Sabbatical Garden

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.                             
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have decided to reframe this past year and have declared it to have actually been an unexpected sabbatical. And because every sabbatical needs a purposeful project, I believe that we can claim our vegetable garden as such. It was and continues to be an experiment in self-sufficiency, botany, chemistry, and even perhaps spirituality (if you count singing to your plants a form of prayer, as I do). 

This morning I was looking at the scene below and felt a surge of pride at our little vegetable patch. Our garden has been the manifestation of the one word we decided to work on for this year: tenacity. We have learned that just because something looks like a withered brown stick or a piece of wet tissue paper does not mean it is dead. In fact, patience and love do triumph in the end. This may seem commonsense to my wise readers but for me who is always ready to jump instead of to sit still, it has been a very valuable lesson to glean from my sabbatical.

Anyway, without further ado, let me show you around our garden, as it is now in mid-July. 

We chose the backyard instead of the original garden space in the front of the property because:  
 a. it's easier to keep an eye on the kids and b. it's rather gorgeous.

White and yellow Italian strawberries, grown from seed. It took them forever to get beyond the little sprout stage but here they are, looking rather lush.

Our okra forest.

Sorry for the blurriness. We have two types: Alabama red (seen here) and Star of David.

An okra blossom. I did not know this until I grew okra but essentially the okra is the blossom, curled up. Something quite lovely about that besides for being such a delicious vegetable. 

Eggplant patch. 

Edirne striped eggplant. 

Asian eggplant.

Watermelons!

Moon and stars watermelon. 

Tomato forest. About 50 plants with a mixture of black plum and purple Cherokee. We are harvesting at least a quart of tomatoes everyday now.

Pepper patch.

Chocolate bell peppers. They will turn a purplish brown and be rather sweet.

Wenk's yellow hot pepper. Mildly hot. 

Italian cowpeas. They are finally getting the hang of the trellis. 

Japanese climbing cucumber. Currently the caterpillars are feasting on this luscious vine but it is a determined plant.

Colette's sesame plants. We actually have a row of these at the back of the garden that are still only a tenth of this size. Colette planted these when she was helping in the garden and did her part to water them everyday. That girl has quite the green thumb, ne?

Okay, so it is hard to see the veggies for the weeds here but this is our green onion patch. It is quite prolific despite the weeds and has been our source of negi goodness for a few months now.

The fields of greens. Well, this was our greens patch, kale, mizuna, rainbow chard, and collards. Until June we were eating salads with every meal but they could not survive the 97 degree days. The collards are actually still trucking and there are some experimental edamae and shallots buried in there.


Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them. -A.A. Milne
Since we have sandy soil, we found that most of the weeds are helping the garden. They also attract pollinators so frankly, I am fond of the weeds. Even the stinging nettles that I despised as a barefoot child are welcomed in our garden.

Observing the start

The sun does not rise in these parts of the planet until 6:30. Since I am used to the summer sun streaming through my window at 4:30, I am usually up to meet the day. I have taken it upon myself to catalog the other life that rises to the occasion. Thus my new ritual of morning observations.









There is a lot of inventory for me to chronicle. This task, I am happy to say, is of no short duration.

How does your garden grow

It has only been a couple of weeks since we started our gardening venture. I am so glad to have brought this into our lives. We all get so much pleasure in watering the plants and watching them thrive. Colette is the Queen of the Watering Can so I have to get out there before she does in the morning to make sure all the plants get watered. And she has learned the valuable lesson of not crushing the plants, or plucking them out of the ground. Now she is very careful and hardly ever plays with their dirt. Sebastian is pleased because the sunflower seeds that he planted, most of the twenty(!) seeds, sprouted and are zooming up in all directions right now. Jason even contributed to the mix by adding that lovely little hydrangea with the perfect antique blue tiny blossoms.

It is an addictive habit, this gardening stuff. This weekend we plan to add eggplant, shiso, rosemary, and salad greens. And we will be starting a little compost container to use all of our kitchen scraps, perhaps using the bokashi method. It is part of my goal of cutting our garbage production in half.

The best thing about this experience has been involving the kids in every step. They already have a natural interest in all things growing (and all things in general, of course) and the boys get to do a little gardening at both of their schools. Colette is happiest when she is digging and using her hands so this new routine of ours is perfect for her. I do worry about their attitude towards the natural world living in a human curated city that is heavy on the concrete and light on the green. This balcony garden of ours has given us a tiny corner of botany and ecology, of responsibility and togetherness. I just wish we had started it sooner.

I Heart Ajisai

Growing up, there were hydrangeas. I never really paid them any mind though as they were usually at the corner of the house with their pastel blossoms. By August they were essentially just sticks with brown dried blossoms somehow still attached. It had something to do with the name too, particularly pronounced in the Southern accent: high-drain-ya. While the Southern accent can lend a bit of romantic flavor to flowers like the magnolia, it does no favors for hydrangeas. It took me forever to figure out how to properly spell the word since the word I knew couldn't be phonetically dissected.
Then I moved to Japan where I learned that the plant is a rainy season plant so the annual Florida drought is not on the hydrangea's side. I really fell in love with the plant, or ajisai, the way it is in Japan, with rich, lush green leaves and vibrant orbs of deep blue, purple, and pink. Pastel versions are around, though I tend to ignore them for their darker neighbors.




At the end of summer, the ajisai will be cut down to nubby sticks in order to survive the long winter. Somehow they manage to resurrect themselves every year. We have a little potted ajisai now, with the most beautiful blossoms of them all. Unfortunately Jason forgot to water it while they were still thriving so I have no pictures to share. This year.

By any other name

There seem to be roses blooming everywhere around Nagoya right now. I have never been very fond of the rose, inheriting my grandmother's prejudice against their full sweet blossoms. She referred to them as funeral flowers, a description that repelled me for many years. This year though I have been charmed by them.