August Update

Well, it's the beginning of August and I am....at home.

Let me explain: usually, every year from August 2/3 - 15th, I am more or less out of commission - Dawn and I load up approximately half of our worldly possessions, hop in the car, drive 2 1/2 days out to northern Michigan, camp in the woods with a bunch of dear friends (and about 1,500 other like-minded ladies), get sweaty and dirty, then drive back home again.   By then, half the month has passed. Dawn usually has to go right back to work, and even if I have been off of work it still takes me a couple of days to get back into the groove of home, life and summer.  (i.e., I want to sleep for approximately 27 hours).   I get some food preservation done, but in a week or two, it's time to start getting ready for work/school in September.

This year, we skipped the trip.   I missed the feeling of being rejuvenated and sparkly about the whole world, but I finally realized why my late-summer/early fall garden usually goes straight to hell: August. Usually when we come home, the tomatoes are a mess, the squash has died, the weeds are rampant, the carrots are bitter and I have no more energy to deal with any of it.

This year in late July, instead of packing and shopping and cleaning for our trip, we bought string and 8 ft. poles and strung up our tomato wildness.  Dawn pruned the raspberry canes.   I harvested onions and garlic, pulled up our (meager) carrots, fed the plants, made compost tea, weeded and laid down straw on our paths, sifted compost and have actually started fall plantings!    (usually I try to do this, but don't get around to it until early September, and thus everything is only barely getting started by the time frost comes around).

What am I planting for the fall?   A second try at carrots, a second round of beans, some radishes, and today (this very day) I am going outside to plant lettuce and arugula for the fall right on the new moon!  (It is said among gardeners that planting on the new moon harnesses lunar energy to help plants sprout and grow faster - one is also supposed to harvest on the full moon!).

So, I missed a week of blessed-out connection to the land.   But I also got to not feel frazzled and crazed around the edges of the trip.   I saw family and friends.   I am slowly preparing for the fall.  I celebrated Lammas, a holiday on the pagan calendar, for the first time, with some local lady friends.  I never really appreciated Lammas before - it represents the midway point between the solstice and the equinox, so it doesn't have the energy of shifting daylight that the quarter-year festivals have, but garden-wise, its an important transition time nonetheless, and one that I usually miss.  (I think) it represents the first harvest of wheat - so it is the time to harvest things that you started sewing months ago, back when it first got warm (remember that)?    I was just finishing teaching a class that I started in early May, so it seemed extra appropriate - I could see how much my students' writing had changed over that time, which is a cool thing to "harvest".   It's also a nice reminder that it does take months to harvest things - the things we "plant" now (exercise, self-care, planning for the fall, meditation, stories I start writing) may not have immediate payoffs.   Sometimes by the time we get a payoff, we almost can't remember who we were when we started.   hmmm.

Last, I think for this important date, early August, it's a time when we can turn all the way around.   The stuff that we planted in the spring is now harvested and eaten or mature and ready to use.   Now it's time to start a new planting and look forward for the fall.

Garden-wise, August is also the time when everything is wet, damp and sweaty.   In this time, inevitably, the tomatoes have some kind of disease, the squash has some kind of mildew, and the grasshoppers are happily bouncing off of every surface, chewing through our leaves.   A period of intense rain in late July brought on the mold and mildew (and blossom-end rot on some fruits), but with sunny days things are evening out.   Also, although there are grasshoppers, there are also bees and dragonflies, ladybugs and tiny parasitic wasps whipping through my garden.   I let some of my herbs and even weeds  flower to provide food for these little helpers, and they pay me back by keeping  my plants well enough to grow.   My compost is fine and dirt-like, thanks to the little red compost worms who happily chomp through almost anything we put in there.    We are also at a period where I've harvested enough veggies that I'm starting to make entire meals (almost) just from the garden.   That is always the coolest to me.

Dried:
garlic & some onions

From the garden:
eggplants (A whole bunch of little ones!)
tomatoes (cherry, roma and regular)
beans (only some!  next year, the bean teepee returns so I can make dilly beans!)
kale (so much kale, mountains of kale)
beets
cucumbers (also few, we planted late)
basil (pesto city!)
hot peppers
squash (only one so far).
(one last) Napa cabbage.
(one last regular) cabbage (in the fridge).