Y'all are the BEST!

Not that I needed the validation or anything, but it was lovely to read your supportive and uplifting comments yesterday. It was, indeed, a down day, and those happen every once in a while. I made the best of it, and will continue to do everything I can to eat healthfully, move gracefully and with intention (doesn't that sound all yoga-y?) and shoo those negative thoughts from my mind. With your help, of course. THANK YOU.

After I published yesterday's post I went to the drugstore for generic Claritin and an allergy eye drop, to treat whatEVER the hell happened to my eye on Friday at the garden center. I was standing at the potting bench, moving petunia plugs into larger pots, when suddenly my right eye began swelling. It was quite dramatic, actually, everyone there noticed it. I washed it out with clear, cold water and hoped for the best, but that best wasn't good enough. I needed an anti-allergy arsenal, because whatever it was was quickly spreading to the left eye.

I've had eye "issues" before. A couple of times it has been too-much-sun-related, and I once ended up in an urgent care facility in Florida because of it. My glasses are the transition kind, and I try to wear a visor or a hat when I'm in the sun, but sometimes even that doesn't help.

But it wasn't a sun issue on Friday, it was probably just something in the air that decided to attack me. My eyes are still swollen and red this morning, but the loratidine is helping and I'm not sleeping the day away, as I would if I were taking Benadryl, which is the other thing the pharmacist recommended.

I spent yesterday afternoon crossing things off my long garden work list. I weeded the herb bed and planted lots of stuff in there, both plants and seeds. There's one empty "slice" of the circular pie, which I will fill with lavender and bee balm, I think. It still looks pretty raggedy; definitely not photo-worthy!

After I told a friend about all the straw we've collected lately, she asked, "What are you going to do with it?" Well, here's what I've done so far:

All the onions have been weeded and straw-mulched. What a huge job that was. I got the electric fence up around the vegetable garden Friday morning (and thinned the apples) and fenced the blackberries yesterday afternoon. Now I need to trim around them, add some cardboard and put down a thick layer of straw.

Then it's back to the big garden for more weeding/yoga (downward dog really is the best weeding pose) and, maybe, if the rains stay away, some major planting. In addition to the 48 Amish Paste plants I bought yesterday, I have some other tomato plants and a few peppers, along with cucumber, zucchini, edamame and Italian green been seeds. Oh, and this celery plant, which I hope will grow in the ground as well as it's grown in a dish on the kitchen counter. I'm always willing to try something new in the garden. I've planted celery before, but always new plants, never the root end of a bunch from the grocery.

We shall see … I think it's important to keep trying to grow my own celery, although I haven't had much luck so far. Celery is #2 in the dirty dozen, and Tiny Kroger rarely has organic celery in stock.

Time for breakfast, then time for work. And one last thank you before I go.

THANK YOU!

Dedicated to Anna and Mark

When I had the falling out with my face-to-face gardening mentors last year, I turned to Farmer Google for much of the food production knowledge I needed. Two of the best resources I found were Anna and Mark. Mark is actually the nephew of a good friend, so I knew about the blog long ago and occasionally looked at it. But within the last year I've begun reading it regularly and have learned so much from them.

They live even more in the middle of nowhere than I do, and have thus learned to be extremely resourceful. I thought of Mark yesterday when I was on the ground trying to fix my lawnmower. Because I don't have a workbench and am not much of a fixer, I had to scrounge around in every closet in the house before I found ONE wire coat hanger. Like duct tape, coat hangers (or any other kind of heavy-duty wire) are indispensable in the toolbox. I was able to elevate and tie up the rod which had come loose and finish mowing the front yard, making only left turns (the rod is bent and scrapes the right front tire if I turn right). The neighborhood lawnmower fixer will take a look at it – again – when he gets a chance, but for now I can at least cut the grass (and add the clippings to the compost pile).

The dill has self-seeded and is popping up everywhere. I sprinkled the center of the herb bed with saved seed, none of which germinated, but there are plenty of baby plants in two flower beds that I will be moving to the herb garden. This is something I think Anna would delight in as much as I do – free food! I planted dill from transplants two years ago, and it has been growing itself every since.

The onions are ready to walk. These Egyptian onion sets actually came from Anna and Mark's farm. I knew NOTHING about Egyptian onions when I planted them. Now that they're growing new sets on the upper leaves of the plants, I realize I probably should have been eating every other plant, rather than waiting to see what happens. But since they're maturing, I will wait until the sets are ready to share with other gardeners I know. There's something magical (to a gardener, anyway) about food that reproduces without human intervention. (See dill in the previous paragraph … heh.)

The big bonanza this weekend, and one I'm sure Anna, especially, will appreciate, was straw, the secret ingredient to a good garden. Straw enriches the soil, improves the tilth and cuts weeding chores to a bare minimum.

I bought 10 bales of straw from a local farmer last weekend, and he said I could rake up all the loose straw on the floor of the barn and bag it up – free – if I wanted it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I enlisted the help of the husband for this job. We spent a good two or three hours moving pallets and raking the perfectly good straw beneath them into THIRTY-ONE garbage bags. I'm guessing each bag holds about a bale and a quarter. All we had to provide was gas for the truck, the bags and our own labor for a yield of about 40 bales of straw (plus the 10 I'd already bought). 

I feel RICH.

Two and a half bags went on the asparagus bed, which got a good kill mulch two summers ago and is just now sprouting a few weeds. I'm tempted to only plant tomatoes in the big garden this year (I put a kill mulch on a third of the garden last fall, in preparation for the tomatoes) and use this straw to improve the remaining unplanted parts. Except I really, REALLY want fresh edamame. And squash. And maybe a few green beans. Heh.

At any rate, it's too wet (still) to do any planting today, so I have time to think about Garden Plan B. I'd hate for all this straw to rot in the bags. It would do so much more good if it rotted in the garden!

Anyway. Thank you, Anna and Mark, for mentoring this old lady farmer from your middle of nowhere to mine. I'm grateful beyond measure. And if you, too, want to be mentored, be sure to add their blog to your RSS feed and pre-order Anna's book, which will be shipping later this year. (And/or download – for a buck each – any of her monthly titles or other e-books.)