Memoirous

I’m not sure how I thought I could do this in one day. The weather has gradually gotten better and not so cold in the a.m. I did a bit on Friday and a bit on Saturday with momentum building to finishing up today. Almost. I got the raised beds seeded and a few tomato seedlings transplanted. But there are NUMEROUS pots I use for what doesn’t fit in the raised beds. At one point I used my bike + trailer to go get more garden soil—not knowing the bags were 50 pounds each—and brought home two. The pots just kept coming. At a certain point, I told myself the rectangular ones would wait till tomorrow. 2 kinds of cucumbers 2 kinds of kale 2 kinds of chard Sweetie, Big Daddy, and another kind of tomato Pole beans Dill Thyme Summer savory Peppers Still to go—carrots, radishes, and basil Sooooo tired from the sun and exertion.

In five years I’ve gone from never having a garden—in fact, saying I’m NOT a gardener—to having a garden several years in a row. It all began out in Oregon with my millennial roommate who, using his Amazon account, ordered in a bunch of stuff for making a garden. He knew nothing. I sort of felt sorry for how naïve he was. I kept thinking: This isn’t going to be easy. You’ll be disappointed. It’s going to fail. Well, it didn’t. I thought, How can someone grow anything when they’ve never done it before? That’s when I became a believer. My first year in Michigan at the townhouse, I did veggies in pots—first in the back yard and then moving them to the front where there was more direct sunlight. My first two years at the Tiny House my garden did so-so. Come to find out all the trees in Michigan can put a damper on the garden. This year I planned even better and built raised beds along a section behind the shed and the neighbor’s fence, where there is no tree obstruction. Wow! Wow...

My orchid recently blossomed. This is a rare occurrence (perhaps because there is little direct light since my window ledge faces the inside of a U-shaped courtyard. At 12 noon is the best chance for sunlight. When that’s available. The month of March was dreary, being mostly cloudy. James Schuyler and I have that in common. We both live in small rooms in former hotels in a big city. So, yeah, a bloomin’ orchid is reason to celebrate. This is my #2 installment in a flash series about the memoirs James Schuyler listed in his Diary (edited by Nathan Kernan). In July of 2017 I was on Great Spruce Head Island reading Diary entries from Schuyler—written on GSHI. On August 4, 1969 he was deep in the potting soil reading various gardening memoirs. Letters from an American Farmer , J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, a collection of essays describing rural life in America, first published in London 1782. Alpine Flower Garde n, Wm. Robinson. Poet and Landscape , Andrew Young, ...