My Green Toe: Hoe down!

"I didn’t need the message hammered home so literally. The time was absolutely right for me personally to embark on this adventure in living green—other than having no electrical, plumbing, building, engine mechanical, horticultural, or animal husbandry skills at all, that is."~Doug Fine
Having recently completed reading Farewell, My Subaru by Gary Fine, has only made me desire to see my garden come to fruition more quickly. Upon declaring to my wife that I had finished the book, she asked me "well, what did you learn?" I explained to her that I can't really place into words what I learned (mostly because it makes me self-conscious), but that I came away with a deeper clarity concerning some previously acknowledged understandings about sustainable living of which I had been marginally unconvinced, especially regarding the specifics of "doing it yourself," something I have little practical experience in.

Change that "sticks," like a garden from which a harvest is reaped, takes time and patience, as well as some specific skills, a few of which I have been picking up here-and-there. It has been nearly four weeks since Anne and I planted our annual vegetable garden (see photo to the left from June 6), and amidst the Juliet, Brandywine, Cherokee, Fooled Yous and Spineless Beauty Zucchini (to name a few) quite a few weeds have begun to emerge. In truth, this is probably a good sign that things are beginning to "hum" in the garden bed.(as shown in the photo to the right, taken yesterday).

The small bed of tomatoes, peppers, squash and zucchini are gaining height and fruit, so an initial harvest should not be too far off. In the interest of water conservation,and with a little luck, the recent rain will move things along without the necessity of watering from the tap. The fact that growth is taking place is further illustrated by the hoeing that became necessary after a few days of "letting it go."

While my wife has generally enjoyed clearing the weeds from the garden, I took on this very simple task yesterday morning (the result, and our dog, are pictured below), to fairly good effect... though one "mystery squash" (a vegetable which ha sprouted from the remains of our composting pit that we had not intended to grow) was an unfortunate causality of my hoeing...

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!