a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

  • Baby Tomatoes, Drifting Cherries


    The baby tomatoes are just about ready to be put into the hoop house. Baby tomatoes have a fresh, clean scent that calms the mind. Feeling unsettled, frazzled, nerves on edge? Smell some baby tomatoes. I planted plenty of Sungold tomatoes this year. Last year I planted some and not a single one made it to market. I ate them all. They were that good. This year I am planting more than I can possibly eat – or is it even possible to grow more Sungold tomatoes than you can eat?

    Wind gusts have ripped clumps of cherry blossoms off the trees. The edges of the driveway look like snow. With this week’s cooler weather, the cherry blossoms will last a bit longer, but no matter how much you wish, in just a few weeks, they are gone.




    The first rosemary flower has opened. Is it a curtsying dancer? A blue angle? A quinceañera dressed for her party? Tinkerbell?



    Happy and old Sven are courting the hens out behind the tofu cabin. Still young, Happy has a long future ahead of him, and no doubt will be the father of much of the flock, eventually. Old Sven is looking pretty sad at times. He’s long past his glory, and sometimes I wonder if this will be his last summer. Just like the flowers, roosters don’t last forever. Neither do we.

  • Beauty Can’t be Hidden


    Sunshine or clouds, cherry blossoms can’t hide their beauty. Their blossoms buzz all day with hundreds of bees.




    The cherries are in full bloom, with a few blossoms already falling. In a week or two, blizzards of cherry blossom petals will blanket the grass and driveway like snow. It’s a special time of the year. Each day something new is budding out, something new is blooming.



  • Buzz Is in the Air


    At long last, the plum blossoms are open. The cold February and early March put a damper on spring, but no more.


    In the garden the bees are awake, digging out of their dens, and buzzing about. If they couldn’t find something to eat, they’d go elsewhere, which is why it’s a good thing to have a variety of early blooming flowers. Dandelions are hardly a weed. Their puffy yellow flowers satisfy the hunger of many a wild bee.



    The amazing stinging nettles, Urtica dioica (worth reading about), are pushing up too. A bowl of stinging nettle tips stirred into beaten eggs make a great omelette. It takes but a few minutes of cooking to vanquish their sting. Stinging nettles are so nutritious the industrialists have banned them from supermarkets, not true really, but it does make you wonder why there aren’t heaps of stinging nettles in the grocery aisles.




    These are what non-industrial eggs look like. The variety of hues and sizes is endless. I was wondering why the industrialists love to make everything look the same, and then I realized that if every carton of eggs you saw in a store was different, it would take forever for customers to decide which carton of eggs to put in their shopping cart. Drag a few little kids with you to the store, and little Annie would be clamoring for the carton with more blue eggs in it while little Ken would be demanding the carton with the darkest eggs. Parents would hate to take their kids into the egg section of a store. Sales of eggs would drop because shoppers couldn’t make up their minds as to which eggs to buy. Have all the eggs look the same and get on with it, convince shoppers that all eggs are the same, speed the masses along, that’s the plot of the industrialists.

  • Summer at Last


    Yesterday I was celebrating the final arrival of spring. Today it is summer. How did that happen? A brilliant Oreas Anglewing (Polygonia oreas) spread its wing on the birch in front of the house. The sweet daphne opened their blossoms, filling the air with their sweet perfume.



    With warm, sunny, summery days like this, these tomato seedlings will have plump tomatoes early in the season.

  • Spring at Last


    A few days ago little patches of snow remained in the shadows. Today they are all gone. Late January daffodil buds which went dormant with February snows are in bloom now, as is the first plum blossom.



    The rhubarb are popping out of the ground. If any spring leaves need to get out of the ground and stretch, it is the tightly crumpled rhubarb leaves. They are so tightly bound up, they look like they are in pain.


    The ducks are having a good time checking out the bamboo leaves I placed on the paths between the rows in the gardens. The warm weather has the hens laying a lot of eggs, thirty-three today.



    Wednesday is the vernal equinox. It should be a national holiday like it is in Japan. There are five national holidays in Japan having to do with nature, the vernal equinox, the autumnal equinox, Green Day (May 4 this year), Ocean Day (the 3rd Monday of July), and Mountain Day (August 11). One national holiday a month celebrating an aspect of nature would be nice.