Looking Back, Moving Forward

I pride myself on my solid memory. Most of my students would likely recall I would often tap my right temple with my index finger and say, "That's a steel trap right there. A steel trap." And for most things (except where I left my keys or whether I remembered to turn off the iron), it has been a safe deposit box for all kinds of information. But lately I've been noticing that things are slipping through the cracks.

We recently had a guest at our house. There's nothing remarkable in that fact. We live in Florida. We get lots of guests. Lots. But he had asked about my garden and wanted to know if I grew anything remarkable. My thoughts quickly turned to my pineapples. He asked a number of questions about how they grew, and to illustrate my explanation, I went to my office and pulled down the two photo books that I've made (using Shutterfly) to chronicle what has happened in the garden for the last two years. I knew I had photos of the entire pineapple growth process. So I showed them to him and explained, and when I collected the books to return them to the shelf, I saw a photo on the back of the 2013 journal. It was an early morning shot of the Secret Garden. "Oh," I said, rather surprised. The guest asked what was wrong, and I replied, "Well, I just don't remember it ever looking like this."

You see, a certain website had announced a garden contest last year, and I'm a sucker for contests. The announcement asked readers (I thought) to post photos of their garden spaces that fit into one of several categories. I decided the Secret Garden would work well in the "Garden Rooms" category, so early one morning, I dragged our massive ladder out to the yard and set it up outside the fence that forms the back wall of the garden. I figured an aerial shot would best capture the whole space.

So I entered the contest, and when the winners were revealed, I discovered that they must have really only wanted photos from landscape architects who had designed spaces that cost a minimum of $20,000. Obviously, I did not even place, but that fact did not diminish the high regard I had held for my garden.

And then I clearly forgot about that moment. I suddenly found the garden lacking. And over the winter, when most plants had retreated a bit, I thought it insufficient, which is when I started planning the redesign. I've been implementing that design in the last several weeks. And then I saw that photo of a magical garden that I could not recall. The steel trap had failed, hung open and slack like my mouth did upon realizing the garden was mine.

My garden last year

Listen, the new design will be equally beautiful. It is taking shape. Sometimes it's hard to remember that  something was beautiful and might be again. Sometimes a memory misleads us into thinking that change isn't required. I'm almost certain this change was necessary. I just wish I could have remembered the pride I felt in the garden, remembered that it's always been a pretty special place.

A peak at the garden now from a
different perspective

An old friend watches over the changes

Springing into a Fresh Start

This is my favorite time in the Florida seasonal calendar. It's that brief but magical moment when we can keep the windows and doors open, when the humidity is reasonably low, and everything in the garden is emerging from its short winter nap. This is the moment of unfurling. It reminds me a bit of putting the clothes for a particular season away, leaving them in the attic for months, and then opening the box again, only to reveal a wonderful world of clothes that I've always loved and forgotten for a moment that I even owned them. Everything has a newness about it.

The Tibouchina in bloom again

The best part of this season is the fact that I begin my gardening with a clean slate. It's a curious truth about gardening that is, unfortunately, not often replicated in human relationships. No matter what I've done wrong in the past, no matter how horrific the outcome has been, there's always hope--perhaps even faith--that things will turn out differently, that I will enjoy a rich and satisfying harvest. This is yet another lesson I wish I could somehow translate into other areas of life.

The seeds I sowed indoors are now sturdy seedlings that I am hardening off outside, and they're nearly ready to join the plants already producing in the vegetable garden. And despite my difficulties with getting reasonable yields from my vegetables since we moved here, despite what seems to be far too many suggestions that gardening here is exceedingly difficult, I still have some inexplicable belief that this season will be different. Hope, indeed, springs eternal when it comes to gardening. 

The secret garden is coming along. I completed one planter. I don't know how I feel about it, so I've decided to take a few weeks to get a clear idea before I move forward. I carefully pondered whether I should get a tattoo nearly 20 years ago, and the delay served me well, so I give the same consideration to many other decisions. But I'm happy to hear what the rest of you think of it.

I have a few reservations…and the upper
plants have not fully grown in.

I gave the Wolfie statue a new coat of paint after I cleaned off the rust. I think the new color is more in keeping with my sweet boy's coat.

