winter garden

I wrote this early yesterday evening. This morning, I saw that today is Blog Action Day 2011 and the topic this year is food.

I'm sitting outside.  There's a nice breeze and I'm in the shade of the pecan trees with the sun going down behind me.  The temperature is perfect whatever it is.  

I'm killing time actually, waiting til it is time to leave to meet my sister at the local theater.  It used to be a movie theater but obviously failed at some point.  Now it's being used as the local community theater.  I've been wanting to go to one of their productions and so my sister and I made plans.

Sitting in the yard, I'm sort of facing the garden.  Emma the cat is sleeping under the pepper plants.  She likes to lay in the garden.  Earlier she was laying in the space between the okra and the peas that Marc just planted, right on top of the spot where we are going to put carrots tomorrow.

Frank's garden

It's winter garden time, time to get things in before it's too late.  Our garden is small since we are still learning about growing food.  It's very haphazard compared to our neighbor Frank's garden.  Frank's garden is easily three times larger than ours, neat, all rectangled up, trenched around the edges to keep the grass out, row after row planted.

our garden

Our garden, a narrow strip on the other side of the yard, has no rows, no organization to it at all.  There are four tomato plants together at one end and one at the other.  We also have, still, the four okra from the spring garden as well as the two bell pepper and two jalapeño pepper and one banana pepper, also from the spring garden.  New and interspersed among them are three cauliflower and two broccoli, one swiss chard and two horseradish that got stuck in there sometime this summer.  Also peas that Marc put in today, wrapping the wire fence around the okra.

I have no idea what we are going to do with the horseradish besides just let it grow.

little garden

I've planted beans and spinach in the strawberry bed which I refer to now as the 'small garden'.  It's at the back of the property.  I put in some carrot and lettuce seeds today to fill in where the spinach didn't come up.  And I planted some zucchini in a big pot out there in an attempt to fool the squash vine borer worms which get my squash every year.

We don't grow enough to entirely feed ourselves but we do grow enough to contribute to lots of meals.  Frank, on the other hand feeds himself and his kids families and still brings stuff over to us sometimes.

We aspire to growing most of our food and not just because its fresher, tastes better, and is more nutritious but because it just seems right and it's certainly more satisfying than going to the grocery store.  It's not just the eating of the food that nourishes us but the energy, love, and effort that we put into it.  We nourish the earth and it gives back to us.

Frank's pear tree seems a little confused about what season it is.

And besides, unless the economy improves, it's that or, as Marc like to say, Chinese cat food.