My little patch of sanity

It’s called my garden. I spend hours on this little patch of land, preparing the soil, digging up invasive bittersweet roots, and fortifying it with compost and rich organic soil. It only takes an hour or so to plant, but the preparation to plant can take me near 12 hrs.  Tomatoes–sungolds, black and caspian pink heirlooms, sweet cherry 100′s, and a big boy. Lots of basil and thyme, some purple verbenas and snapdragons for color, and some late blooming marigolds grown from seed that are now at their peak (reminds me of an Indian wedding garland). And beans–purple climbing ones on lattices, green tasty ones down low. Japanese curly and crisp salad cukes, snap peas (per Kenji’s request), and some sad catalope that never took. Arugula, mesclun, sweet baby onions, and voila! that’s my garden.

A family of groundhogs moved in mid-May. By early June, they ate half of the plants. Sad little cucumbers eaten to a stub. Thanks to a hastily installed fence by my dear husband and amazing neighbor, I was able to keep them out and replant most of the vegetables lost. My neighbor and I commiserated all summer long about the critters eating away at our gardens. Seems as though the supposed civility of suburbia doesn’t mean too much to a hungry animal. And then a hornworm came along and ate half my tomatoes before I noticed him lurking on a sungold tomato branch. He was really quite brilliant and fantastic, the type of creature that makes you pause for a moment. This small but fat lime green and white striped worm with a red thorny horn on the tip of its head. Chomp, chomp, chomp, doing what he was made to do. Gardening  brings me down to earth, it literally and figuratively grounds me. Having a garden is a wonderful thing. Growing your own food–digging dirt, weeding, tending, picking, watering–well, it’s simply amazing. I wish I could have more time and energy to grow it bigger and better. But alas, the growing season is over and so soon will be my garden. Thank you earth.

The nasty but beautiful horn worm that had a field day in my garden

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