Fertile ground

I am here and the next place, while in the garden this morning.

I fill in the spaces where some snap peas didn’t come up. They were old seeds and I guess some were not as virulent as others. I replace them with this year's snow pea seeds. I am thankful for my abundance of seeds and for the warm fertile earth. I think of farmers in other parts of the world who are more dependent on their gardens than I and bless their toil and send prayers of fertility.

There are only two plants in the row of cucumbers that I reseeded this morning. While I am confused why so many didn’t grow, I am thankful that my harvest will be staggered. For some reason cucumbers come on strong and then succumb to a quick death. Staggering the seed planting is always suggested, although not surprisingly it took an act of nature for it to happen in my garden.



I plant beets in two rows about six inches apart. The seed package says plant in rows 12 inches apart. I plant them closer because I figure that if I am not walking between, it is not necessary to have so much room. I have to admit, I have never gotten much of a harvest of beets.

I turn a pile of sawdust and twigs that Stephen has piled on the edge of the mowed grass. It is filled with earthworms churning it into black gold that I will use next year to replenish the soil. I move the volunteer squash plants that are popping up all over the garden, a result of using "not quite done compost" from my kitchen pile as a soil booster.

I believe the plants to be butternut squash and I place them on the sawdust mound with a little bit of extra soil. This method of sending some seedlings out beyond the fence has worked in the past. The deer don’t seem to be able to find the hard squash growing in the high weeds. It’s a risk but it has always increased the harvest.

I pick stones out of the soil. There are so many. I used to consider that some could have been Indian artifacts. Last summer, I took some to Cliff S. at Tom’s Bait and Tackle in Narrowsburg. He’s more or less an expert on Indian artifacts and he told me that my shards, while triangular and sometimes grooved, were just broken rock from an ancient plow.

The knowledge changed how I picked up the stones. For a while, no longer innocent, I didn't look at them much. I understood that my sea of rocks were just that – rocks. Then for a time, when I picked up the shards, I thought about how I used to think that native peoples lived and worked in this fertile ground and that it wasn’t true.

Now I understand that it is important to me to feel connected and while Cliff might be right, I continue to look at the rocks, some of them, as if they were left over ancient tools. I continue my search, even though it may not lead to anything conclusive. It’s an act of imagination. It’s an act of needing or wanting to feel that there is a connection to something else beyond the present moment in the garden.

It’s a meditation, this garden work. An abetting of creation.