Staking Claims

Ever noticed how permanent a garden feels?  There's some promises made to yourself and to the dirt and to the little seeds or sproutlings that you're tending.  You'll keep coming back to this spot and add water and pick away the weeds.  You'll do that over and over again until something edible grows in the place where you stuck a seed down in the dirt with your finger or where you stuck a root ball down in the ground.  Either way, gardening feels territorial.  This is your dirt and your spot.

To say that I garden or categorize myself as a gardener is an exaggeration.  I don't do much beyond the general digging and planting.  Remembering to water on a regular basis is a real breakthrough, when I manage it, and weed pulling?  I do that in earnest for approximately one week after everything is planted.  Once the weeds start to flourish, one of two things happen.  I either water less to stop the weeds or stop pulling the weeds and let Darwinism take over.  The plants and the weeds have to battle it out.  May the best man win.

Although my gardens are never beautiful and rarely bountiful, I plant them in a manner similar to dogs peeing on stuff.  For me, gardening is mostly about staking a claim with the benefit of some produce (only if it rains).  That little spot of dirt there?  Mine.

So it's a real statement to say that I have managed to water and fertilize the herb and veggie garden along with the newly acquired fruit trees.  This time, it seems, I'm serious.  It's more about production than territory, and I'm anxious to see if this level of care will yield some real results.  Saturday we're mulching the garden with hay from the goat pen which means I've demonstrated forethought and consideration where the garden is concerned.  This is the real deal, folks.

What's changed this time, aside from the view?  There's a special satisfaction in staking a claim in the precise spot you imagined breaking ground for three years.  And the glass of wine that accompanies me into the garden at dusk helps, too.