Wolfie is waiting for new friends to
be planted

So it's a moment of joyful anticipation that we're experiencing here. Let's hope we learn a little from our mistakes, find pleasure in the smallest of victories, and always keep faith that things will get progressively better.

Experimentation

Gardening offers so many metaphors for life. For one thing, a garden is always in process. Even if you sat down and carefully drew out a detailed garden plan and followed it exactly, you would find upon completion that you wanted to make edits. That's just the nature of things. You learn as you go along. You see what works and what doesn't. You make edits, improvements. This isn't terribly different from life, I hope.

Gardening demands experimentation, as well. In Michigan, my Cherokee Purple tomatoes were magnificent. In Florida, they were something like a disaster. And so I had to look for tomato varieties that might work better for me here. Enter Gardener's Delight, Brown Berry Cherry, Black Plum, Brandywine, Black Krim, and my favorite--in terms of names--Beam's yellow pear. Some have done better than others. Some I'm just now growing seedlings for their trial in the garden. At the end of each season, I take careful notes on each variety so that as time goes on, I can make better choices.

Sometimes the experiments are with plants I've never heard of. Someone on Twitter suggested that I try growing Rat Tail radishes. I thought, why not? They sounded interesting enough, if only because they don't really produce root vegetables but rather seed pods that you pick much like beans. I also liked the the suggestion that I could pickle them. The experiment seemed to going rather badly, though, until last week. All I was getting was tons of leaf growth on plants over five feet tall. Then, suddenly, they started to flower profusely. And now I have the most curious and tasty snack I've ever grown.

The pretty flowers of Rat Tail radish

The spicy little seed pods of Rat Tail

I've also been experimenting with different varieties of sugar snap and snow peas. I've grown accustomed to the beautiful magenta and pink flowers of the Dwarf Grey sugar snaps, but they never produced peas for me. This season, I tried Oregon Sugar Pod II snow pea. Appropriately, they are producing white flowers and a continuous supply of peas. 

Fresh peas are just behind those flowers

I've finally had the courage to pop a nasturtium flower in my mouth, which then led me to put them in all of my salads and even eat the leaves. 

This nasturtium is getting a little
friendly with my ant statue.

Finally, the greatest experiment, the biggest leap of faith I've taken in the garden continues to yield results. As I was trimming back the tomato plants today, encouraging them to focus all of their energy on ripening the fruits they have on before I pull them up and replace them with the spring season plants, I noticed something in two of my pineapple plants. 

A fruit is on the move

We'll be eating pineapples again this summer. These will be particularly special because they are fruiting from the crowns that I cut off of my first homegrown pineapples we ate last February.

I agree with Ulysses, who says, "How dull it is to pause, to make an end," in life and in the garden. As long as I continue to experiment, I may find my fair share of failures, but I'll also find that the garden is forever "a bringer of new things."

Estimation

I used to work with someone who estimated any activity would take 20 minutes. We would invite her over, and she would say, "Okay. I'm leaving home now, and I'll be there in 20 minutes." Her house was near the university where I was working on my Master's degree. On a good day, it would take me 40 minutes to get home from there, but her estimate was half that. If I was trying to compile a report that  required her input, she would say that I would have it in 20 minutes. I would simply smile. I liked her positive thinking, but I think she's the reason I really learned how to think exponentially.

Three weeks ago, I announced my plan to redesign the Secret Garden. I mentioned that I thought it would take me four weeks to complete. I'm now thinking I should revisit exponents. The plan may well have taken only four weeks had I just gone out and bought everything already built, plants already grown to full size. As is all too often the case with me, though, I couldn't stomach the thought of paying more than $30 for a planter. I couldn't imagine paying $8 (after coupon) for a grapevine ball. I wanted plants that are almost impossible to find and have to be grown from seed. So let's just say that I won't be revealing a completely redesigned Secret Garden next week. I have quite a bit more work to do.

Here's what I've done so far. I have made progress with the path. I've been slowed a bit by the discovery that the 12" pavers I purchased three years ago are no longer to be found in stores. I'm still pondering how to deal with this, but it may come down to me pouring pavers of my own. The upside to this is that it will be considerably cheaper, and by now, you all know that this pleases me.

