It's enough. Tonight I'm preparing vegan chile rellenos with a recipe I'd clipped from Organic Gardening awhile back. Mint iced tea. I might even bake the spaghetti squash & serve that on the side. Potentially incongruous, but if it's from the same garden, also potentially compatible.
I feel a part of a surge of growth. The garden is abundant. I feel my own creative energy stirring in a way it hasn't for some time. My body feels pliant when I lengthen into yoga asana, my mind nimble & ready to generate ideas, the soil dark & rich.
At Goddard I had a conversation with some awesome farmer-scholars (I love them). A New Hampshire farmer joked that he was growing rocks & grey hairs. Kevin suggested he pull out the rocks by the taproot next time so they stop regrowing so quickly. We started talking about our collective love for soil, which is so diverse given our various homes. I remember my grandfather taking me for a walk in his Atlanta neighborhood. He had a HUGE (at least an acre) backyard garden in Atlanta. He & my grandmother canned & stored tons of food.
We walked down a hill & he began describing rich, red Georgia clay. He told me about what it grows well: peanuts, string beans, green tomatoes (that my grandmother fried), peach trees, and so much more. He stooped down & collected a handful of the clay; putting it in a jar for me. That jar stayed by my bed for at least a year. Each night I watched it; it's ruddy color, the obvious life to it as it shifted, settled, dried. I thought of it's potential, it's journey to mud and dust.
Our South Jersey soil is sandy and loose. We put blueberry bushes directly in the ground but most of the rest of our plants are in raised beds of composted soil. We're still learning how best to respect what it has to offer and grow that. We'd love to support & buy from other area farms what we grow less successfully here.
Hands in dirt. Rich, heathen scent. Fed & full.
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