Well July has come and gone. For us here at 41 Western Ave in Hull it started with a big week as our two older children and their children and spouses were here for most of the July 4th week. We ate greens and arugula by the bushelful. It was busy and crazy and we all missed Josie.
Ben, Maud and Reggie stayed almost to the end of the month and there was much less from the garden to give away or preserve as the eaters matched the garden production and in fact we did some supplementing from the Hingham Farmers Market. Last Saturday the Baltimore contingent arrived with tomatoes from their Baltimore garden. I found it very exciting for a child to bring us tomatoes. Josie had once written a beautiful essay about tomato season in Hull and how summer here in Hull was tied to tomatoes and the garden and was a reason to be in Hull, but this year here on August 1st no tomatoes were ripe. It was totatoes that we had been lacking and what a joy it has been to have Cleo bring some really good tomatoes to go along with the harvests we did have.
The title of this blog is Carrot Day and I am pleased to report that the Juneteenth carrots are prospering. The radishes have all been pulled. Several times in the past six weeks the carrot bed has been weeded and thinned. The bunnies have been kept out behind the wood and chicken wire barrier. I think the bunny population is thinning as the phlox and the blackeyed-susans are making a comeback and the parsley that is above the fence is not being eaten, but it is reassuring that the bunnies have not eaten the carrots. While I still see rabbits every day I think there are fewer rabbits at 41 Western Ave or perhaps they are just eating other things. Anyway I think the carrots are safe.
The three photos above tell much of the story of the past five weeks. We have been blessed with visits from two of our children and their families. Izzy, the child in the middle, and I pulled a carrot yesterday from the spring-coldframe-planted carrot bed and he washed it with the hose and then ate it. He shared with me a taste and while it was an okay carrot with good crunch it was not frost kissed. I suspect if it was frost kissed he might not have been so willing to share it. It was fun to watch and hear him eat a carrot. I think it is the thrill of the harvesting and the self sufficiency of washing it himself that makes him want to eat a carrot. The photo on the right is Reggie celebrating the beauty of collard leaves. That photo was taken about three weeks ago and since then some insect has been eating the collards, as you can see if you look very closely at the photo on the bottom right of the bank of photos below.
Living with children two or nearly two years old for the past five weeks has been transportive. It brings back memories of the amazing time in our lives when we lived with small children every day. It has also reinforced for me why gardening with children is powerful. The idea of Carrot Day is that homegrown/school-grown food tastes really good and is an entry way to healthier eating for us as individuals and healthier ways of living for us as a species.
Living with two-year-olds has also had me thinking about turn-taking, sharing and child development. This time of thinking has been stimulated by watching our children raise children. I have also had the advantage of being with an early-childhood professional. Maud, my daughter in-law, has taught preschool for twelve years and is an assistant professor of practice in Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas, Austin. As it says on the UT website, “Her practice is informed by an interdisciplinary approach that views learning as a collaboration based in mutual trust, and children as social agents. We grow the community we want to see in the world …..” Community is a goal of gardening with children at home and students in school and Community is a goal of this blog.
One metaphor I hear often from educators who are not thinkers about gardening is that the classroom is like a garden. Every year as I tend the garden I am so glad that is not actually true. Gardening is ruthless and it is certainly my hope that classrooms are not. Every time I am in the garden I am making decisions about what will thrive and what needs to be eliminated. My long term goal is the soil and I try my best to always keep that in mind but I thin and weed carefully cultivating what has a chance to thrive and what does not. I hope there are not many classrooms where the teacher is making those kinds of choices.
That said, I have been thinking a great deal about turn-taking. On one side of the garden the tomatoes have been growing well while on the other they are one-fourth the size with one-fourth the fruit. I think perhaps I was too permissive with the arugula around those tomato plants when they were small. They are doing a bit better now that I have pulled out more of the arugula and given the tomatoes more space. While I am gardening I have made up a little saying I say to myself, “When in doubt pull it out.” I am afraid that even with that saying I don’t quite thin aggressively enough and as can be seen by the tomatoes I can ask for too much sharing. In the garden there is competition for light and space and nutrients and while seaweed and low till practice and vertical supports add to the nutrition and sunlight in the 41 Western garden there is still competition and winners and losers. But turn taking really does work. The radishes have had their turn, now it is the carrots turn. In amongst the bean bed two volunteer tomatoes grew. One was a cherry type and one a brandywine type. The beans are almost done and I suspect these will be the most productive tomato plants come mid September.
The photograph on the left is of those two tomato plants in the bean bed. The photograph in the top right is of the cucumbers climbing up the structure and over the sorrel and into an area newly trimmed back mint. The sorrel had its time to be central in early spring. The mint had it moment in June when I havested a years supply of mint tea and the cucumbers are having there moment now. In fact in the last couple of days I put up eight quarts of pickels at the same time we eat cucumbers at every meal. It is the photograph on the bottom left that tells the most important story of turn-taking and sharing. While I did cut back some mint most of it I saved not directly for human harvest but for pollinators. If we collectively can think of resources as finite and part of interconnected ecosystems perhaps we can build that community Maud talks about and “We grow the community we want to see in the world.”
Postscript: This morning Izzy and I took the boat in and out of Boston to visit the Aquarium. When we got back he aksed his dad, Josh Modell, for a “garden carrot.” Izzy and I went over to the spring-coldframe-planted carrot bed. I lowered the bunny fence and put him in the bed and he pulled a carrot. He asked to go and wash it. He then held and ate the carrot for about ten minutes. His dad says he does not eat vegtables. The good news does not end there. As I inspected the collards this morning the new collard leaves were untouched by insects. Perhaps the balance has changed again and we will get those glorious collard leaves again.
Hope you have a good summer and can garden or enjoy children’s inspirations, and the support of friends.
Carrot Day Massachusetts 2023 