a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Seed Mindfulness

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    Saving seeds is an opportunity to practice mindfulness. These are the dried flowers of 牛蒡 – Gobo (burdock). The foot to two feet long roots of young gobo have a delicious, woodsy, mushroomy, carroty taste.

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    After pulling the flowers apart to get their seeds, I discovered that the burdock flowers are also the home to many spiders and tiny bugs. Most of those are back outdoors looking for new homes. It emphasizes the importance of letting plants alone in the garden after they have flowered and gone to seed. Their dried stems and flowerheads house thousands of beneficial insects and spiders.

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    So how many seeds does a handful of gobo flowers produce?

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    1,011 to be precise. This is the mindfulness part. Turn off the radio. Close your eyes. Enjoy the peace and quiet, and start counting. Paying only attention to the seeds, make stacks of 10 seeds and line them up until all the seeds are counted. You can turn most any task into an opportunity to practice mindfulness.

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    GoboSeedsFThe 1,011 seeds are now in packet ready for when I plant them in a few weeks.

  • Nature’s Hope

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    This is how nature hopes … with blossoms. The fruiting plum trees are just starting to unfold their blooms. Each one of their tiny buds is hope for a plum, and from the plum, a future plum tree. Imagine if people’s hopes budded as beautiful as plum blossoms. The more hopes a person had, the more blossoms they would show.

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  • Winter Refuse

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    The world of vegetables is a world of dazzling color. It makes you wonder why they aren’t called colors instead of greens. This is a colorful pile of chard, ruby streaks, and onions I cleared out of a hoop house to make room for spinach. Life is good when even your refuse is so colorful and edible.

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  • Help Is On the Way

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    I’m clearing out a bed of chard and onion to make way for spinach. The packet says 38 days to harvest. I love how seed packets are always so full of optimism. First Billy and then Lucky come into the hoop house to help me prep the ground. You can accomplish any farm task as long as you have enough chickens. They are soil experts with beaks and claws from hell. Need a vegetable or flower bed aerated? Chickens to the rescue. Need a bed of cover crop mowed down? Chickens at your service. Need a compost pile turned? Chickens know how to do that. Need a plot debugged? A flock of chickens will do it nicely, and leave the plot well fertilized to boot.

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  • Not a Cloud All Day

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    A full day with not a cloud all day. Even the jets passing overhead from Asia to Denver or Dallas, couldn’t mar the cobalt sky with a contrail. The sweet daphne is in full bloom. It is so fragrant it’s intoxicating. The plums aren’t as fragrant, though if you lie in the grass underneath a plum tree, the beauty may put you in a trance. Now there is a fairy tale. Once upon a time, there was a hidden garden with flowers and trees so beautiful, no one who entered was ever seen again …

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    Painted in Waterlogue
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    It’s time to get more lettuce started in one of the hoop houses. Hard to believe that in not too many more months, these dirt rows will supply many salads. But not if I forget to close the hoop house door. If I leave it open just a bit, the hens quickly make themselves at home. In their never ending quest for the fattest, longest worm on the planet, they can quickly destroy many a lettuce bed.

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