, but appear to be bouncing back after every storm. Some of our neighbors have been less fortunate in the recent storms, losing trees and sustaining damage to their homes. We are grateful that everyone in our neighborhood is unharmed, and that so far, our only damage appears to be our single squashling sprout.
Lightning round: some fave moments from the past week
My daughter and I got to have a girl’s weekend while my son was getting dropped off at camp. We had a power outage in the big storm, and got to sit around with candles lit, crocheting and listening to our audiobook on my phone. It was really delightful! (Until the power didn’t come on all night and it got very hot and I didn’t sleep at all. But besides that bit!)
My daughter has been working on crocheting a giant (5-6 foot tall) goose. My son got pulled in and they decided to work on it together and take it to their July summer camp. It now has glowing red eyes and is honestly terrifying. I’m getting a huge kick out of it.
Nevermoor (and now the second book in the series, Wundersmith) continues to delight us all.
Next up
Garden updates - I think I’ll finish planting all the things. Kids will both be at camp. Hopefully I write a bunch and some of it is good!
As always, thank you for spending some of your precious time with me!
You simply MUST share pictures of the goose!