Planting Seeds

Planting Seeds

Posted by Heather Harris

* WARNING: This post contains profanity. (Or does it?)


The other day I was teaching my after school group of fourth graders, and said, "Okay everybody, type MobyMax into your search bar to find the math program we will be using today." Typing began, and slowly a head rolled up from the hunched body slumped nearest to me ( a seating placement that was no accident). Two shifty eyes peaked out from the side of his head, and he said, just loudly enough for his classmates to hear, and just quietly enough to feign genuine concern, "Why does my tablet say Moby...dick?" And then just a glimmer of a well-practiced smirk flashed across his face. He looked up at me oh-so-innocently while nine other students jerked their heads up anticipating what could only be a great show.

What they didn't know was that I'm a hardened veteran. " Oh, Moby DICK!" I exclaimed, loudly enough for the class next door to hear, "Moby DICK is a very famous book! You might get to read Moby DICK when you get to high school!" Eyes grew three times their normal size and then quickly dove back down to the tablets. Silent, on-task work prevailed for the rest of class because the last thing any of them wanted to hear was their teacher shouting that word again. Victory!

And here's where I get to planting seeds. What may not seem evident at first, is that while I was masterfully executing classroom management, I was also planting a seed. This disengaged pupil of mine may  now have just a glimmer of  hope that somewhere in his future, in the mystical land known as High School, he might get to read a whole book about dick, and not just any dick, but a Moby dick. And that my friends, might just get him to pay a little more attention in reading class tomorrow. Ahh...planting seeds.

Of course I don't just plant metaphorical seeds. I plant real ones too. What I love about seeds is that they are the cheapest and laziest way to get something to grow in your garden. I've tried starting seeds indoors so that I could put strong seedlings out in spring, but they always ended up meeting a cruel fate. They'd mold, they'd get straggly, or they'd get knocked over by curious children or an idiotic dog. So I've given up on that for now. I am now becoming an expert on seeds that can just be plunked directly into the dirt and left to do their thing.

To select seed, I find anything that was either developed at Oregon State to meet the fickle demands of an Oregon growing season, or an heirloom that was brought over from Russia, preferably Siberia. This is the same strategy I use for selecting tomato plants. If some babushka got a tomato to ripen in Siberia, and it was good enough for her to save the seed and try again, then it's good enough for me.

I buy my seeds from a seed catalog, which is to say that I go a little overboard. In a store, you see how many packets of seeds you have loaded up in your cart, and the reasonable part of your brain kicks in and tells you, "That's probably enough." You throw in three more packs and then you're done. With a seed catalog, there is no visual clue that you have outdone yourself, yet again. You start with an organized list of the things you need, then you get blissfully distracted by all of the amazing plants you never noticed before, and before you know it you have enough seed on your order form to supply a forty acre farm. Yet somehow it always comes to $50.00. See what I mean about cheap!

And every year there is always the darling, new plant that I can't live without, even though it probably does not pass the "plunk-it and forget-it" test, it's never even heard of Siberia and was most likely taken directly from somewhere on the Equator and placed in a seed packet for my torment. This year it's the cucamelon. I ordered it in December because I was afraid they would sell out. It is an absolutely adorable cucumber that looks exactly like a miniature watermelon. It is supposed to be intensely crunchy, with just a hint of lime. I'm in love. But I'm not alone. Check out the Sutton gardener video below. He might just be the hunkiest gardener waxing about the most sublime vegetable that has ever been caught on tape.

I put a list of everything I ordered for this year's garden below, just in case anyone actually reads this blog for useful information, which I'm not necessarily recommending. But if you're a "plunk-it and forget-it" kind of person like me, then most of the seeds should make you quite pleased. (I can not yet vouch for the cucamelon,). Of course the Grand Dame of my garden, the tomato, will not be planted from seed, so don't panic that you don't see it on the list. My lust for boxes full red ripe tomatoes will not be left to the capricious whim of nature. Let's not be silly...

Cucamelon
Chive Seeds
Cilantro Slow Bolt
Dill Dukat
Oregon Blue Lake Pole Bean
Scarlet Runner
Baltimore Carrot
Purple Haze Carrot
Neon Color Mix Chard
Fennel
Bak Choi-Mei Qing Choy
Cascadia Sugar Snap Pea
Jackpot Zucchini
Sunburst Scallop
Echinacea
Cosmos
Empress of India Nasturtium
Jewel Peach Melba Nasturtium
Italian Parsley
Moulin Rouge Sunflower
Supreme Mix Sunflower
California Giants Violet Queen Zinnia

Belize Boot Camp and a Hero in the Making

Belize Boot Camp and a Hero in the Making

Posted by Heather Harris

It all started with a simple goal: get in bikini shape for Greg and my 10 year anniversary trip to Belize. Usually this means "Dance Party", an exercise routine done in the privacy of my home with all of the curtains drawn wherein I flail around the house to loud music while the kids create strange, fine motor tasks for me to do like untying knots on a Barbie dress. I like to think it's a bit like the Biathlon.

