The Gardener’s Dilemma: To plant or not to plant.
Santa Fe Honey
I remember standing at a farmers market in Santa Fe New Mexico in front of a table lined with jars of amber and gold honey. I was surprised at how much honey the high-desert produces, given the dry scrub covering so much the hilly terrain. The bearded beekeeper in a cowboy hat explained how nearly all of what I saw as “scrub” bloomed, and the bees flourished. He was sharing samples and the tastes were spectacular.
Like the honeys in any region, the different waves of flowers throughout the seasons created different tastes, bouquets, high and low notes, like wines. “But the very favorite honey of my customers, hands down, is autumn clematis honey.” He shook his head slightly, “You can just open the jar and you smell flowers.” He closed his eyes as he said this, as if he was inhaling the scent just now. Before I had time to speak a single word he answered my next question, “I just get it in the fall and I sell out right away, so I can’t offer you any. But people are asking me if I have any the rest of the year.” That was 2010 and I’d never even contemplated keeping bees.
Sweet Autumn Clematis blooms in September and October across the Ozarks and as I drive through town I spot the big green mounds of vines on fences covered up with so small frilly flowers it looks like a blanket of white foam. It is a weedy green vine unremarkable for most of the season. Come autumn, it explodes into a starry blanket of creamy blossoms with a delicious scent. I think back to the Santa Fe honey. That trip was in 2010, before I ever contemplated keeping bees.
These days I look for good things to plant for my bees. I looked up Autumn Clematis only to find that is not native to the US can be invasive/opportunistic in some climates and I’m not really sure if it is a problem in the Ozarks. But then there’s Virgin’s Bower (Clematis virginiana) also called woodbine, which is less showy but native. The native variety has an added bonus of being good for songbird food and nesting materials, though I’ll have to find a special spot to plant it given that it loves a moist setting…. But this is all part of the pleasant mental wrangling gardeners engage in for fun when it’s too cold or wet to dig.
But the thought of new plantings immediately runs into another, one that says I may not be here to see it. By the time it blooms I may be breaking new ground yet again on the home we hope to find when we move back to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the next year.
Ahhh, the gardener’s quandary: If you know you are going to be in a place a relatively short time, do you bother to plant things you will likely never get to see fully grown, or bearing fruits or flowers or shade?
I once read a story about a Quaker gardener, a woman, who lived in a town about to be invaded by German troops in World War II. At least that’s the way I remember the story began. Just before she left her home to escape to a neighboring country, she was planting seeds in her vegetable garden. I don’t remember what. Neighbors thought she was crazy to be planting just before leaving and said, ‘You won’t be here to eat it!’ Her answer something like ‘Whoever lives in this house next, they will need to eat.’
Oh those beautiful Quakers. This story has stuck with me for decades, the compassion of this woman willing to plant food she would never eat. Another way I’ve heard this belief is that ‘true wisdom lies in planting trees even if you will never live long enough to sit in their shade.’ It’s very hard to remember to lift up my attention from my wants, wishes and worries and to think of this land going on into the future without me. But when I do, it feels right. And oddly, I feel better—lighter—about how long I will be here. As a hospice nurse, I can’t help but note the larger echo of that realization.
So let me plant more stuff I may or may not be here to see bloom. If only for the reason that when the wash of white frilly flowers appears in some future autumn, bees will arrive at each bloom. There will be nectar for them.
Not clematis, but welsh onion blooms. Not sure how that affects the honey!
First Chicken Coop: The Taj-MaHen
I’ve posted that a good coop is THE KEY to happily keeping chickens. What I mean by that is a spot where your chickens roost at night and can be locked up safe when you need them to be.
Read MoreGood Link: How To Build a Worm Tower
Here’s a link to a great how-to and handout for building a worm tower from our friends at Midwest Permaculture. This is a way to do worm composting of food scraps directly in your garden. Enjoy!
http://midwestpermaculture.com/2012/11/how-to-build-a-worm-tower/
Read MoreChickens: Hardest Working Garden Buddy Award
Some friends and I were standing in the ramshackle remnants of the November garden at Larrapin after an arduous 2012 summer season. There wasn’t much to crow about once you got past the glorious stand of collard greens. Perhaps as a kindness, my friends remarked instead on how handy it must be that my chicken paddock is right beside the garden. The hens were casually pecking away at piles of end-of-season garden residue tossed over the fence to them. Yes it is! I nearly shouted, relieved to turn the attention away from all the things I didn’t do right in the garden this year.
Read MorePermaculture Leaf Compost Shredding with Chickens
The situation: We have an over-abundance of oak leaves every Fall. We have a shortage of good topsoil on this rocky Ozark hilltop year-round. How to use one problem to solve the other? Why, chickens of course.
Read More
