Here is my latest "Rockin' a Hard Place" blogtalk that I performed last weekend at the Postcards from Whidbey Island show in Coupeville, USA. Enjoy!
Greetings, mystery lovers! Have you enjoyed this wonderful show? All of this murder and mayhem and dark
secrets, and all those other good things we love? Me too!
So . . . what am I doing here,
dressed like this, in a show about such mysterious things? Well, I’m here to talk about the
biggest mystery of all, the one most of us try to solve every day. I speak, of course, about how we manage to get
anything to grow in our gardens on this Rock.
How many of you have been outside in
the last few weeks, putting your hands in the dirt? Go ahead, admit it. Confession is good for the soul. I thought so!
We all claim to be gardeners here on the Rock. A lot of us moved here just to fulfill the
fantasy of growing our own fruits and vegetables . . . and roses and azaleas .
. . and every other flowering or edible plant.
All those years of reading Sunset magazine created this fantasy. And, by God, we’re going to make it a reality
here on Whidbey or die trying, aren’t we?
This is the time of year we get out
there, rain or shine. Re-arranging our
rocks and hard-pan clay. Putting in our seeds
and starts. And praying, “Lord, please
make this the year our garden looks like one of those Miracle Gro commercials.” Trouble is, the Lord takes Her own sweet time
in responding to most of those prayers.
You see, nature played a dirty trick
on us here on the Rock. About ten
thousand years ago, give or take a few thousand, the last of the Ice Age
glaciers decided to pick up stakes and move to Alaska.
But, like a bunch of thoughtless
overnight campers at Fort Ebey State Park, they didn’t haul out what they
hauled in. They left a lot of garbage
behind. Mostly rocks. Buried in clay. And, today, that’s what we spend all that money
at Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ace Hardware and Bayview Nursery trying to correct.
Mulch.
Compost. Potting soil. Sand for drainage. Fertilizer.
Diatomaceous earth. . . whatever that is. And need I mention all the trowels, forks,
shovels, tillers, cultivators, gloves, knee pads, sunbonnets . . . and blister
remedies?
This is the time of year on the Rock
when we try to fool Mother Nature. We pretend
that plants we admire can actually thrive here.
But, truth be told, those that seem to do best are thistles, nettles, dandelions
and black caps, to name a few. Not to
mention the several million firs, hemlocks, alders and sea willows with which
we share this space.
Nonetheless, we soldier on. Believing that we have tamed the soil here on
the Rock. We continue planting when we
ought to know it’s too wet or too cold or too shady. And kidding ourselves that we might finally
have a nice warm summer.
And, talking about kidding ourselves,
can we talk about tomatoes? The most
common question I hear among gardeners on the Rock is simply this: “Have you had any luck with tomatoes?” Well, after all, are there any greater
bragging rights for a home gardener than to show off some big, beautiful
tomatoes on their very own vines? You
know. The kind that actually have some flavor
. . . instead of the cardboard type we buy at the market? Of course not!
The reason most of us keeping asking
if anybody’s had any luck with tomatoes is because most of us have not. Sorry to be the bearer of that sad truth, but
there it is. Tomatoes like warm soil and
sun all day . . . places like California and Mexico. On our Rock, about the only places that qualify
are inside a greenhouse with a sun lamp or indoors on a windowsill with a
southern exposure.
There are those, of course, who do
have luck with tomatoes . . . and my hat’s definitely off to them. I am not one of them. I planted some cherry tomatoes last summer. I harvested a total of five. I figure they cost me about ten bucks each. Then there were those two surviving pumpkins
that cost about twenty bucks apiece. The
baby artichokes probably cost six or seven bucks each. And, oh yes, the scrawny corn was about two
bucks an ear.
I will not talk about my
eggplants and radishes, which were noble failures. I will try again, however. I will not let the rocks and the slugs
and the bugs defeat me!
However, I am proud to say that
my squash and potatoes and onions did very well. Why it took me three years to figure that out
remains a mystery! Squash and root
vegetables have always done well in our rocky soil and cool climate. A lot of farmers on the island used to make a
good living growing squash until recent years.
That’s when the fast pace of our modern life made it too much trouble to
chop up a big Hubbard squash and wait for it to bake.
A couple months ago, I wrote in the Whidbey
Examiner about Dale and Liz Sherman. They’re
long-time squash growers on Ebey’s Prairie who are bringing back the big,
homely Hubbard by cutting it up into small cubes we can nuke in the microwave
and selling them in little plastic containers.
You go, Dale and Liz! Making squash
from the Rock relevant to the microwave generation!
Here’s my proudest gardening
achievement last year. I harvested
almost fifty pounds of potatoes from my little patch of the Rock. There was something very soul-satisfying when
I put my hands into the potato mounds and pulled out dozens of Yukon Golds and
California Whites. The potato vines had
actually thrived in my lousy soil! They
didn’t die! They were beautiful when
they were flowering! And my harvest was
so bountiful that we ate potatoes all winter without buying any at the
market! Yippee! I did it!
The other night we enjoyed the last of
those potatoes . . . baked in their jackets and served with a little butter,
sour cream, salt and pepper. Delicious! They may just have been the best-tasting
potatoes I have ever eaten. No kidding! I think.
Oh, I could on for an hour. We gardeners do like to ramble on about our gardens.
But I know all of you have some planting
to do, and so do I. I’m going to try beets
and Brussels sprouts this year. Anybody
had any luck with them?
Any way. Pray for sun.
See ya!