75% complete

I've dug up and relocated quite a few plants, which means that part of the planting plan is coming together. I've also placed one of the planters.

One planter has found its new home

I had to do a little triage with my trellises. They've always been a bit wonky, so I decided that I would attach them to one another to ensure that they would remain even. When I pulled the first one out of the ground, I discovered that it had left one of its legs behind. The rest of the trellis was showing signs of cracking, so I stained it and its twin to match the arbors and give them a longer life. I'm pretty pleased with the transformation because it creates symmetry with the blue arbors at either end of the garden and the blue wall of the house opposite the trellises.

Before

After

Finally, I'm conducting a bit of an experiment. I want to use Germander as a low, clipped hedge. Most people I've spoken to haven't heard of Germander. It's part of the mint family. Since it's so obscure, I had to order seeds. Again, the upside to this is that I paid only $4.50 for them and could ultimately grow hundreds of plants. The downside is that they've taken 14 days to germinate, which means that they're just wee little fellas right now and are likely to remain so for a while.

Let me introduce you to Germander

So that's where I stand at this point. With each successive post to this blog, I am noticing the compounding of a theme, not of my creation, that resounds week after week. It makes me think of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," with one minor revision:

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of [patience] in.

And so, here continues the lesson. I estimate it may take considerable time to reach that goal. The garden will likely be finished much sooner.

DIY Garden Projects

I been working diligently on the Secret Garden overhaul this past week. I keep trying to remind myself that it always looks much worse before it looks better. Most of my time was taken up with construction and garden craft projects, which I'll get to in a moment.

I was also able to convert all of the garden's sprinkler heads to drip irrigation. The drip lines running all over the place don't look gorgeous right now, but they will certainly help make the garden look lovely. They'll also make things a little easier for me, as I'll no longer have to worry about the pop up heads beating the living daylights out of some plants while completely missing others. Better yet, I was able to run micro drippers straight up the fence and into my elevated planters. Everyone will think that I run out every day to water them. It will be our little secret. The cost to convert was free, thanks to the folks at DIG Corporation and their contest I won last year. I couldn't get these in until I cleared the garden.

The conversion head with the lines snaking around the garden

At this point, you all know that I like power tools and must find building projects to keep me occupied. The new garden design involves planters, so I've built the first of four. I'm not pleased that it cost $27 to build, but I have plans for bringing down the cost of the others.

No idea why the top looks warped...anxiously
awaiting the return of my DSLR from the Nikon hospital

If you ever read a blog post in which someone explains how to do a project and claims that it's easy, even though it looks somewhat complicated, I suggest that you just consider it really complicated. I've taken a risk on something that I really hope pays off because making this succulent sphere was tons of work, and I have yet another one to make. Cost? $35 each. Big risk.

Here's hoping the succulent sphere fills in

Finally, I have spent three years trying to find the right lighting solution for the garden, but have always come up short. I'm feeling pretty good about what I'm working on now, though. I bought a grapevine wreath from Michael's for $6 (thanks to a 40% off coupon), and after soaking it in the bathtub for a day to make it pliable, I've made 4 grapevine balls that form the structure of my lights. That's all the more information I'm going to give right now.

How is that a light?

So, I've really not shown you much this week, just hints of what you'll hopefully see when the garden is complete. It's all pretty unnerving at this point. After all, it could go so spectacularly wrong. But it's fun to try something and see how it works out.

Planning a Facelift

I could say that I'm growing rather tired of all the lessons I get about the value of patience. They seem to come pretty frequently. I could say that, but it would be a bit untruthful. The lessons are by no means annoying. In fact, I think I find them comforting. Perhaps they suggest that I could eventually learn to be patient. Perhaps.

I've learned another one of these lessons recently. You see, had I been more patient in the early months of owning this house, the Secret Garden probably would not have been in a persistent state of being "not quite right." It has always seemed cluttered, maybe even that it's lacking a specific identity. That's been bothering me quite a bit for the last few months.

Bit of a messy corner

And another messy corner

A generally unsuccessful corner

You get the point...

