Well it is June and in Hull we have the porch furniture out, put up the sun shades and are eating festive dinners on the porch. The sounds of birds are in the air. The greens are going full tilt and it is getting to be time to plant carrots for a Frost Kissed Carrot Harvest and Carrot Day Celebrations in November or December.
If you have not ordered your carrots this is your last chance. Here is the link.

There is too much in these green harvests for Katy and me but we have willing neighbors and friends who are happy to relieve us of the surplus. Plus we have news that some children and grandchildren will be here later in June. The first Arugula Swim of the year is coming up on June 4th. In an Arugula Swim my swimming friends come to Hull and the prize is arugula. It is also graduation season and the only thing I am bringing to potlucks is salad.
The photos below are from a succession bed planted in late winter with various greens. Readers of these posts know that my strategy for this kind of bed is that fast growing crops like radishes, my new favorite, are harvested first. Then the slightly longer maturing ones, like lettuce, are harvested. This leaves room for the kale, collards and chard harvests all summer and fall.


My publicly stated goal in the garden is healthy soil. I say I want to build the soil by always adding more to the surface of the garden with annual gifts of seaweed and compost and then to trust the natural processes to bring those nutrients into the soil. The process of the nutrition going from the surface into the soil supports the formation of networks of living organisms, which in turn help the soil retain moisture and nutrition. Each year I want the garden to produce more. I try to do as little digging as I can so that networks develop and the complexity of and richness of the soil develops over the years. I now understand what a privilege it is to be growing in the same soil for decades. I am blessed with good fortune.
But is soil actually the goal? I say the goal is the soil and the harvested vegetables are the byproduct of that goal. But I don’t think that is actually true of this Carrot Day Massachusetts Project. If I am to be honest the goal is actually community. Carrot Day will not save the earth by sequestering carbon in soil, by getting children excited about eating a really good carrot and then to change a bit how we live. As readers know from the annual posts here at Carrot Day, written by Dr. Laney Siegner, regenerative agriculture and its potential for carbon capture is an important tool in slowing climate change but this little patch will not do much. What this garden is really about is community, our neighbors, friends, children and grandchildren. For me the most important member of that community is Katy Lacy.
When thinking about my life with Katy I now divide it into two chapters. The first chapter was with cats and now we are living in a chapter without cats. In the cat chapter, many things happened, we lived together, got married, had children, grew gardens, lived in houses, and built careers and then the children got partners and and they all built lives.
Much is the same in the “non-cat chapter.” That chapter began on June 23rd, 2021 when our last cat disappeared; she was probably taken by a coyote. The next day our first grandchild Izzy was born. In the “non-cat chapter” there are gardens, houses, marriage, children, childrens’ partners, careers, and childrens’ lives. These things have all persisted but there is one big addition — grandchildren and with grandchild came the pleasures of seeing echoes of our younger-selves. We, especially Katy, send more time away from Hull.



As we are away from Hull so much it no longer felt wise to have cats and the loss of cats has forced me to change my gardening habits. When we had cats the bunnies stayed away and I did not think about bunnies. But now every gardening move I make I take bunnies into account. There are fences or boxes around the vegetables bunnies eat, such as carrots, lettuce, and beans. And there is freedom in other sections for the vegetables bunnies don’t touch like arugula, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers. The protective boxes I made from the old fir decking that we had on our porch. We replaced the decking so the grandchildren would not get splinters. Katy and I were fine with the children getting splinters but we are not fine with the grandchildren getting splinters, they can learn splinter induced lessons at home.
The reason I am going on this tangent is because Katy really likes these fences and boxes. I put them there to thwart the bunnies but it also makes it easier for people other than me to go into the garden. Katy said to me this week that the garden was now like “the garden at French Laundry.” I don’t think we are at that level of neatness but it did make me happy.


I have not been very welcoming to others, including Katy, in the garden. Once our daughter-in-law Maud said to Katy, “I just wish I could go in there” to which Katy replied, “I’m not allowed in either.” Before the bunny protections it was very difficult for anyone but me to know where to be or how to move but now with the bunny protections it is much simpler for others to be in the garden and I hope I become more welcoming.
The goal of maximizing production, interplanting, using the edges to have crops such as butternut squash grow among the mint did make it hard to know how to be in the garden. I was more interested in production and soil than rows and order. I was forgiving to small children, with their light small feet, but not so generous with adults. In this post I am celebrating our new life without cats and with garden boxes and small fences and a more welcoming attitude to others in the garden. With time I can see that maximizing community is really more important than maximizing crops.
Happy gardening and happy new chapters in your lives and your gardening lives.
A new thing I did today was to harvest chamomille which we will drink as tea. It was great fun and smells so good.

Fighting bunnies has helped me grow. I am still mad about how they eat the black-eyed-susans, the flox and the crocuses. I won’t fence everything in, even if it would make it look neater. I don’t care that much for neatness. I haven’t changed that much. The bunnies do leave the daffodils, lily of the valley, iris and many other plants alone.
Here is to flexibility and acceptance and minor adversities to produce growth. However I am not going to celebrate growth so much as to encourage splinters from our porch in a grandchild. Growth can be overrated.