Garden Diary - frustration, salad days

Well, here it is June, for real now. Finally hot - classic New England non-spring: straight rainy cold into boiling heat.   So, conditions not so perfect.   But as David Mas Masumoto writes in his farming memoir "Epitaph for a Peach"  - we can't control the weather.   And we can't control the garden.   In fact, organic gardening, and growing food in general, is in a big way about letting go of control.   Of course, its way different to grow food for the table than for income - I don't have a season's worth of work on the line.   But still, after putting in work into a home garden, I wish I could guarantee that everything turns out perfect.

The good: despite the weather we have big, beautiful heads of lettuce that taste delicious with a little homemade vinaigrette - if we can eat them before they bolt.   There are herbs and green onions to sprinkle on food.

And the peas out front are finally flowering, but no pods yet.   Spinach, kale and bok choi still growing, but small.  carrots tiny.   Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes and beans all growing, but none even close to producing fruit or roots: the bigger ones are just starting to flower.

Even more frustrating, the backyard peas are small and will probably need to get pulled to make room for the cucumbers.   Only a few radishes balled up, and the beets are still teensy.   (Also, Trouble dug half of them up.  Sometimes she thinks the garden is her litter box, little jerk).  The carrots are patchy and it will take at least another month to see how they do.   Caterpillars are chowing down on the cabbages, and barely any of my beneficial-insect plants have flowered yet. Nothing in the broccoli department, and each green onion means one less big, full season onion.

Strawberries have come ripe almost all at once - delicious, but a time-limited proposition - we have to eat them before they go squishy.

In other words, despite lots of hard work, the garden produces some frustration along with produce.   But I've been thinking about this - about how working on this garden project is a lesson in humility.  A certain kind of manic energy, of perfectionism, will always be thwarted in a living project like this one.  And I have those qualities in spades, always rushing around, trying to plant something and fill in blank spaces where something failed, trying to cram another plant in, trying to prevent any kind of failure.  But another way of thinking might help us prepare better for reality - prepare for imperfection.  Yes, squash vine borers will inevitably seek a home in our zukes - yes, some tomatoes will rot on the vine because I run out of time or energy to preserve them.  Yes, some things will not grow or grow poorly, weeds will come up, and sometimes I'll forget or won't have time to weed, prune, water or feed.   These things could (and do) cause a little anxiety in a home gardener, especially for me, this season when I'm feeling so on top of my game and have put some much time into making things healthy and productive.   But a garden is good for teaching me a lesson about control - that we are not, in fact, in control.  There is the weather, there are insects, there are the plants themselves, and there is life, which sometimes switches up our priorities without warning.   We do our best, and then all we can do is wait and hope and appreciate what comes - and forgive ourselves if it doesn't.

Right now, I'm trying to exist in the here and now, in the salad days.  I could stress about how the beets aren't doing that well, or how maybe my decision to plant carrots between the spinach will make it hard for me to plant fall crops in that section.   Or I could eat lettuce.  Lots and lots of lettuce.  Truth be told, with a chopped green onion, a tiny radish, Boston Organic carrots, a head of our lettuce and bbq'd chicken on top, its something I made almost from start to finish.   And its lunch.  And just about the best damn salad I think I've ever eaten.

Recipe for vinaigrette, courtesy of Alice Water's Simple Foods:

Mix together 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar,
pepper and salt
to taste.

Whisk in 3-4 Tablespoons olive oil.

pour over your salad and eat it.