Many of the gardening books I've read have cautioned would-be gardeners who have moved to a new home to wait a while, get a sense of the place, let ideas percolate, and then begin the creation of a garden. Some have even suggested that one wait a year or two. Every time I read something like that, I thought the author was very right and wise, and then I walked straight into my garden and did the exact opposite. The results have been pretty disappointing. The upside is that I've been letting things percolate at the same time, and now, a little over 3 years of being in this house, a real Secret Garden plan is falling into place.

That plan begins with destruction. We've been clearing things out. Some plants have been ruthlessly cut down and pulled out, and others have been relocated to new areas of the yard.

A small portion of what has been removed so far

A relatively cleaner slate

Over the years, I've noticed that visitors to the garden walk rather awkwardly down the paver path. I think the limited number of pavers have made them feel like getting to the swing involves a game of hopscotch. So we're doubling down on the pavers. But that's just one of many changes to take place in the garden in the coming weeks.

An easier path to follow

In such a confined space, the garden needs a lot of structure, I think, so that's what I'm going for in the designs. I haven't finished drawing them up, but here's where I am so far.

Entrance gate to the right. I'm rather short on plants
in the plan at present.

I hope to finish the reconstruction of the garden in about a month. As ever, I'm very cost-conscious, so as I give you updates on what I've accomplished from week to week, I'll also give an accounting of my various projects.

I hope you'll find the renovation process satisfying to watch. And, please, I beg you, be patient with me as I create the new space. I hear patience is one of the best things to cultivate.

The Great Garden Cover Up

I've been keeping a secret. It's not a secret that could make any real impact on the world, really. Some of my family and friends already have some inkling of what's been going on around here. The honest truth is that I've been growing things...edible things.

I've taken photos with every intention of writing blog posts and telling you all about what's been going on in the garden, but to be completely honest, I have felt guilty. My mom's shower froze in Ohio last week, for goodness sake. My sister-in-law has been enduring shocking below-freezing temperatures, too. My former exchange student, who spent the Christmas and New Year holidays with us, visited friends in Michigan, and let's just say that had I been the one going through what she experienced, I'd be a little cranky right now. When she wasn't enduring canceled trains and flights, she was coping with significantly delayed trains and flights. I covered my plants for two nights. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't covering kale or leeks, which are known for their ability to endure the cold. I was covering tomatoes and pineapples.

In short, I've felt a bit like a phony.

Preparing for the cold

There are a lot of people who like to flaunt the mild Florida temperatures to others who are suffering in colder climes. In my mind, they're a bit like people who talk smack about their football teams. It's a language I've never understood. Recently, I mistakenly replied to a message to all family members, in which I merely cheered for my home state's football team. I received the most incredibly rude response from one person, which has led me to decide that I simply won't communicate my desire to see a particular football team win anymore. I see no cause to beat someone's hope or joy into submission, but it seems I may be in the minority. Though I'm fluent in German, "Schadenfreude" has no meaning to me. And so I've remained silent about what's been happening in my garden.

But then it occurred to me today that summer in Florida is very much like winter nearly everywhere else (and vice versa). In summer, I can't grow anything but jalapeños, if I'm lucky. Yet I derive the greatest pleasure in seeing the ebullient posts from others who are celebrating their first tomatoes of the season in July when I fear I may wither from the heat. The fact that any of us can drop something akin to a speck of dirt into the soil and ultimately find sustenance from it is nothing short of a miracle to me, and it's something to be celebrated, no matter the time of year. I wish that every one of us could, regardless of space, attempt to grow a little something that we could harvest and share with family or friends and experience the great pride and deep honor that comes with knowing that we've been part of a miracle. Perhaps it's a good New Year's resolution to try. So now I'm ready to confess.

I had a delicious salad that came solely from my garden the other day.

A bowl full of everything from my garden!

I made preserves of salsa and tomato chutney. I had a delicious lunch of my tomatoes and thyme in a cream sauce, served with buckwheat crepes. I ate a stir-fry that was mostly comprised of my snow peas.

Snow pea stir-fry

I've been eating miracles.

I'm preserving the fruits of my labor this winter, preparing for the harsh Florida summer ahead. I hope it gives all of you in colder areas something to look forward to, a beacon of hope for delicious things to come.