In the Garden

Things that we planted a while back are growing!

The little sprouts in the right hand picture are carrots

The other picture is either beets or swiss chard -- we planted both, and while I know which row is which in the garden, in the picture it's impossible to tell which this is since they look just alike at this point

Looks like before long it will be time to thin!

We put in tomatoes

Lots of tomatoes -- about 20 little plants, some of them that we got at the store and some heritage ones that I started from seed

With any luck we'll have tomatoes to eat and tomatoes to can and tomatoes to give to Second Harvest


In a double row along the fence behind the tomato baskets I planted these

These are not the seeds I originally intended to put there, but the ones that I started in pots indoors did not survive the transplanting, so we're trying again.

These can get to be very, VERY, tall plants, so I figured I can tie them to the fence if I need to

We hope to get sunflower seeds to share with our daughter (she has a bird that gets them as a treat sometimes)

See the string on the fence?

That is my bean lattice.

I know some folks prefer to plant bush beans, but I just don't like having to crawl around on the ground to pick them. So I've always tried to grow climbers and run them up some kind of support system.

Since we're planting all along the back fence this year, beans seemed like the right thing to put against it.

We planted yellow wax and green beans, and I only used about half of the seeds. I may run a similar lattice along the side fence and plant beans there too.

(and if all of these do well I'll be learning how to freeze them and maybe pickle them too)

We still have peppers and eggplant and cucumber plants to put in, and squash and corn seeds to plant, but when we got this much done it started raining on us, so we decided to go in the house. Maybe late today we'll be able to get back to it.

Gardening makes me think of my Mammy and Pappy (my mother's parents). When I was a child they had a huge garden. I can remember a lot of summers when a lot of what we ate came out of that garden. One of my favorite pictures of Pappy in his later years was taken of him standing in the corn in his garden.

Mammy was big on poetry. I can remember her quoting it for every occassion (maybe where I got my love for words --- especially the lyrics of meaningful songs). The garden poem (as I thought of it) was "you're nearer to God in the garden than anyplace else on earth". I know now that it was a misquote, but it is still dear to my heart and really is close to what the poet meant.

Just to set the record straight, here's the full poem with the poet's credit and the oft misquoted stanza highlighted. (I have to think somewhere Mammy is smiling about this!)


God's Garden

The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden-closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,--
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

For He broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.

Dorothy Frances Gurney