Anyway, I decided to skip the dance routine and go out in the yard to actually accomplish something with my workout. This led me to an oh so simple task that quickly morphed into three-day weekend hell. I thought, " Why don't I unearth the debris pile that has been lurking near the creek since time immemorial and get rid of it." I'd already tried this in the summer, but the grass and weeds were so intertwined among the stumps, logs, and tree limbs that it was impossible. However, on a crisp January morning, with the sinuous vines and reeds lying long dead on the grass, it seemed like a good idea to give it another go. This was actually the easiest part of the weekend: Pick up a stump, drag it CrossFit style to another location, repeat. Very straightforward. The only problem was that while I unearthed one pile, I was just creating another, larger, less decomposed pile on the other side of the yard. A monster, if you will, had arisen,ready for battle.

When Greg got home, I mentioned that maybe we should rent a wood chipper this weekend to kill the beast. Not knowing what I was up to while he was at work, he looked into the yard and rolled his eyes. "It should just take a few hours, " I said sweetly, "and a wood chipper should be fun!" And then I got an idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. "As long as we have a wood chipper, we should prune the apple tree."

 Prune is a hilarious euphemism for what this tree needed. I checked out a book from the library called, "Easy Pruning". I flipped to the page on apple trees and it showed a nice little man in British woolens with hand clippers snipping peacefully at a tree no taller than himself that had been lovingly nurtured since it was a seedling. The freakish, miscreation of a fruit tree towering over our yard had been planted thirty years ago and left to the dominion of the apple maggots.

Clippers were not going to do anything. We needed a chainsaw. And thus began a series of unfortunate events that would take five blog posts to expound upon, so let me give you the lowlights in one sentence: Chainsaw stuck in tree, chisel used to get it out, massive tree limbs strung out all over yard, Greg leaves to get wood chipper, truck won't start, jumper cables won't reach battery, remove battery from other car, truck starts, wood chipper running, Greg moves it to "a better location", chipper and truck get stuck in the mud of our back yard, 24 hours later truck and chipper out of mud, great jubilation, wood is chipped into mammoth pile of mulch, truck and chipper momentarily get stuck in mud again, dark despair descends, it's free!, great jubilation.

And this brings me to one of the many lessons learned this weekend: Greg is a hero in the making. When all of us girls get married, we imagine that we are joining our lives with a man that can solve all of our problems, just like our Dad. Our car won't start, Dad drives up, wiggles a few cables, and we're back on the road in minutes. Pipe is leaking, call Dad up, he brings over a big manly wrench and tightens a few thing-a-ma-jigs and leak stops!Two days into marriage and we realize we didn't marry our Dad. In fact, this guy we are spending the rest of our lives with barely knows more than us! How could we have been so stupid! And why the heck doesn't he know how to do all this stuff? Then we reluctantly resign ourselves to actually having to help solve all of these annoying problems of life with our mate.

But then Greg said something remarkable as we joyfully embraced by the freed wood chipper. He said "You know, when we were first married, there is no way I could have done all this stuff!" And then I had an epiphany: Our Dads were just as stupid as our husbands are! They only knew how to save the day for their little girls because they had battled all of these ridiculous problems side-by-side with their mate when we were too young to be paying any attention. During all of this mayhem, Lily, our 6 year old, was in the house happily turning our living room into a gypsy camp. She had absolutely no clue what war was being waged beyond the sliding-glass door.

And as I gaze out at the scene of the battle, imagining spring grass growing in to cover up the tire marks and a post Apocalypse apple tree covered in fruit, I know that when Lily calls up her dad crying, "My car is stuck in the mud!," that he will know the exact number of sandbags, shingles, jacks, and force to get her out in a few minutes and he will forever be her hero. He's starting to look a lot like mine too.

Graph Paper

Graph Paper

Posted by Heather Harris

The Project has begun. You could say it really started in June with the frantic plunking of eight tomato plants into a solitary raised bed. Or maybe the hurried toss of a few dahlia tubers by the deck late in the spring. But no... I think the project really began today. For today I took out the graph paper.

I NEVER take out graph paper. It runs completely contrary to my willy-nilly nature. My husband, weirdly, has graph paper as his notepad. Can you imagine?! All of those serious little boxes staring at you while you're trying to daydream, doodle, or deliberate? The only reason I even own any is because I thought I might take up cross stitch as a means to improve my undeveloped attention to detail. I don't think it worked.

However, as I tromped out into our soggy field to measure the perimeter of the new vegetable garden (I use the term "measure" loosely, since I am also adverse to precision with a tape measure)  I came to several sobering conclusions:

1. This yard is freaking huge.

2. My vegetable garden will have more square feet than my first house.

3. Greg (my husband) is going to kill me when he sees how many tons of gravel and dirt he is going  to be shoveling.

4. This is only Phase 1 of 3,678 phases to complete the garden of my dreams.

5. This "Project" is going to take 20 years and 5 million dollars.

And

6. I'm going to need graph paper.

And thus, The Project has begun...