Could a Garden Come Up from This Ground?

Yesterday, while waiting to hear if Butch was able to free his forklift from its prison, Phil figured out a way to make a height extender for the tractor. He figured that he was able to get the beam up within just a few inches of where it needed to be, but the bucket height was simply not quite enough.

So he built a contraption (explained it to me, too, though I'm functionally illiterate in mechanics and don't really understand). It'll give him the extra height he needs.

We woke up this morning to find a text from Butch: the forklift is free. So the contraption won't be tested, but how freeing, to know that, forklift or not, the building progress will continue.

***

One of the songs we sing could be written just for disappointed farmers.

All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust.

When we sang that today, I wondered about my greenhouse, newly cleared, ready for lasagna beds of compost and seeds. Could a garden come up from this ground?

I was amazed today, when watering today, to find that many of my little okra seeds, planted four days ago, had sprouted! A garden could come up from this ground.

And, really, for all the lack of watering and weeding and overall neglect, I have fairly productive plants. I get a cucumber or two daily; the tomatoes are starting to put off red, albeit somewhat chewed, fruits.

The comfrey looks better by the day.

Some of the leaves are a foot long.


***

The puppies did me a great service today. Last fall, I buried cow horns with manure mashed in. After six months or so underground, the manure changes texture and form and becomes BD 500, a biodynamic prep that, when stirred for an hour and sprayed on the land, improves soil tilth and health. I suppose you could call it homeopathy for the earth.

And I do love homeopathy.

I was terribly disappointed this spring: when the time came to dig up the horns, I could not find them. The $49 worth of horns was disappointing to lose, but the preps: that felt tragic.

Phil walked up today with a horn. The puppies had dug one up.

And we found them all!

Much more dried out than I'd prefer, and perhaps not as potent as I might wish, but there they.

A garden will come up from this ground.