Lil's Garden

My Mama loved flowers. It seems like there was always something blooming in the yard. Magnolia trees graced the front yard and the corner of the backyard, where I often “played over the fence” with my backyard neighbor, Debbie Hauck.  Debbie Hauck and Me having a tea party near the magnolia tree Sometimes Mama would let me pick a blossom that I could reach and bring it inside where its fragrance filled the house. You had to be very careful because every place you touched would turn brown. The wisteria bush in the middle of the front yard smelled like Vacation Bible School punch. The bees loved it too. Melinda in the front yard A row of crape myrtles lined the other side of the driveway. Red amaryllises ringed the oak tree. The Easter Bunny would often make a nest of Spanish moss around the tree among the amaryllises to hide his Easter eggs. Finding those Easter eggs was one of the Easter morning rituals. Melinda, my brother Jimmie, and my Mama on Easter Sunday ...

A couple of years ago I read an amazing book called The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson. He helped me to seed that the glory of a plant is not the beautiful flower that it produces, which fades in a short time and is gone. The real beauty and, in fact, the purpose of the plant is to produce seeds.    About five years ago I bought so me poppy seeds and planted some poppies. They are some of the first things to bloom in the garden. They just seed themselves and show up every year. The blooms are gorgeous.     However, the seed pods are also incredible.  Eventually the pods dry out and become little pepper shakers full of poppy seeds. I picked one today and shook all the seeds out. Robert took photos of the seeds with his macro lens. Aren't they wonderful?      

The waiting is beginning to pay off. The potatoes are blooming.  The radishes are up. The corn and beans are beginning to come up.  The okra is also peaking through.  We have a beautiful crop of Crawford Leaf Lettuce , if anyone would like to come and pick some, at the proper social distance, of course. The ladybugs like it.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Psalm 90:10 I am well into my seventh decade. I spent the last half of my sixth decade and the first half of my seventh decade in graduate school, feeling most of the time like  that awkward geek in middle-school with no friends and zits on her face. But I persevered, earning Master's degrees in Humanities and Museum Studies and a PhD in Literature and Religion. As it turns out, the job market for a recently minted sixty-seven year old PhD with no experience in the field is quite limited. So I am continuing to compose my further life , defining myself as an independent scholar, writing a few articles, doing a bit of scholarly research, and thinking about turning my dissertation into a book (Hopkins's Homer). However, for the last year my primary interest has been tending our prairie a...

We've begun to fill in the garden beds. So far we have onions and some beautiful Crawford lettuce. I just picked my first little handful of sugar snap peas. We'll be having those with the lettuce and some beets from the little garden for our supper tonight. Here I am having just picked the beets and a couple of sweet peas. The sweet peas smell so lovely. I planted a whole row of zinnias that I started from seeds. The cabbages are coming along. They were a gift from my neighbor, Sharon. Thank you. I also have a whole row of lavender that we started from seeds—50 little plants. The two rows of potatoes—Red Pontiac, Adirondack Blue, Yukon Gold, and White Kennebec—are coming along nicely. A few already have some buds on them. Although the tomatoes had a difficult start , they are coming along also. Some are blooming, and some even have little tomatoes. The blackberries have been blooming and making little berries. This week we ...