The Back Flowerbed

 ETA: I think I wrote this post sometime around June, but recently discovered that it never actually got posted.  Since I talk about this flower bed a lot and consider it a work in progress...I'm posting it now.

 

I've been alluding for some time to an ongoing project near our back fence, so I thought I'd better explain myself.  The "back 40" is the strip of land (steep slope) on the opposite side of this fence.  When we bought this house I had grand plans to put a gate in this fence and steps in the hillside - I even planted a bunch of flowers down the sides of these imaginary steps.  Then the city mowed them all over, exercising their right (obligation?) to mow the "right-of-way" opposite a fence with no gate.  And the real estate market went bad, and I got busy, and frankly it was just so far from the house...okay, enough excuses.  We've been letting the weeds take over the back 40 and the whole fence line ever since.  In the grand tradition of Shaela's house projects, I neglected to take a before picture before diving in.  To give you some idea how bad it had gotten, here's a closer shot of the section behind the shed where I encountered a rose bush and stopped clipping.

Somewhere in that clump is not only a massive multiflora rose, but also a medium-sized holly bush.  But when you look at it, you can't even tell they're there.

So I've devoted several hours this spring to chopping down volunteer trees and ripping out at least three different kinds of ivy, one of which seems to give me a very mild rash.  The cups you see in the picture at the top are little perennial seedlings, some of which I've already planted but many of which are still tipping over every time the wind gusts above 5mph.  ("Do you think they thought those were just trash?" N asked about the cups after some guests left one night.)  There are balloon flowers, pony tail grass, mallow, and soapwort, as well as a few daylilies I planted from seed last spring, a couple tough-as-nails flowering shrubs rescued from my former neighbor's flower bed, and two blueberry bushes.  (And, of course, potatoes in the recycling tote.)  It still takes some imagination, but I think it's going to be spectacular once it's planted and growing.

Going, Going, Gone!

The last three onions hanging in my pantry basket

Last winter when planning my garden, I made a conscious decision to grow more food that I could store for the winter.  I don't know if it's the lousy economy, the lousy housing market, or just being a mom, but I actually worry about food shortages...so much.  So I added things like onions and potatoes and carrots and winter squash to my plan.  I know I'll never be able to put enough food away for the four of us, but there is something comforting about opening my basement door and being greeted by the sights and smells of my "pantry".

When it came time to sow the onion seeds last spring, I sat down with my beloved HG-16 and calculated that I needed approximately 90 onion seedlings to fill my onion bed, and that this would be enough for most of a year.  (I estimated that we used about 2 onions/week.)  What good fortune!  I could, for the most part, stop buying onions!

Hmmm...except that this afternoon I used the last half onion a mere 3 months after I began harvesting them! What happened?  Well, for one thing, I'm almost incapable of planting anything (even tiny little onion seedlings, which look like single blades of grass) less than six inches apart.  It's just not in me.  I ended up giving away about a third of my seedlings.  Then the unusually dry spring killed a handful of them.  And then, it turns out that I cook a lot more onions than I realized.  Tomato sauce?  Salsa?  Onions.  Fried ground beef in anything?  Onions.  Roast anything?  Onions.  Soup of any kind?  Onions.  Steak sandwhiches? Onions.  Grilled sausages?  Onions.  Potato anything?  Onions.  Oatmeal?  Of course not...although...  I think maybe I cook onions more often than I cook meat.  (I know, you're shocked.  Me too!)

I guess next year I'll have to plant more onions.  I think I may also try to branch out a little.  Bulb onions should be for the winter.  Looking around the community garden plots I see so many little green allium leaves, clearly flourishing in the cool air.  Surely some of them would make for good soups and salsa and everything else!

Food Security

Last year about this time I read the book Independence Days, by Sharon Astyk.  At first I didn't know what to make of it.  I picked up the book because I thought it would be about canning and drying food, which she does get around to talking about eventually.  However, she first spends considerable time discussing her personal reasons for preserving food, which boil down to many flavors of food security.

Many of the things that she talks about are things that occasionally run through my mind, at least since my first pregnancy.  What will happen to our food supply in the future when the demand for oil begins to outstrip the supply?  When the demand for water continues to outstrip the supply in many areas?  What does common sense demand we do to prepare for such a future?  What moral considerations should guide our food decisions today, in light of possible future problems?  In light of current agricultural practices and their impact on the people and environment of our world today?  These aren't actually new concerns - they've been with us for generations - but they are receiving a lot of attention right now, in part due to the economic upheaval and uncertainty of the past several years.  I think each one of these issues is extremely complex and could be (and probably is) a book in itself.  If you've got an hour, check out the Wikipedia article on "Food Security".

Recently I picked up Independence Days again, after realizing that some things in the book had really stuck with me.  I was curious how I would feel about it after a second reading, and, well, I still don't know what to make of it.  There are a lot of people, especially on the internet, with really strong opinions about these topics.  (See a recent post on one of my favorite blogs, New to Farm Life, and associated heated comments.)  At times it really reminds me of a religious community - certain opinions are assumed to be universally shared and therefore require no justification.

So here's my plan: for the rest of this year I will write periodic follow-up entries to this one, trying to gather useful facts and references and sort out my own opinions on some of these issues.  I welcome your comments, whatever side of the battle line you stand on, and hope that my ramblings won't turn you away.