One-Third Century

While decades, quarters, and halves are usual century divisions, I am 33 1/3 today: a third of a century. That's my exciting news. Abraham's exciting news is that he asked the Lord this morning to let him lose his tooth. And after watching it visibly grow more and more loose, it popped out right before dinner. He was thrilled: "The Lord God answered my prayer!" he said over and over.

As a treat, my parents, sister, and nieces have been visiting for the last week.

It was a delight to see the cousins interact beautifully for a week, despite fatigue and various levels of introvertedness. Joe played, "How big is Eliana? SOO big!" with the baby, over and over. And the two three-year-olds, only twelve days apart in age, bounced on the trampoline, collaborated on the bulldozers, splashed in the stock tank pool, and listened to stories together. Very sweet.

Unlike last year, I didn't need my mom and sister to help plant dozens of flats of vegetables. Besides, most of the week was pushing 90 and cloudless, which means simply being outside makes one sweat. We spent a lot of time indoors after Phil put in the air conditioner. Surprisingly, the air conditioner went in the same day as it did last year: May 25.

My sister helped me dig up dozens (hundreds?) of daffodils, which enabled Phil to actually drive down the ridge of the clearing, rather than the side, where the road has been. I really liked digging daffodils: amazing to see their large roundness, like uncovering treasure.

Phil and I also spent a little time with the backhoe, planting the 100 larger, year-old comfrey plants in the orchard. That was much easier than digging holes by hand.

I remember last year that this was about the time we fell apart. With the warm weather and rainfall (or at least heavy dew), the cover crop plants appeared to grow about a foot during the last week. My sister commented that she tries to spend an hour a day in her garden, pulling weeds and doing general maintenance. Somehow I missed the memo that weeding is really, really important in gardening, and somehow am again surprised that I need to do it. Last year I was blindsided. This year, I'm just feeling a bit amazed that even though I've weeded my apple nursery once (twice?), it needed it again. So I weeded, and it took maybe two hours. But it is nice to stay on top of it, nice to feel like I'm not making us more behind.

I noticed, too, that a patch of Johnson grass is setting seed. I popped the seeds into a garbage bag, and then started to dig. With the overall good cover crop growing, it is interesting to see the three or so patches of Johnson grass. It's not everywhere yet, and I'm going to do my best to contain it. That's what Joe and I did today: we dug up "baddies" as best we could.

Joe and I planted three of the 15 or so stinging nettle plants back behind the compost pile. I think that's a good place for them: fertile soil, good shade, adequate moisture, not much traffic. I said, "Joe, is it silly to plant a plant that stings? It will feel like a bee sting."

He said, "Well, if a bee stings it, the plant can sting back. It will be a stinging party!"

He really liked that line of thought.

Joe was also pleased, when we hoed the few weeds out of the greenhouse comfrey planting, to see that we already had an emergent little bit of greenery. Two weeks after planting the little root cutting, I have a viable plant two inches above ground. So cool!

Phil worked a day in the asparagus patch. As nice as the idea of perennial vegetables sounds, the reality is, the asparagus was planted in very weedy soil, and the weeds, under control a month ago, are now higher than our heads. There are plenty of awful itchy bugs biting, too. I joined Phil for an hour or two, until I ran away, mentally screaming over the amount of itches I'd acquired.

Whatever we end up getting for asparagus some day, I don't know that it will be financially profitable, with the amount of man hours required up front.

On the other hand, to have a garden, the weed seed bank needs to exhaust itself, if not in an asparagus patch then some other way. So the weeding needs to be done. It looks different when finished.

We are in the explosive growth period, and are enjoying the ride. If the guinea could step up tick annihilation, I'd like it even more.