Contents

The Lewis School Garden
Planting Fruit Trees
Community Growing
A Dream that Healed the Earth
Beauty in the Garden
Certainties
Gardening in the Summer of 2011
A Personal Garden Vision
Gardening for a Purpose
Garden Observations are a Bonus
Gardening with Natural Principles
Community Growing
Hidden Places for Growing
Still Learning as Always
Connecting Gardeners, Community, and Opportunity

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Certainties, October 2011

I am comforted by certainties in a time of little sensible political action amid world-wide environmental degradation and a poor economy. Some of the few things I can count on are the golden light of fall, acorns falling with the brown oak leaves, and the emerging green grass transforming the dry faded golden hills.
Another certainty is the funny things that kittens do. There is one kitten by my side as I write. Actually she is now moving under my journal, on me, next to me, oops!–over my journal. Now she is high on the book shelf after some tiny flying insect or spider that I can’t see. Now two of the smaller stuffed animals are falling on me from the shelf above the bed where I am sitting as the kitten explores.
When this active kitten first arrived, she seemed uninterested in people. We have recently adopted her along with her four-month old sister and their mother. During her first few days with us, she and the others stayed close to the bathroom where I had their beds and food. By the second week, they were joining us in the living room. The others were interested in being petted and purred vigorously when they were handled and came to sit with us on the sofas. It crossed my mind that the most active one needed more petting so she would become more social. I soon noticed that when she got around to being with her people she was most attentive–purring, laying nearby, stretching out on her side in front of me, moving under foot, or snuggling with me depending if I was lying down or walking. I realized that she is just a very busy cat and socializes when she gets around to it.
She is a cat after all, and does things her way. No extra petting needed. Weeks later, she is near me when I lay on the sofa in the evening. She even watched a documentary about dogs with me one night. I could tell she was watching because her head moved slightly as she tracked the motion on the screen. She got up and left a few times but went right back to her position facing the television each time.
My husband has named her Rudy. She is the smallest. The mom, he named, Claire. The sister kitten he named Theo or Thea. All names are from the Cosby Show. Sometimes my husband calls the mom Mrs. Huxtable. I can be certain that Rudy will have a busy day today.

Gardening with Nature’s Principles during October in California
A big change happens in California after the first inches of rain fall in October. The grass seed and other wild-plant seeds sprout and grow. Growth is fast in the soil that is still holding warmth from the summer sun. Soon green is visible after the long summer drought. The plants that grew with the last rainy season have withered and dried. In wild places, the dry plants are thick and some are tall. There the green is barely visible two weeks after the first rains . Where last season’s golden brown dry plants have been mowed or eaten by grazing animals, the bright green velvet coat of plants already shows its vibrancy. Perennial plants like the roadside fennel begin to grow from the base of the old dry stalks.
In my garden, I cut down the finished perennial plants and compost them. No one does that to the plants like roadside fennel. By late spring, their old dry stalks are concealed by the new growth if they haven’t blown down during winter storms.

This October, I copied nature and sowed my winter green manure crops in between the finishing tomato, squash, and corn plants. I can remove the tomatoes, squash and corn plants after the last harvest, while letting the seeds get a good start in the warm soil. My time is limited as I teach full-time so I dug compost into beds only when essential for a particular crops like onions, garlic, and cabbage. I didn’t dig or weed to sow the green manure. I just tossed the bell beans and mixed cover-crop seed in between the finishing crops and scratched them into the soil with a hand tool. These beds will get a good dressing of compost later when this green manure crop is double-dug for the next planting in the spring or dug even earlier for lettuce and spinach which will be protected under row-cover or glass.
This green manure sowing was very easy and took about ten minutes. I could have been watching baseball on TV and done the sowing during the commercials if the Giants were in the World Series.

The garlic is up and growing along with the cabbages planted in August.
This year I am planting Chinese Garlic. I recently read Chester Aaron’s book called "Garlic is Life". I was so inspired to try other varieties of garlic that I found this more spicy Chinese variety at Imwalle’s Gardens in Santa Rosa. We tasted some of it before planting to determine that it really had a noticeably different taste from the California Garlic commonly sold in the grocery stores, and it does seem a little spicier.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Garlic is Life for its beautiful descriptions of living in Western Sonoma County. As I had also lived in the Occidental area, I loved having Chester’s words bring back my connection to this land of tall firs and grassy hills. His writing also tells of his gardening and how that connects him to warm memories of his parents. If you love gardening, this is a good read.