A Garden Epiphany

It's the last six weeks of school.  The 5th graders are in the process of checking out entirely.  Middle school looms large, bringing waves of nostalgia and terror in equal measure.  There's a new vibe in the garden and it took me a while to figure out my part in it.

This is the first year that we've grown enough produce to eat more than a taste.  I'm so proud of it.  I love watching it grow.  I love how fecund it looks.  There are marigolds blooming everywhere; their open pollinating system is right out there for the touching and teaching.  

And every time someone asks me for a blossom or a scallion or a strawberry, a little piece of me cries.  

I've noticed it and wondered about it for a few weeks.  Spring Break clarified things, thanks to Landscape Guy's efforts to have a crew clear the weeds we'd been pulling at for weeks.  Everything seemed clearer once the detritus was swept away.

I was letting nature take her course, instead of taming her to my will.  After all, isn't that a definition of a garden - organizing nature to your advantage?

The first thing to go was the giant nasturtium, an inadvertent seed which has been overtaking the vegetable garden.  The thing was stubborn, but I had an able assistant.  

She used the sharp secateurs to prune off the branches once it became apparent that we were not going to pull the whole plant out at once.  Even without all its branches, we needed a trowel to dig it out, tracing the gigantic root system back further and further, its tentacles holding tightly until, with her digging and my pulling (and landing flat on my butt) she ended up with a trophy.

I started saying yes with a smile when the big kids ask for those cutting things and a cup.  I looked on with appreciation as the more experienced gardeners explained to the newbies which scallions to cut and where to cut them.  They were turning them into one inch pieces, to share more easily with their friends.

These two kept quite busy pruning off the tops of the scallions in the raised bed outside the garden fence.  They are free to one and all, even if Grandma isn't in the garden.  They have tiny brown tips where the pruning was done, tips which were examined with exquisite care and precision.

I decided not to feel terrible about how small those scallions were, because the onion bulbs themselves were absorbing all the nutrients that had no where else to go.  Some are red, some are yellow, all are quite amazing.

And we planted them ourselves.  We put seeds in the ground and out came fruits (white strawberries are waaaayyyyy sweeter than our very tasty red ones) and vegetables with super powers (extreme bad breath) and beautiful flowers.

For the next six weeks I'm going to be agreeing to just about everything.  Why not?  It's spring and school's (almost) out for summer.
 

https://youtu.be/2Oo8QzDHimQ?si=oyMtfj7aj9DYno5v