August 19, 2009

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

When Maudie was a little girl, she loved that song. We listened to it and sang along with Peter Paul and Mary. A lot. We didn't have a garden then, but at least we had middle-aged hippies to sing to us about a garden.

One of the great things about living where we do is that although we are landlocked, our area is mostly rural. If we drive for about ten minutes, we're whizzing past Amish buggies and acres and acres of farmland.

I never really had a garden before I married Timmy. He's a natural gardener, dedicated and meticulous. He builds the raised beds, makes the compost, plans and plants, and is out there every day doing the work. I'm the cook and tentative canner, and I love preparing and eating what we grow. Last night I picked some green beans, and 15 minutes later we were eating them. We call these "Moosewood Moments", in homage to the tried-and-true hippie classic. This year we doubled the size of the garden. We've got kale that I hope we'll be eating until Thanksgiving, beets, carrots, cucumbers, corn, and for the first time, blackberries.

We've also got tomatoes in all shapes and sizes -- Roma, cherry, Pink Lady, Mr. Stripey. This morning we also learned we've also got Late Blight.

Last night I was reading Erin's post about her own garden, and I showed it to Timmy. He assured me that, no, we didn't have it. This morning he came back from walking the dog and told me, that yes, we do have it. What a bummer.

As for knitting, I've been working on Ishbel, my first-ever shawl. After months of turning up my nose at shawls (and secretly feeling intimidated by the lace), I finally cast on with some gorgeous Malabrigo Sock yarn in Abril. I'm now completely hooked. I love the concentration this kind of knitting requires, how you really feel the inch by inch and row by row of it. And then, after seeing it as groups of stitches, the finished product blooms into something amazing; proof that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

I leave you with some canning shots, a fun afternoon spent with Heather and my pal Peeper-lou making tasty, but not so crispy, pickles.





2 comments:

The A.D.D. Knitter said...

Yo we cracked into those pickles earlier this week and they were deee-lish:)

Alison said...

Our tomatoes have been spared, shoulda planted more... but our cucumbers died a sudden death soon after planting, damping off, I think... farmstand cukes will have to do for us this year...